As observed by USAF lieutenant colonel Fred J. This was in marked contrast to the Hiroshima mission, which delivered the less powerful “Little Boy” device to within 800 feet of its intended target, Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge. It was detonated above the predominantly Christian Urakami valley, just up the river and across a range of mountains from the Nagasaki waterfront and well over two miles from the intended ground zero for the blast. This article tells the story of the lesser-known second of the two atomic missions in the final days of World War II, which delivered a uniquely powerful and complex explosive device known as “Fat Man”-the first plutonium-implosion device ever deployed in war.
