Plutonium core of Fat Man Atomic Bomb
Toronto. Seventy six years ago on August 9th, 1945 the Japanese city of Nagasaki woke to a terrible calamity. Around 11:00am, the second Atomic Bomb called “Fat Man” was dropped by the US Airforce, levelling a wide area of the city. Within days Japan capitulated and in the following month WW2 was officially over, saving a huge number of troops on both sides of the war while laying waste to a city and its civilian population.
The Atomic bombs were so called ‘dirty bombs’. Fission broke heavy elements into lighter elements plus massive amounts of energy and ionizing radiation. The later Hydrogen Bombs by comparison were ‘clean bombs’ created by fusion where light elements were merged to make slightly heavier elements plus even more massive amounts of energy. Check out wikipedia on Nuclear Weapons for more details.
The event was recorded in 1945 and is shown here on the “Rare Historical Photos” website. I read the book “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns” about the Manhattan Project and the Atomic bomb back in the late 1950s/early 1960s.
The site shows a colour photograph of Harold Agnew (right) and a fellow soldier who is unidentified. Agnew kept this photo. The silver scratchings? They were done by the FBI to ‘declassify’ the photograph.
A big thank you to friend and fellow PHSC member George Dunbar for sharing this photographic record and commentary on the final days of WW2.
