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Related: Iconic photos from WWII: Fat Man was the second nuclear weapon to be deployed in combat after the US dropped a 5-ton atomic bomb, called " Little Boy ," on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it had a wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico.
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The Trinity bomb was officially a Y-1561 device, as was the Fat Man used later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The two were very similar, though the Trinity bomb lacked fuzing and external ballistic casing. The bombs were still under development, and small changes continued to be made to the Fat Man design. [59]
The mission included three B-29 bombers and their crews: Bockscar, The Great Artiste and The Big Stink. Bockscar was flown on 9 August 1945 by Crew C-15, which usually manned The Great Artiste; piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, commander of the 393d Bombardment Squadron; and co-piloted by First Lieutenant Charles Donald Albury, C-15's aircraft commander. [7]
The 1945 photo shows Manhattan Project physicist Harold Agnew holding the heart of one of the most devastating weapons in the world.
The Mark 4 nuclear bomb was an American implosion-type nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 3 Fat Man design, used in the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki.With the Mark 3 needing each individual component to be hand-assembled by only highly trained technicians under closely controlled conditions, the purpose of the Mark 4 was to produce an atomic weapon as a practical piece of ordnance.
Theodore Alvin Hall (October 20, 1925 – November 1, 1999) was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on United States efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II (the Manhattan Project), gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of several processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet intelligence.