Little boy

Little Boy (in Spanish: Chico Pequeño, in Japanese: リトルボーイ Ritorubōi^?) was the name given to the atomic bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima in Japan, on Monday, August 6, 1945 by the United States. Little Boy was launched from the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber named Enola Gay , flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who named the plane after Little Boy's mother. he. Little Boy was launched from an altitude of 10,450 m. The bomb exploded at 8:15:45 a.m. m., at an elevation of approximately 600 m above the Japanese city, killing approximately 140,000 people.

On August 15, the Empire of Japan announced its unconditional surrender to the Allies, ending the Pacific War and thus World War II (in that part of the world).

Description

Little Boy was a bomb whose design had not yet been tested on the day of launch, as the only previous test of a nuclear weapon (Trinity test, conducted near Alamogordo, New Mexico) was made of plutonium, while Little Boy was made of uranium, about whose reliability there were not so many doubts.

It featured an elongated, olive green color with a flat nose and square ailerons. Radar and barometric sensors protruded from its surface. It weighed approximately 4,400 kilograms, was three meters long and seventy-one centimeters in diameter.

Launch over Hiroshima

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima produced by the bomb explosion Little Boy on 6 August 1945

It was attached to the aircraft with special hooks, designed and manufactured by a company owned by Zeppo Marx. It had an explosive power of about 16 kilotons, equivalent to 16,000 tons of TNT.

Sent disassembled to Tinian on July 26, 1945, a part was transported by the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) and the rest by plane.

Once assembled, under the strictest security measures, it was put on hold, requiring the construction of a pit next to the runway to deposit the bomb in it.

The Enola Gay had to be positioned on top of this pit so that the bomb could be raised using hydraulic jacks and placed in the aircraft's bomb bay.

The B-29 Enola Gay needed the entire runway to take off with the bomb, which was assembled in flight by technicians William Sterling Parsons and Morris Jeppson. The assembly consisted of placing the small cordite sacks (a conventional explosive that would be used to trigger the firing of the uranium-235 rings), arming it electrically, checking it and removing the green safety shutters and placing some red shutters.

Once over Hiroshima, Tibbets dropped the atomic bomb after Claude Eatherly's weather reconnaissance and his "Go Ahead". However, a miscalculation caused the bomb to be dropped. landed directly in the city of Hiroshima instead of the corresponding military base.

It was the first of only two atomic bombs (along with Fat Man) ever used against cities in wartime.

Design

1. Line fins.
2. Cannon steel closure.
3. Detonator.
4. Cordita (conventional explosive).
5. Proyectil uranium-235, six rings (26 kg) in a thin steel container.
6. Barometric sensor apertures.
7. Pump outside.
8. Bomb equipment.
9. Canyon revolver, steel, about 10 cm in diameter, 200 cm in length.
10. Interconnection wires.
11. Anti-handling body, steel.
12. White uranium-235, two rings (38 kg).
13. Anti-handling/reflector assembly, wolfram carbide.
14. Neutral initiator.
15. Antennas ArchieFor radar detonation.
16. Accommodation for the embroidery safety device (not visible).