At 8:15am on August 6th, 1945, the first of only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The weapon, officially designated the Mark 1 but better known by the nickname "Little Boy", was a gun-type nuclear weapon with 80% enriched Uranium-235 as the fissile core.
Anywhere from 66,000 to 140,000 people were killed as a direct result of the explosion, radiation release, or subsequent firestorm.
Never test fired due to its simplicity and the scarcity of the Uranium-235 metal, Little Boy was a widely inefficient weapon. Only about 1.5% of the 64kg of Uranium onboard underwent nuclear fission, producing a yield of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT, compared to Fat Man's yield (with only 6kg of Plutonium) of 20 kilotons three days later.
28 июл 2023