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Fat Man

"Fat Man" was the codename for the nuclear bomb that was
Fat Man
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. It was built by
scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium
from the Hanford Site, and it was dropped from the Boeing B-29
Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.

The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it
had a wide, round shape; it was also known as the Mark III. Fat Man Replica of the original Fat Man
was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. bomb
The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity Type Nuclear weapon
nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo
Place of origin United States
Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. Two more were
detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Production history
Atoll in 1946, and some 120 were produced between 1947 and 1949, Designer Los Alamos
when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Fat Man Laboratory
was retired in 1950.
Produced 1945–1949
No. built 120

Contents Specifications
Mass 10,300 pounds
Early decisions
(4,670 kg)
Naming
Length 128 inches
Development (3.3 m)
Interior Diameter 60 inches (1.5 m)
Assembly
Bombing of Nagasaki Filling Plutonium
Bomb assembly Filling weight 6.4 kg
Bombing of Nagasaki
Blast yield 21 kt (88 TJ)
Post-war development
Notes
References
External links

Early decisions
Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime
atomic research, and in Berkeley, California, in July, at which various engineers and physicists discussed
nuclear bomb design issues. They chose a gun-type design in which two sub-critical masses would be
brought together by firing a "bullet" into a "target".[1] Richard C. Tolman suggested an implosion-type
nuclear weapon, but the proposal attracted little interest.[2]

The feasibility of a plutonium bomb was questioned in 1942. Wallace Akers, the director of the British
"Tube Alloys" project, told James Bryant Conant on 14 November that James Chadwick had "concluded
that plutonium might not be a practical fissionable material for weapons because of impurities."[3]
Conant consulted Ernest Lawrence and Arthur Compton, who acknowledged that their scientists at
Berkeley and Chicago respectively knew about the problem, but they could offer no ready solution.
Conant informed Manhattan Project director Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., who in turn
assembled a special committee consisting of Lawrence, Compton, Oppenheimer, and McMillan to
examine the issue. The committee concluded that any problems could be overcome simply by requiring
higher purity.[4]

Oppenheimer reviewed his options in early 1943 and gave priority to the gun-type weapon,[2] but he
created the E-5 Group at the Los Alamos Laboratory under Seth Neddermeyer to investigate implosion
as a hedge against the threat of pre-detonation. Implosion-type bombs were determined to be
significantly more efficient in terms of explosive yield per unit mass of fissile material in the bomb,
because compressed fissile materials react more rapidly and therefore more completely. Nonetheless, it
was decided that the plutonium gun would receive the bulk of the research effort, since it was the project
with the least amount of uncertainty involved. It was assumed that the uranium gun-type bomb could be
easily adapted from it.[5]

Naming
The gun-type and implosion-type designs were codenamed "Thin Man" and "Fat Man" respectively.
These code names were created by Robert Serber, a former student of Oppenheimer's who worked on the
Manhattan Project. He chose them based on their design shapes; the Thin Man was a very long device,
and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel The Thin Man and series of movies. The
Fat Man was round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in Hammett's The
Maltese Falcon. Little Boy came last as a variation of Thin Man.[6]

Development
Neddermeyer discarded Serber and Tolman's initial concept of implosion as assembling a series of pieces
in favor of one in which a hollow sphere was imploded by an explosive shell. He was assisted in this work
by Hugh Bradner, Charles Critchfield, and John Streib. L. T. E. Thompson was brought in as a
consultant, and discussed the problem with Neddermeyer in June 1943. Thompson was skeptical that an
implosion could be made sufficiently symmetric. Oppenheimer arranged for Neddermeyer and Edwin
McMillan to visit the National Defense Research Committee's Explosives Research Laboratory near the
laboratories of the Bureau of Mines in Bruceton, Pennsylvania (a Pittsburgh suburb), where they spoke
to George Kistiakowsky and his team. But Neddermeyer's efforts in July and August at imploding tubes
to produce cylinders tended to produce objects that resembled rocks. Neddermeyer was the only person
who believed that implosion was practical, and only his enthusiasm kept the project alive.[7]

