On 6 August 1945, at 08:15, the first ever atomic bomb was dropped on the centre of Hiroshima. ‘Little Boy’ was a gun-type atomic bomb. It used a simple design by firing one piece of uranium 235 into another, triggering a powerful explosion with about 15 kilotons of force. Upon detonation, it produced a fireball that raised temperatures to 7,000 degrees Celsius. The blast also generated shockwaves exceeding the speed of sound. These shockwaves, coupled with the radiation released, killed thousands, and transformed Hiroshima, a city with wooden and paper buildings, into a fierce inferno. After the explosion, a heavy downpour of black rain, carrying radioactive fallout, caused widespread contamination. Those who approached the blast's epicentre in search of the missing were exposed to this radiation. Three days later, in the early hours of 9 August, a second U.S. aircraft took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean. The nuclear device it transported bore the codename 'Fat Man'. This was a more advanced plutonium-based bomb that had undergone trials during the ‘Trinity test’. While originally intended for the city of Kokura as its primary target, the airplane's crew shifted to Nagasaki due to a dense layer of clouds. Reports differ on the casualties from the bombings, with estimates as high as 166,000 deaths - mainly civilians. Over 2,000 nuclear tests were conducted after 1945, contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the development of arsenals far more powerful than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
