The Third Shot. On August 13, 1945—four days after the bombing of Nagasaki—two military officials had a phone conversation about how many more bombs to detonate over Japan and when. According to the declassified conversation, there was a third bomb set to be dropped on August 19th.
Because Little Boy was an air burst 580 metres (1,900 ft) above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout. However, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fireball. Its lethal radius was 1.3 kilometres (0.8 mi), covering about half of the firestorm area.
"Fat Man" was the codename for the nuclear bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 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 nuclear explosion in history.
In some respects, Hiroshima looked worse than Nagasaki. The fire damage in Hiroshima was much more complete; the center of the city was hit and everything but the reinforced concrete buildings had virtually disappeared. At Nagasaki there were no buildings just underneath the center of explosion.
Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear bomb needs about 33 pounds (15 kilograms) of enriched uranium to be operational.
"Fat Man" was the codename for the nuclear bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 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 nuclear explosion in history.
Filming took place in the fall of 1988 mainly outside Durango, Mexico, where the Los Alamos research facility was re-created. The re-creation of the Los Alamos laboratory entailed 35 buildings and cost over $2 million to construct in 1988.
Actress Midori Naka, who was present during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, was the first incident of radiation poisoning to be extensively studied. Her death on 24 August 1945 was the first death ever to be officially certified as a result of acute radiation syndrome (or "Atomic bomb disease").
The character of Michael Merriman (John Cusack) is a fictional composite of several people and is put into the film to provide a moral compass as the "common man". Part of the character is loosely based on the scientist Louis Slotin.
Secondly, the US wished to prevent any possibility that the Soviet Union would occupy Japan whilst the US troops were still far away and so consolidate Soviet influence. So the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August.
Scientists at Los Alamos had developed two distinct types of atomic bombs by 1945—a uranium-based design called “the Little Boy” and a plutonium-based weapon called “the Fat Man.”
Kokura was the primary target for the "Fat Man" bomb on August 9, 1945, but on the morning of the raid, the city was obscured by clouds and smoke from the firebombing of the neighboring city of Yahata the day before.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima that destroyed most of the city and instantly killed 80,000 of its citizens. Today, Hiroshima has recovered into a bustling manufacturing hub with a population of 1.1 million people and counting.
Hiroshima was chosen because it had not been targeted during the US Air Force's conventional bombing raids on Japan, and was therefore regarded as being a suitable place to test the effects of an atomic bomb. Among those in the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki was the British pilot Leonard Cheshire.
About 140 pounds (64 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium-235 was used to create "Little Boy," a nuclear-fission bomb that worked by shooting a large, hollow cylinder of uranium over a smaller uranium insert. Far from little, the bomb weighed about 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg).
"Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into
Most of the uranium used during World War II was from the Congolese mines, and the “Little Boy” bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 used Congolese uranium. However, the transportation of uranium across the Atlantic Ocean was an arduous task.
Among some there is the unfounded fear that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still radioactive; in reality, this is not true. Following a nuclear explosion, there are two forms of residual radioactivity. The first is the fallout of the nuclear material and fission products.
By comparison, the “Little Boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II yielded roughly 15 kilotons TNT. The “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki was about 20 kilotons TNT. The most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested, meanwhile, is said to be a Soviet hydrogen bomb that yielded 50,000 kilotons TNT.
The bomb never hit the ground, but exploded about 2,000 feet above the city – a height intended to cause maximum damage.
This is known as a chain reaction and is what causes an atomic explosion. When a uranium-235 atom absorbs a neutron and fissions into two new atoms, it releases three new neutrons and some binding energy. This causes a nuclear chain reaction. For more on this topic, see Nuclear Fission.
President Harry S. Truman
Hours after news of Russia's invasion of Sakhalin Island reached Tokyo, the Supreme War Guidance Council met to discuss Japan's unconditional surrender. The nuclear bomb on Nagasaki was dropped as Soviet forces were overwhelming Japanese positions in Manchuria and Japan appeared set to surrender to the Allied powers.
