“Little Boy on trailer cradle in pit on Tinian island, before being loaded into Enola Gay’s bomb bay”, 1945
“Little Boy” weighed as much as a car and exploded with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 80,000 people almost instantly.
Witnesses would have seen only a blinding flash of light as it smashed into the flatlands below. What followed this was a fireball that ran at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The immediate surroundings burst into flames and almost everything within a one mile-radius of Little Boy’s impact was utterly cremated, except for a few earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, but even those were gutted. Fires raged roughly two miles from the site of impact.
One victim, who was seated 850 feet away from the center of Little Boy’s impact, was reduced to only a shadow as the stone steps around them were bleached by the tremendous heat.
Approximately 80,000 people were killed and another 35,000 injured in the immediate blast. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of radioactive fallout.
