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A-bomb stokes Cold War feeling

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A-bomb stokes Cold War feeling
Photo: Isfronten

A half-tonne atomic bomb 20 times as powerful as the two dropped during the Second World War has gone on display at the Norwegian Aviation Museum in Bodø.

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Museum curators noted that children were just a little curious, while older visitors turned serious upon seeing the Cold War relic. The Bomb was on loan from the Royal Air-Force Museum in England and was flown to Norway for greater impact.

Now just a shell, the green projectile was in service for 20 years between the late-sixties and late eighties. It formed part of the museum exhibition, Isfronten, showing what things were like in this Cold War “battleground” nation and border country to the former Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union.

“Our society and military strategy is still stamped by the Cold War,” museum curator Kari Aasjord White told The Local.

White said she hoped funds would become available for a big new exhibit in 2014.

“It’s important to show today’s youth what the atmosphere was like in that era,” said White, adding, “Today’ we leave (electronic) tracks wherever we go and expose ourselves to monitoring without knowing it.”

She hopes the museum’s blog will help attract ordinary people’s stories from the days when frontline country Norway was key to Nato’s strategy of keeping the Soviet Northern Fleet hemmed in the icy Barents Sea.

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