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Friday, April 25, 2014

An Illustrated Guide To The Atomic Bombs

Early Bombs

“Thin Man” Plutonium Gun Type Bomb Casings in 1944. In the background you can see “Fat Man” casings. It is unknown whether they are the early Model 1222 “Fat Man” casings, which required 1,200 bolts to assemble, or the later Model 1561 casings which were substantially easier to assemble and which were used for the production versions.

Initial Bomb Assembly and Test

Photograph of personnel checking a casing. A significant number of extra casings were shipped to Tinian and used in various tests with “dummy” bombs which contained all the active components of a working atomic bomb, but no fissile material to test out and prove the assembly procedures for the actual devices themselves.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Few people are aware that "Little Boy", the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was never tested. It was the gun type whereby a chunk of fissile material was fired down a gun barrel into another chunk thereby reaching critical mass. It was considered foolproof thus no need for testing.

The test at Trinity Site in New Mexico was of the "Fat Man" type of bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki. It was an implosion type which produced a larger explosion from a smaller amount of fissile material but no one knew if the imploding charges could be timed to all go off simultaneously and if they didn't it would just make a small fizz. The test in New Mexico proved that it would work, and away we went into the true nuclear age.

April 25, 2014 at 7:43 PM
Anonymous said...

And even fewer are/were aware that another A bomb was stolen and never retrieved.To this day it's location is a mystery.

April 26, 2014 at 8:59 AM

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