In 2004 the Department of Energy repaired and repainted the artifact at its Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.Ĭlick here to return to the World War II Gallery. When constructed in 1945, the "Little Boy" on display was an operational weapon, but it has been completely demilitarized for display purposes. Tibbets enlisted in the United States Army in 1937 and qualified as a pilot in 1938. ![]() Weighing about 9,000 pounds, it produced an explosive force equal to 20,000 tons of TNT. He is best known as the aircraft captain who flew the B-29 Superfortress known as the Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped a Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The result of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, "Little Boy" was a gun-type weapon, which detonated by firing one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. ![]() ![]() It was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay (on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum), it detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. The Mk I bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare.
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