redlightning
Banned
What if instead of reaching its target of Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb, the Enola Gay is either shot down or experiences technical trouble causing it to crash on the Japanese mainland?
What if instead of reaching its target of Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb, the Enola Gay is either shot down or experiences technical trouble causing it to crash on the Japanese mainland?
Then Little Boy goes off at the crash site, assuming it remained intact prior to impact.
Unless there was a difference in Little Boy compared to today's nukes, no it doesn't. A nuclear chain reaction needs specific circumstance and a conventional airplane crash will not detonate a bomb into a nuclear explosion. If someone with more technical expertise can correct me, I would appreciate the reasoning as to how it does (or doesn't if I'm correct). I'm only versed in nuclear reactors in civilian use and not in an actual nuclear warhead.
Little Boy was a gun type bomb, not a implosion type like Fat Man, and significantly less safe, since you're just jamming two pieces of subcritical mass together at high speed, instead of using explosive lens which HAVE to go off at precisely the right times to work properly. There's a reason no one builds them anymore.
Unlike the Fat Man device the Little Boy was fairly sturdy, being litteraly a gun tube. The tube had to be strong enough to hold the moving slug in proper alignment when the propelling charge activated.