The Impact of Little Boy
by Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped by the United States Air Force on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Little Boy was the first finished atomic bomb built through the efforts of the Anglo-American Manhattan Project.
The Little Boy bomb was the United States secret weapon to bring the Second World War to a swifter conclusion. The new United States President Harry S. Truman took the decision to use the Little Boy atomic bomb in order to force the Japanese government to surrender without the Americans having to carry out an invasion of Japan.
On the morning of 6th August 1945 the lone American B-29 Super Flying Fortress bomber, the Enola Gay took off on its top secret mission of dropping the Little Boy bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
the immediate impact of the Little Boy atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima was a very destructive one, with an estimated 100,000 people being killed by the iniatial blast. The dropping of the Little Boy atomic bomb changed warfare in an instant, as just one bomb did the damage that the 1,000 bomber raids on Dresden and Hamburg had done.
In another way the Little Boy atomic bomb did not have the impact that President Harry S Truman had actually expected, the Japanese government refused to surrender with immediate affect.
Bibliography
Colvin J, (2004) Decisive Battles, Headline, London
Hobsbawm, E (1994) Age of Extremes, the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Michael
Joseph, London
Holmes R, (2007) Battlefield – Decisive conflicts in History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, and Cambridge, USA
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