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Fat Man Bomb

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World War II entered its sixth year in 1945, with the official end of the European War on May 8. Though the European part of World War II was over, The Pacific War was not. The Allied forces, led by the United States of America and backed by the United Kingdom and Canada, were working on the Development of Substitute Materials in attempt to create the world’s first atomic bombs. The bombs were planned to be used against the Axis powers, specifically the Japanese after their refusal to surrender unconditionally to the Allies in 1945. The Development of Substitute Materials, more widely known as its later codename the Manhattan Project, was created in 1942 and was in effect until 1946- after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. The bombings of Hiroshima and …show more content…
A test was conducted, with a plutonium bomb (Fat Man) being detonated on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico. This test is known as the Trinity Test and is the first ever detonation of an atomic bomb. The Fat Man bomb was an implosion-type bomb (see photo on left); a bomb in which the plutonium is surrounded by high explosives that force the mass inwards, or compress it until it becomes critical mass and starts a chain reaction. Critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The Fat Man bomb was the same model that was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, while Hiroshima was hit by the Little Boy. The Little Boy, made with uranium 235, was a gun-type bomb. This type of bomb has a mass of uranium
235 that is fired at by high explosives another mass of uranium 235 (see photo on right), creating a supercritical mass (critical mass that has an increasing rate of fission) and prompting a chain reaction. Both types of bombs generate mass explosions, and Little Boy and Fat Man killed many people when dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and

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