Little Boy

Little Boy

Main page: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Little Boy is the name that was given to the first atomic bomb that was dropped in a war. The bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the American army who were trying to end World War II. Enola Gay was the name of the plane that dropped Little Boy.

Little Boy Media

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  Photograph of a Little Boy atomic bomb, the same type of weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. This was the first photograph of a Little Boy bomb casing to ever be released by the U.S. government (it was declassified in 1960). This photograph is of a postwar Little Boy unit, and is not the exact bomb dropped over Japan.

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  "Thin Man" plutonium gun test casings at Wendover Army Air Field, as part of Project Alberta in the Manhattan Project, illustrating their relative length and size

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  Little Boy target case and gun tube

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  As part of Project Alberta, Commander A. Francis Birch (left) assembles the combat unit (L-11) while physicist Norman Ramsey watches. This is one of the rare photos where the interior of the bomb can be seen, with the fuzing units and battery boxes visible, attached around the gun tube.

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  The "gun" assembly method. When the hollow uranium projectile was driven onto the target cylinder, a nuclear explosion resulted.

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  Little Boy Internal Components

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  Arming plugs for a Little Boy type atomic bomb on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

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  Enola Gay after Hiroshima mission, entering hardstand. It is in its 6th Bombardment Group livery, with victor number 82 visible on fuselage just forward of the tail fin

• The General Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a U.S. Air Force film