Oppenheimer brought John von Neumann to Los Alamos in September 1943 to take a fresh look at
implosion. After reviewing Neddermeyer's studies, and discussing the matter with Edward Teller, von
Neumann suggested the use of high explosives in shaped charges to implode a sphere, which he showed
could not only result in a faster assembly of fissile material
than was possible with the gun method, but which could
greatly reduce the amount of material required, because of
the resulting higher density.[8] The idea that, under such
pressures, the plutonium metal itself would be compressed
came from Teller, whose knowledge of how dense metals
behaved under heavy pressure was influenced by his pre-
war theoretical studies of the Earth's core with George
Gamow.[9] The prospect of more-efficient nuclear weapons
impressed Oppenheimer, Teller, and Hans Bethe, but they
decided that an expert on explosives would be required.
Replica mockup of a Fat Man displayed in the
Kistiakowsky's name was immediately suggested, and
National Museum of the United States Air
Force, beside the Bockscar B-29 that dropped
Kistiakowsky was brought into the project as a consultant in
the original device – black liquid asphalt October 1943.[8]
sealant was sprayed over the original bomb
casing's seams, simulated on the mockup. The implosion project remained a backup until April 1944,
when experiments by Emilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at
Los Alamos on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from
the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the B Reactor at the Hanford site showed that it contained
impurities in the form of the isotope plutonium-240. This has a far higher spontaneous fission rate and
radioactivity than plutonium-239. The cyclotron-produced isotopes, on which the original
measurements had been made, held much lower traces of plutonium-240. Its inclusion in reactor-bred
plutonium appeared unavoidable. This meant that the spontaneous fission rate of the reactor plutonium
was so high that it would be highly likely that it would predetonate and blow itself apart during the initial
formation of a critical mass.[10] The distance required to accelerate the plutonium to speeds where
predetonation would be less likely would need a gun barrel too long for any existing or planned bomber.
The only way to use plutonium in a workable bomb was therefore implosion.[11]

The impracticability of a gun-type bomb using plutonium was


agreed at a meeting in Los Alamos on 17 July 1944. All gun-type
work in the Manhattan Project was directed at the Little Boy,
enriched-uranium gun design, and the Los Alamos Laboratory was
reorganized, with almost all of the research focused on the problems
of implosion for the Fat Man bomb.[11] The idea of using shaped
charges as three-dimensional explosive lenses came from James L.
Tuck, and was developed by von Neumann.[12] To overcome the
difficulty of synchronizing multiple detonations, Luis Alvarez and
Lawrence Johnston invented exploding-bridgewire detonators to
Flash X-Ray images of the
replace the less precise primacord detonation system.[12] Robert
converging shock waves formed
Christy is credited with doing the calculations that showed how a
during a test of the high-explosive
solid subcritical sphere of plutonium could be compressed to a
lens system.
critical state, greatly simplifying the task, since earlier efforts had
attempted the more-difficult compression of a hollow spherical
shell.[13] After Christy's report, the solid-plutonium core weapon was
referred to as the "Christy Gadget".[14]

The task of the metallurgists was to determine how to cast plutonium into a sphere. The difficulties
became apparent when attempts to measure the density of plutonium gave inconsistent results. At first
contamination was believed to be the cause, but it was soon determined that there were multiple
allotropes of plutonium.[15] The brittle α phase that exists at room temperature changes to the plastic β
phase at higher temperatures. Attention then shifted to the even more malleable δ phase that normally
exists in the 300–450 °C (570–840 °F) range. It was found that this was stable at room temperature
when alloyed with aluminum, but aluminum emits neutrons when bombarded with alpha particles,
which would exacerbate the pre-ignition problem. The metallurgists then hit upon a plutonium–gallium
alloy, which stabilized the δ phase and could be hot pressed into the desired spherical shape. As
plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was coated with nickel.[16]

The size of the bomb was constrained by the available aircraft, which
were investigated for suitability by Dr. Norman Foster Ramsey. The
only Allied aircraft considered capable of carrying the Fat Man
without major modification were the British Avro Lancaster and the
American Boeing B-29 Superfortress.[17][18][19] At the time, the B-29
represented the epitome of bomber technology with significant
advantages in MTOW, range, speed, flight ceiling, and survivability.
Without the availability of the B-29, dropping the bomb would likely
have been impossible. However, this still constrained the bomb to a
maximum length of 11 feet (3.4 m), width of 5 feet (1.5 m) and
A pumpkin bomb (Fat Man test unit) weight of 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg). Removing the bomb rails
being raised from the pit into the
allowed a maximum width of 5.5 feet (1.7 m).[18]
bomb bay of a B-29 for bombing
practice during the weeks before the
Drop tests began in March 1944, and resulted in modifications to the
attack on Nagasaki.
Silverplate aircraft due to the weight of the bomb.[20] High-speed
photographs revealed that the tail fins folded under the pressure,
resulting in an erratic descent. Various combinations of stabilizer
boxes and fins were tested on the Fat Man shape to eliminate its persistent wobble until an arrangement
dubbed a "California Parachute", a cubical open-rear tail box outer surface with eight radial fins inside of
it, four angled at 45° and four perpendicular to the line of fall holding the outer square-fin box to the
bomb's rear end, was approved.[17] In drop tests in early weeks, the Fat Man missed its target by an
average of 1,857 feet (566 m), but this was halved by June as the bombardiers became more proficient
with it.[21]

