Fat Man

And on the 6th of August, 1945, the bomb, Little Boy, with a yield of 16,000 to 18,000 tons of TNT, devastated Hiroshima.

And then, of course, we know that three days later, on 9th of August, the bomb Fat Man with a 20,000 ton TNT yield was dropped on Nagasaki.

Shortly after that, World War II came to an end, but the atomic age had already begun.

So in a single week in July 1945, Winston Churchill stood at the absolute summit of global power, holding the secret of the universe in his hand.

Looking back on all the, all the stuff we've talked about, the decision that led to the sinking of the Indy and the suffering of its crew were born of the US Navy's arrogance, hubris, conceit in the final days of the war.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that that arrogance and conceit was tied to the possession of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs, okay? 'Cause-

It's fair

... again, to get into that mindset, it'd be like, well, it doesn't matter if the Philippine Sea still has, you know, four Japanese subs hunting US ships.

Um, so on the 15th of July, 1945 the Indy was loaded up in San Francisco with bomb parts and two cases of uranium-235 which is the fuel for the Little Boy bomb.

Incidentally, the, the, the Fat Man bomb, the other one that's gonna be dropped on Nagasaki, uh, that was for reasons I haven't really ascertained, that was actually flown to Tinian-

Mm

... which seems quite risky to me.

Uh, I mean transporting weapons-grade fissile material is pretty risky just as a prospect, but I would've thought a sh- a ship [laughs] yeah.

And, and that one was, I mean Fat Man was a plutonium bomb, uh, so that, that has a whole different, uh, sort of triggering effect to a, um, I, I don't want to get into nuclear bomb nerdiness but d- different, it's triggered a different way to a uranium bomb so I, I don't know if that was the difference maker, but for whatever reason, uh, the, the crew of the, of the Indy they're, they're only transporting the uranium and the bomb parts for, for one bomb basically.

They have no idea what this stuff is which is another wild fact.

They've been told, you know, top secret mission.

One test equals one bomb you can't drop.

Meanwhile, Hanford was producing about 20 kilograms of plutonium per month, and each Fat Man used about six, which is why plutonium could be spared for Trinity and uranium could not.

It's not a physics decision.

It's a supply chain decision.

They knew what was riding on this.

The bomb in the bay, a plutonium implosion device the weapons team called Fat Man, had been assembled and armed.

The targeting committees had selected the city of Kokura on the northern shore of Kyushu as the primary target.

Kokura Arsenal was one of the largest munitions manufacturing complexes in Japan.

The original aim point, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works at the mouth of the harbor, was obscured, but the Urakami Valley to the north showed a break in the clouds.

Beahan called that he had the target in sight.

At eleven oh two in the morning, local time, Fat Man fell away from Bockscar's bomb bay.

Forty-three seconds later, at an altitude of approximately eighteen hundred feet above the Urakami Valley, detonation twenty-one kilotons.

After Hiroshima, they knew.

The aircraft assigned to carry the second weapon, a plutonium bomb called Fat Man, was a B-29 named Bockscar after its regular aircraft commander, Captain Frederick Bock.

But on this mission, Bock was flying a different airplane.

The pilot in the left seat of Bockscar on August 9th would be Major Charles Sweeney.

A visual fix.

He was on the aiming point.

At 11:02 in the morning on August 9th, 1945, Kermit Beahan released Fat Man over Nagasaki.

The weapon detonated 43 seconds later, roughly 1,500 feet above the ground.

The other thing they had gotten wrong was that there wouldn't be a bigger bomb than the 15 kilotons little boy that had dropped on Hiroshima.

The atomic bomb for Nagasaki, dubbed the Fat Man, had an explosive force of 21 kilotons, which meant that an amount of devastation even worse than what befell Yamaguchi and his coworkers in Hiroshima was about to be unleashed on them again in Nagasaki.

The crazy thing was, the second bomb was actually never supposed to fall on Nagasaki that day.

but because of unforeseen circumstances, plans changed at the last possible second.

Hiroshima was listed specifically for its major military depot with a large urban industrial area and its geographic location between hills that would increase the blast damage.

Another city prioritized on the committee's list, Kokura, had also been selected for its military arsenal and surrounding industrial structures.

So, on the morning of August 9, 1945, the plane carrying the fat man was well on its way to dropping the second bomb on Kokura.

That was until the pilots realized the city had become obscured by a hazy cloud cover, keeping them away from their targeted hit point.