What if- A nuclear thought

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Just to clear things out-Both side have nuclear weapons and both side have developed rocket(V2)

Markus

Well a V-2's payload is about 3000 kg too low to carry a 1st generation atomic bomb.

They would have to be delivered by bomber.

[Catfish]

Well there were the Junkers JU 290 and 390, and the Messerschmidt ME 264 V1-3.
http://www.militaryfactory.com/image...ircraft_id=759
Along with the ****e-Wulf FW 200 all four-engined bombers, however there would not have been much chances - even if it would have bombed the US with whatever bomb, it would never have brought he US to an armistice with that action.

Also, the german nuclear project was hindered by a never openly outspoken agreement of the partaking scientists, they just did not want to develop that thing for Hitler. Heisenberg writes about it in his autobiography.
Certainly, had von Braun been in that project ...

edit: ****e-Wulf ? lol PC goes a bit far

Greetings,
Catfish

[MH]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Also, the german nuclear project was hindered by a never openly outspoken agreement of the partaking scientists, they just did not want to develop that thing for Hitler. Heisenberg writes about it in his autobiography.
Certainly, had von Braun been in that project ...

Catfish

German nuclear project was hopelessly behind and clueless.
According to interrogations of spome German scientists.

[Oberon]

There's a rumour that Germany had a reactor but it didn't go critical right, or something like that, but basically after it failed miserably they didn't try again before the war ended.

[Catfish]

They had a kind of reactor (not intended to go critical) but only late in the war, and enough uranium. A good part of it had been tried to be shipped to Japan, but the U-234 carrying it surrendered to US forces. There are rumours that the US only got enough uranium for their (second?) bomb with the capture of this boat, but i'm not sure about that.

Heisenberg worked with Otto Hahn and Friedrich von Weizsaecker on a "Plutonium bomb", and found out that it would take 2-5 years for a development with lacking resources and needed centrifuges (so too late for the war anyway), but concealed to Speer that there was another method of chemical separation, of the 235 and 238 fractions. The physicists secretly agreed to not develop it for the Nazis.

From the german Wiki:
"Arbeit am Nuklearprogramm

Zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurden er und andere Physiker (zum Beispiel Otto Hahn und Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) in das Heereswaffenamt berufen. Ihre Aufgabe im Rahmen des Uranprojektes sollte sein, Einsatzmöglichkeiten der Kernspaltung zu finden. Heisenberg stieß zwar erst relativ spät zu dem Projekt, arbeitete jedoch intensiv daran und übernahm bald eine führende Rolle.

Er und seine Kollegen kamen schon früh zu dem Schluss, dass die aufwändige Anreicherung des Spaltstoffes Uran 235 mit den allgemein zur Verfügung stehenden Ressourcen während der voraussichtlichen Restdauer des Krieges nicht zu machen war, und informierten dahingehend am 4. Juni 1942 Albert Speer.

Allerdings verschwiegen sie (oder sprachen davon nur in Andeutungen) die Möglichkeit, eine Plutoniumbombe zu bauen, bei der die Trennung viel einfacher chemisch ablaufen konnte und für die nur ein Natururan-Reaktor mit Schwerwasser als Moderator erforderlich war (ähnlich wie zum Beispiel der heutige kanadische Candu-Reaktortyp, mit dessen Hilfe Indien in den Besitz von Kernwaffen kam).

Auf die entscheidende Frage Speers, wie lange sie für eine Bombe bräuchten, gab er drei bis fünf Jahre an ***8211; womit das Projekt seine Priorität verlor.

Im weiteren Verlauf arbeiteten die deutschen Kernphysiker nur noch an einem Schwerwasserreaktor, der am Ende des Krieges ins schwäbische Haigerloch ausgelagert wurde. In den Experimenten der letzten Kriegstage, drei Jahre nach der erfolgreichen Inbetriebnahme eines Graphit-moderierten Reaktors durch Enrico Fermi in Chicago, gelang es beinahe, den Forschungsreaktor Haigerloch kritisch werden zu lassen. "


The autobiography of Heisenberg is well worth a read -

Greetings,
Catfish

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

There's a rumour that Germany had a reactor but it didn't go critical right, or something like that, but basically after it failed miserably they didn't try again before the war ended.

I saw a documentary on PBS once that basically said that after the war the OSS and MI6 got all the German Scientists in a house together and listened in, then sent the transcripts to our Scientists who told them that the Germans had the formulas wrong and thought they needed a lot more nuclear material for the bomb to work. Apparently we let the German Scientists go after that.

[USS Drum]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Japan refused to use them on the US because of the same.

Actually, a US sub sank a Japanese ship with plague infested rats on it's way to Saipan.

[USS Drum]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Well there were the Junkers JU 290 and 390, and the Messerschmidt ME 264 V1-3.
http://www.militaryfactory.com/image...ircraft_id=759
Along with the ****e-Wulf FW 200 all four-engined bombers, however there would not have been much chances - even if it would have bombed the US with whatever bomb, it would never have brought he US to an armistice with that action.

Also, the german nuclear project was hindered by a never openly outspoken agreement of the partaking scientists, they just did not want to develop that thing for Hitler. Heisenberg writes about it in his autobiography.
Certainly, had von Braun been in that project ...

edit: ****e-Wulf ? lol PC goes a bit far

Greetings,
Catfish

Don't forget the Daimler benz project C.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by USS Drum

Actually, a US sub sank a Japanese ship with plague infested rats on it's way to Saipan.

Did not know that. Got a citation for that?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

I saw a documentary on PBS once that basically said that after the war the OSS and MI6 got all the German Scientists in a house together and listened in, then sent the transcripts to our Scientists who told them that the Germans had the formulas wrong and thought they needed a lot more nuclear material for the bomb to work. Apparently we let the German Scientists go after that.

I found the incident I was thinking of, it was in 1942:

June 23, 1942 – Leipzig, Germany (then Nazi Germany) – Steam explosion and reactor fire Shortly after the Leipzig L-IV atomic pile — worked on by Werner Heisenberg and Robert Doepel — demonstrated Germany's first signs of neutron propagation, the device was checked for a possible heavy water leak. During the inspection, air leaked in, igniting the uranium powder inside. The burning uranium boiled the water jacket, generating enough steam pressure to blow the reactor apart. Burning uranium powder scattered throughout the lab causing a larger fire at the facility.

That set the project back by a long time, primarily because, as you said, they thought they needed more material than they did, that and because of their politics most of their decent scientists left a long time ago, and those that didn't were usually denounced as Jews. Plus we were bombing most of Germany at that point.

Of course, then there's the whole "Hitlers Bombe" story, but that's a conspiracy for another post...