The early Y-1222 model Fat Man was assembled with some 1,500 bolts.[22][23] This was superseded by
the Y-1291 design in December 1944. This redesign work was substantial, and only the Y-1222 tail design
was retained.[23] Later versions included the Y-1560, which had 72 detonators; the Y-1561, which had 32;
and the Y-1562, which had 132. There were also the Y-1563 and Y-1564, which were practice bombs with
no detonators at all.[24] The final wartime Y-1561 design was assembled with just 90 bolts.[22] On 16 July
1945, a Y-1561 model Fat Man, known as the Gadget, was detonated in a test explosion at a remote site in
New Mexico, known as the "Trinity" test. It gave a yield of about 20 kilotonnes (84 TJ).[25] Some minor
changes were made to the design as a result of the Trinity test.[26] Philip Morrison recalled that "There
were some changes of importance... The fundamental thing was, of course, very much the same."[27]

Interior
The bomb was 128 inches (3,300 mm) long and 60 inches (1,500 mm) in diameter. It weighed 10,300
pounds (4,700 kg).[28]

1. One of four AN 219 contact fuzes.


2. Archie radar antenna.
3. Plate with batteries (to detonate charge
surrounding nuclear components).
4. X-Unit, a firing set placed near the
charge.
5. Hinge fixing the two ellipsoidal parts of
the bomb.
6. Physics package (see details below).
7. Plate with instruments (radars,
baroswitches, and timers).
8. Barotube collector.
9. California Parachute tail assembly (0.20-
inch (5.1 mm) aluminum sheet).
Assembly
The plutonium pit[22] was 3.62-inch (92 mm) in diameter and contained an "Urchin" modulated neutron
initiator that was 0.8-inch (20 mm) in diameter. The depleted uranium tamper was an 8.75-inch
(222 mm) diameter sphere, surrounded by a 0.125-inch (3.2 mm) thick shell of boron-impregnated
plastic. The plastic shell had a 5-inch (130 mm) diameter cylindrical hole running through it, like the
hole in a cored apple, in order to allow insertion of the pit as late as possible. The missing tamper
cylinder containing the pit could be slipped in through a hole in the
surrounding 18.5-inch (470 mm) diameter aluminum pusher.[29]
The pit was warm to touch, emitting 2.4 W/kg-Pu, about 15 W for
the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) core.[30]

The explosion symmetrically compressed the plutonium to twice its


Fat Man's detonation method
normal density before the "Urchin" added free neutrons to initiate a
fission chain reaction.[31]

An exploding-bridgewire detonator simultaneously starts a


detonation wave in each of the 32 tapered high-explosive columns
(positioned around the explosive material at the face centers of a
truncated icosahedron,[32] a geometry popularly known from the
pattern of common soccer balls).
The detonation wave (arrows) is initially convex in the...
...faster explosive (Composition B: 60% RDX, 40% TNT).[32]
The wavefronts become concave in the...
...slower explosive (Baratol: 70% barium nitrate, 30% TNT).[32] Fat Man's "physics package"
nuclear device about to be encased
The 32 waves then merge into a single spherical implosive shock-
wave which hits the...
...inner charges' faster explosive (Composition B).[29]
The medium-density aluminum "pusher" transfers the
imploding shock-wave from the low-density explosive to the high-
density uranium, minimizing undesirable turbulence.[33] The
shock-wave then compresses the inner components, passing
through a...
...boron-plastic shell intended to prevent pre-detonation of the
bomb by stray neutrons.[33] The shock-wave reaches the center of
the bomb, where the... Fat Man on its transport carriage,
...beryllium–210Po"Urchin" is crushed,[34]
pushing the two with liquid asphalt sealant applied
metals together and thereby releasing a burst of neutrons into the over the casing's seams
compressed...
...pit of the nickel-plated delta-phase alloy of 239Pu–240Pu–
gallium (96%–1%–3% by molarity).[35][36] A fission chain reaction
then begins. The tendency of the fissioning pit to blow itself apart
prematurely is reduced by the inward momentum of the...
...natural-uranium "tamper" (inertial confinement). The tamper
also reflects neutrons back into the pit, accelerating the chain
reaction. If and when sufficient fast neutrons are produced, the
tamper itself undergoes fission, accounting for up to 20% of the
weapon's yield.[31]
Preserved Tinian "bomb pit#2",
The result was the fission of about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of the 6.19 where Fat Man was loaded aboard
kilograms (13.6 lb) of plutonium in the pit, i.e. of about 16% of the Bockscar
fissile material present.[37][38] The detonation released the energy
equivalent to the detonation of 21 kilotons of TNT or 88
terajoules.[39] About 30% of the yield came from fission of the uranium tamper.[40]
Bombing of Nagasaki

