WWII, Nagasaki Mission, August 9, 1945
The mushroom cloud as seen from one of the B-29s on the Nagasaki mission. Fat Man was the codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on August 9, 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third-ever man-made nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site and dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar. For the Fat Man mission, Bockscar was piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney. The name Fat Man refers generically to the early design of the bomb, because it had a wide, round shape. It was also known as the Mark III. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. The bomb was 128 inches long and 60 inches in diameter. It weighed 10, 300 pounds. The Fat Man was dropped and, following a 43 second duration free fall, it exploded at 11:02 local time, at an altitude of about 1, 650 feet. Because of poor visibility due to cloud cover, the bomb missed its intended detonation point by almost two miles, and damage was somewhat less extensive than that in Hiroshima
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A-bomb Atom Atomic B-29 Blast Catastrophe Catastrophic Destroy Detonation Devastation Infamous Mushroom Nagasaki Notorious Strategic Superfortress Technological Weaponry
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