Thin Man (nuclear bomb) and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel "The Thin Man" and series of movies by the same name. The "Fat Man" bomb would be round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in "The Maltese Falcon". "Little Boy" would come last and be named only to contrast to the "Thin Man" bomb. Oppenheimer assembled a team at the Los Alamos Laboratory to work on plutonium gun design that included senior engineer Edwin McMillan and senior physicists Charles Critchfield and Joseph Hirschfelder. Critchfield had been working with sabots, which Oppenheimer believed would be required by the
Thin Man (nuclear bomb) under the main wing spar and some oxygen tanks located between its two bomb bays. The great length of the "Thin Man" bomb led to aerodynamic instabilities. Subscale models of the bomb were dropped from a Grumman TBF Avenger at the US Navy test range at Dahlgren, Virginia starting in August, 1943. The bombs would spin sideways after being dropped, and broke up when they hit the ground. Twenty-four drops were carried out in March 1944 before tests were discontinued so that improvements could be made to Thin Man. The bombs failed to release immediately, frustrating calibration tests. In what