Bomb assembly

The first plutonium core was transported with its polonium-


beryllium modulated neutron initiator in the custody of Project
Alberta courier Raemer Schreiber in a magnesium field carrying case
designed for the purpose by Philip Morrison. Magnesium was
chosen because it does not act as a tamper.[31] It left Kirtland Army
Air Field on a C-54 transport aircraft of the 509th Composite
Group's 320th Troop Carrier Squadron on 26 July and arrived at
North Field on Tinian on 28 July. Three Fat Man high-explosive pre-
assemblies (designated F31, F32, and F33) were picked up at
Kirtland on 28 July by three B-29s: Luke the Spook and Laggin'
Dragon from the 509th Composite Group's 393d Bombardment
Squadron, and another from the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit.
The cores were transported to North Field, arriving on 2 August,
when F31 was partly disassembled in order to check all its
Mushroom cloud after Fat Man components. F33 was expended near Tinian during a final rehearsal
exploded over Nagasaki on 9
on 8 August. F32 presumably would have been used for a third
August 1945
attack or its rehearsal.[41]

On 7 August, the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, Rear Admiral


William R. Purnell, Commodore William S. Parsons, Tibbets, General Carl Spaatz and Major General
Curtis LeMay met on Guam to discuss what should be done next.[42] Since there was no indication of
Japan surrendering,[43] they decided to proceed with their orders and drop another bomb. Parsons said
that Project Alberta would have it ready by 11 August, but Tibbets pointed to weather reports indicating
poor flying conditions on that day due to a storm and asked if the bomb could be made ready by 9
August. Parsons agreed to try to do so.[42][44]

Fat Man F31 was assembled on Tinian by Project Alberta personnel,[41] and the physics package was
fully assembled and wired. It was placed inside its ellipsoidal aerodynamic bombshell and wheeled out,
where it was signed by nearly 60 people, including Purnell, Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, and
Parsons.[45] It was then wheeled to the bomb bay of the B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar after the
plane's command pilot Captain Frederick C. Bock,[46] who flew The Great Artiste with his crew on the
mission. Bockscar was flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney and his crew, with Commander Frederick L.
Ashworth from Project Alberta as the weaponeer in charge of the bomb.[47]

Bombing of Nagasaki

Bockscar lifted off at 03:47 on the morning of 9 August 1945, with Kokura as the primary target and
Nagasaki the secondary target. The weapon was already armed, but with the green electrical safety plugs
still engaged. Ashworth changed them to red after ten minutes so that Sweeney could climb to 17,000
feet (5,200 m) in order to get above storm clouds.[48] During the pre-flight inspection of Bockscar, the
flight engineer notified Sweeney that an inoperative fuel transfer pump made it impossible to use 640
US gallons (2,400 l) of fuel carried in a reserve tank. This fuel would still have to be carried all the way to
Japan and back, consuming still more fuel. Replacing the pump would take hours; moving the Fat Man
to another aircraft might take just as long and was dangerous as well, as the bomb was live. Colonel Paul
Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have Bockscar continue the mission.[49]

The target for the bomb was the city of Kokura, but it was found to
be obscured by clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a
major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous
day. This covered 70% of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming
point. Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes,
burning fuel and repeatedly exposing the aircraft to the heavy
defenses of Yahata, but the bombardier was unable to drop visually.
By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese anti-aircraft fire was
getting close; Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser was monitoring
Japanese communications, and he reported activity on the Japanese
fighter direction radio bands.[50]

Sweeney then proceeded to the alternative target of Nagasaki. It was


obscured by cloud, as well, and Ashworth ordered Sweeney to make
Effects of the Fat Man's detonation
a radar approach. At the last minute, however, bombardier[48] on Nagasaki
Captain Kermit K. Beahan[47] found a hole in the clouds. The Fat
Man was dropped and exploded at 11:02 local time, following a 43-
second free-fall, at an altitude of about 1,650 feet (500 m).[48] There was poor visibility due to cloud
cover and the bomb missed its intended detonation point by almost two miles, so the damage was
somewhat less extensive than that in Hiroshima.

