Fat Man was the codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 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. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. 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. |