Posts: 283. Colonel Paul Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have Bockscar continue the mission. The Fat Man was round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. A term used to describe some who does or says something illiterate or when someone says something you don't like you add head ass at the end of your joke The Fat Man is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas. It uses a mini nuke for ammunition which when fired, results in a small nuclear blast. 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. [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. The Army Air Forces wanted improvements to the design to make it easier to manufacture, assemble, handle, transport, and stockpile. [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. It was obscured by cloud, as well, and Ashworth ordered Sweeney to make a radar approach. F33 was expended near Tinian during a final rehearsal on 8 August. The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. [4] Concurrent development ran on the MIRV version of the launcher. 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. [1] Richard C. Tolman suggested an implosion-type nuclear weapon, but the proposal attracted little interest. 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. "[27], The bomb was 128 inches (3,300 mm) long and 60 inches (1,500 mm) in diameter. The Striker was made by the employees of Beaver Creek Lanes for Thomas Davis, a former league champion that became handicapped after a battle injury. It gave a yield of about 20 kilotonnes (84 TJ). However, this still constrained the bomb to a maximum length of 11 feet (3.4 m), width of 5 feet (1.5 m) and weight of 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg). [31], The result was the fission of about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) of plutonium in the pit, i.e. [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. Production of the Mod 0 ended in December 1948, by which time there were still only 53 cores available. This is an overview article which contains background information and cross-game comparisons. Without the availability of the B-29, dropping the bomb would likely have been impossible. Read unique story pieces & columns written by editors and columnists at National Post. 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. 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. But Neddermeyer's efforts in July and August at imploding tubes to produce cylinders tended to produce objects that resembled rocks. [22][23] This was superseded by the Y-1291 design in December 1944. 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. 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. The second is a modified version of the standard launcher created by weapon smiths in the Commonwealth and Appalachia, which splits a single mini nuke into six independent projectiles. Parsons agreed to try to do so. Mechanical components were made or procured 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. 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. Sweeney then proceeded to the alternative target of Nagasaki. [12] Robert Christy is credited with doing the calculations that showed how a solid subcritical sphere of plutonium could be compressed to a critical state, greatly simplifying the task, since earlier efforts had attempted the more-difficult compression of a hollow spherical shell. For more about the nuclear past and present, follow @wellerstein on Twitter, and read Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog. Named for the Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) intercontinental ballistic missile payload, two distinct variants of the experimental MIRV exist. 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. 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. The difficulties became apparent when attempts to measure the density of plutonium gave inconsistent results. The plutonium core could not be left in for much longer, because its heat damaged the high explosives. [18], Drop tests began in March 1944, and resulted in modifications to the Silverplate aircraft due to the weight of the bomb. 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. [7], Oppenheimer brought John von Neumann to Los Alamos in September 1943 to take a fresh look at implosion. 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. Neddermeyer was the only person who believed that implosion was practical, and only his enthusiasm kept the project alive. The designation M42 is shared with a couple of other pieces of military equipment, such as the. The M42 "Fat Man" Launcher[1] is a shoulder-fired, catapult weapon system that launches tactical nuclear ordnance, the "mini nuke". The lead-acid batteries which powered the fuzing system remained charged for only 36 hours, after which they needed to be recharged. As plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was coated with nickel. 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