An estimated 35,000–40,000 people were killed outright by the bombing at Nagasaki. A total of
60,000–80,000 fatalities resulted, including from long-term health effects, the strongest of which was
leukemia with an attributable risk of 46% for bomb victims.[51] Others died later from related blast and
burn injuries, and hundreds more from radiation illnesses from exposure to the bomb's initial
radiation.[52] Most of the direct deaths and injuries were among munitions or industrial workers.[53]

Mitsubishi's industrial production in the city was also severed by the attack; the dockyard would have
produced at 80 percent of its full capacity within three to four months, the steelworks would have
required a year to get back to substantial production, the electric works would have resumed some
production within two months and been back at capacity within six months, and the arms plant would
have required 15 months to return to 60 to 70 percent of former capacity. The Mitsubishi-Urakami
Ordnance Works was the factory that manufactured the type 91 torpedoes released in the attack on Pearl
Harbor; it was destroyed in the blast.[53][54]

Post-war development
After the war, two Y-1561 Fat Man bombs were used in the Operation "Crossroads" nuclear tests at Bikini
Atoll in the Pacific. The first was known as Gilda after Rita Hayworth's character in the 1946 movie
Gilda, and it was dropped by the B-29 Dave's Dream; it missed its aim point by 710 yards (650 m). The
second bomb was nicknamed Helen of Bikini and was placed without its tail fin assembly in a steel
caisson made from a submarine's conning tower; it was detonated 90 feet (27 m) beneath the landing
craft USS LSM-60. The two weapons yielded about 23 kilotonnes (96 TJ) each.[55]

The Los Alamos Laboratory and the Army Air Forces had already commenced work on improving the
design. The North American B-45 Tornado, Convair XB-46, Martin XB-48, and Boeing B-47 Stratojet
bombers had bomb bays sized to carry the Grand Slam, which was much longer but not as wide as the
Fat Man. The only American bombers that could carry the Fat Man
were the B-29 and the Convair B-36. In November 1945, the Army
Air Forces asked Los Alamos for 200 Fat Man bombs, but there were
only two sets of plutonium cores and high-explosive assemblies at
the time. The Army Air Forces wanted improvements to the design
to make it easier to manufacture, assemble, handle, transport, and
stockpile. The wartime Project W-47 was continued, and drop tests
resumed in January 1946.[56]
Espionage information procured by
The Mark III Mod 0 Fat Man was ordered into production in mid- Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and
1946. High explosives were manufactured by the Salt Wells Pilot David Greenglass led to the first
Plant, which had been established by the Manhattan Project as part Soviet device "RDS–1" (above),
of Project Camel, and a new plant was established at the Iowa Army which closely resembled Fat Man,
Ammunition Plant. Mechanical components were made or procured even in its external shape.
by the Rock Island Arsenal; electrical and mechanical components
for about 50 bombs were stockpiled at Kirtland Army Air Field by
August 1946, but only nine plutonium cores were available. Production of the Mod 0 ended in December
1948, by which time there were still only 53 cores available. It was replaced by improved versions known
as Mods 1 and 2 which contained a number of minor changes, the most important of which was that they
did not charge the X-Unit firing system's capacitors until released from the aircraft. The Mod 0s were
withdrawn from service between March and July 1949, and by October they had all been rebuilt as Mods
1 and 2.[57] Some 120 Mark III Fat Man units were added to the stockpile between 1947 and 1949[58]
when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb.[59] The Mark III Fat Man was retired in
1950.[58][60]

A nuclear strike would have been a formidable undertaking in the post-war 1940s due to the limitations
of the Mark III Fat Man. The lead-acid batteries which powered the fuzing system remained charged for
only 36 hours, after which they needed to be recharged. To do this meant disassembling the bomb, and
recharging took 72 hours. The batteries had to be removed in any case after nine days or they corroded.
The plutonium core could not be left in for much longer, because its heat damaged the high explosives.
Replacing the core also required the bomb to be completely disassembled and reassembled. This
required about 40 to 50 men and took between 56 and 72 hours, depending on the skill of the bomb
assembly team, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project had only three teams in June 1948. The
only aircraft capable of carrying the bomb were Silverplate B-29s, and the only group equipped with
them was the 509th Bombardment Group at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico. They would
first have to fly to Sandia Base to collect the bombs, and then to an overseas base from which a strike
could be mounted.[61]

The Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon was based closely on Fat Man's design thanks to spies Klaus
Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Greenglass, who provided them with secret information concerning the
Manhattan Project and Fat Man. It was detonated on 29 August 1949 as part of Operation "First
Lightning".[62][63][64]

Notes
1. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 42–44.
2. Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 55.
3. Nichols 1987, p. 64.
4. Nichols 1987, pp. 64–65.
5. Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 87.
6. Serber & Crease 1998, p. 104.
7. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 86–90.
8. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 130–133.
9. Teller 2001, pp. 174–176.
10. Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 228.
11. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 240–244.
12. Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 163.
13. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 270–271.
14. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 293, 307–308.
15. Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 244–245.
16. Baker, Hecker & Harbur 1983, pp. 144–145.
17. Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 380–383.
18. Hansen 1995, pp. 119–120.
19. Groves 1962, p. 254.
20. Campbell 2005, pp. 8–10.
21. Hansen 1995, p. 131.
22. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 52.
23. Hansen 1995, p. 121.
24. Hansen 1995, p. 127.
25. Jones 1985, pp. 465,514–517.
26. Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 377.
27. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 53.
28. Hansen 1995, p. 145.
29. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 186.
30. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 49.
31. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 45.
32. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 41.
33. Hansen 1995, pp. 122–123.
34. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 48.
35. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 57.
36. Sublette, Carey (3 July 2007). "Section 8.0 The First Nuclear Weapons" (http://nuclearweaponarchiv
e.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html). Nuclear Weapons FAQ. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
37. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 46.
38. Wellerstein, Alex (23 December 2013). "Kilotons per kilogram" (http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/
12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/). Restricted Data. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
39. Malik 1985, p. 25.
40. Wellerstein, Alex (10 November 2014). "The Fat Man's Uranium" (http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/201
4/11/10/fat-mans-uranium/). Restricted Data. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
41. Campbell 2005, pp. 38–40.
42. Russ 1990, pp. 64–65.
43. Frank 1999, pp. 283–284.
44. Groves 1962, p. 342.
45. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 67.
46. "Bockscar … The Forgotten Plane That Dropped The Atomic Bomb « A Little Touch Of History" (htt
p://awesometalks.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/bockscar-the-forgotten-plane-that-dropped-the-atomic-
bomb/). Awesometalks.wordpress.com. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
47. Campbell 2005, p. 32.
48. Rhodes 1986, p. 740.
49. Sweeney, Antonucci & Antonucci 1997, pp. 204–205.
50. Sweeney, Antonucci & Antonucci 1997, pp. 179, 213–215.
51. Columbia university center for nuclear studies: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Long Term Health
Effects (http://k1project.org/explore-health/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-long-term-health-effects)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150723042220/http://k1project.org/explore-health/hiroshima
-and-nagasaki-the-long-term-health-effects) 23 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine, updated
7/3/2014
52. Craven & Cate 1953, pp. 723–725.
53. Nuke-Rebuke: Writers & Artists Against Nuclear Energy & Weapons (The Contemporary anthology
series). The Spirit That Moves Us Press. 1 May 1984. pp. 22–29.
54. "United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (Pacific War) The Effects Of The Atomic
Bombs" (http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#teotab). U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. p. 24.
55. Coster-Mullen 2012, pp. 84–85.
56. Hansen 1995, pp. 137–142.
57. Hansen 1995, pp. 142–145.
58. Coster-Mullen 2012, p. 87.
59. Hansen 1995, p. 143.
60. Hansen 1995, p. 150.
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External links
Video footage of the bombing of Nagasaki (silent) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9v5sW6t0zI)
on YouTube
Fat Man Model (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie3.shtml) in QuickTime VR format
Samuels, David (23 January 2009) [15 December 2008]. "Atomic John: A truck driver uncovers
secrets about the first nuclear bombs" (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fa
ct_samuels). A Reporter at Large (column). The New Yorker. Essay and interview with John Coster-
Mullen, the author of Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, 2003 (first
printed in 1996, self-published), considered a definitive text about Fat Man; illustrations from which
are used in the Physics Package section above.
The Half-Life of Genius Physicist Raemer Schreiber (2017) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4870510/)
at IMDb – Biographical film about the life and times of physicist Raemer Schreiber

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