Hitler orders advanced intercontinental bomber projects into production to carry on his war plan for attacking Manhattan

Not only that, but the usual Nazi approach to managing anything was incredibly chaotic and inefficient.
We have not only Herman Göring who is incompetent in any way
Like his dislike for modern landing gear or the use external fuel tanks
His cronies were not better, like idiot that send Squadron of Unarmed He-111 bomber for Glasgow raid.
oh the RAF had damm good day over Glasgow...

but German WW2 Aircraft Industry was in not better conditions
rivalry for lucrative contracts, Intrigue, personal interventions at Fat incompetents or even worst at Little annoying Austrian it self.
Messerschmitt play that game very good, even for contracts he screw up do construction errors.
Next to that the German industry shot themselves in foot by the Nazi chaotic emulation of Soviet Plan economics.
 
What would really kill the program is every plane would be essentially a hand-built one-off with modifications being introduced with each new one on the line.
On a related note - even if your industrial capacity is massive and you can build the things in record time, at some point you need to freeze the design and fix upon a production model.
 
On a related note - even if your industrial capacity is massive and you can build the things in record time, at some point you need to freeze the design and fix upon a production model.
The US were the best in that Game

See the Grumman F6F Hellcat
Ordert in June 1941, in June 1942 first prototype ready,
do combat experience of Wildcat with Zeros, Grumman overworked the design.
build second prototype ready to fly in July 1942 !
in October 1942 mass production started in the Bethpage Plant Number 3 while its Build.
Januar 1943 first aircraft goes into service.
in total 12275 Hellcats were build.
 
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We should also remember that a good case can be made that the massive Anglo-American bombing campaign against Germany achieved little in military terms. The results of the US post-war strategic bombing survey can themselves be interpreted that way. A necessarily, vastly smaller scale attack by Germany would likely have no effect at all.

Nor has bombing ever been achieved the purely morale effects that the Douhet school of thought anticipated. It makes everybody angrier and stubborner.
 
Telegram:

Horse thoroughly beaten. Stop. Recommend beatings stop. Stop.

(Signed)

Goering
dead-horse-spank.gif
 
Haris and Spaatz didn't waste time consulting tourist guides, they just ringed the map "let's flatten this area".

Bombing Wall Street is like asking Bomber Command to just hit Wilhelmstraße in Berlin. Unless flying in broad daylight its unlikely the German crews would even find Wall Street accurately let alone bomb it. Even allowing for no blackout at night with a grid street pattern it would be a difficult job and of course the Germans have nothing like H2S to help them.

A raid by 20 bombers is laughable, even assuming all made it across without engine problems, fuel cocks sticking etc. it would amount to about 60,000kg of bombs in total.
Even if you did succeed in making a token raid with a handful of Me 264s in, say, early 1944, the next day the 8th AF is going to pay sunny Bordeaux a visit and flatten the place with a few hundred B-17s and B-24s and P-47s strafing anything that moves or remotely resembles a parked aircraft in that area just for good measure.

Yet compared to Allied efforts, even a RAF Pathfinding force on an average raid would be about as big as this postulated raid And 60,000kg is only 9 Lancaster loads! Yep there's only one winner in this arm wrestle.
And if we're waiting for German industry to produce Ta 400s, P.1107s or Ho XVIIIs then Germany had better find a way to stop any Allied invasion on every front until about 1949 or 1950... (and a foolproof air defence system post-August 45...)

As mentioned above, the idea of a raid by 20 bombers isn't laughable, since the goal was to cause the Americans to expend time and resources which might otherwise have gone into the war effort.
The Germans actually succeeded in this strategy with Belfast. The city was hit by German bombers four times in April-May 1941. Afterwards there were huge recriminations about lack of preparedness and the British government was forced to establish a massive air defence system around the city (to which my grandfather was stationed as an AAA battery commander - I have a photo of him somewhere standing next to a ginormous searchlight bulb). But the Germans never came back. The raids did cause some damage - but the most significant effect was in all the resources the air defence system tied up for the next four years.
Except that the US had resources to spare, both to devote to countermeasures and to repairing damage. Defending New York against late-war air attack would have made no more difference to the war effort than the defense of the US west coast against Japanese air attack had done already.

Germany, on the other hand, did not have any resources to spare. The construction of the 100 or so bombers that you'd need in order to get 20 of them over the target and provisioning fuel for them would have done far more damage to the German war effort than extra radar, AAA guns, and interceptors would have done to the US effort--which was precisely why Germany did not build long-range strategic bombers in the first place.

Germany gambled on winning a short war using the forces it had ready in 1939 and then imposing a favorable piece that would leave it with territorial acquisitions that would more than offset any losses it incurred. The approach favored short-term needs and tactical aviation. When the gamble failed to pay off, landing Germany in a long war with larger, more resource-rich opponents, it had to focus all of its energy on replacing losses and reacting to battlefield set backs.
 
Ok, so how about a few U-boats each towing a 500 ton tanks of Tabun converted to an aerosol by a spray rigs. I don’t believe the US distributed gas masks to the general population, not that they’re any good against nerve agents. A favourable wind direction, starting at say 3.00 am, the surprise and shear terror, particularly if it significantly hit the Washington leadership would be difficult to assess. Using this means, a 5000 ton, nerve gas simultaneously attack against Boston, New York, Washington would have been completely within their capabilities.
The US stockpiled vast quantities of mustard gas in England against the possibility that the Germans might use nerve gas against Allied troops. Germany was well aware of the consequences should it use chemical weapons against anyone, much less against US civilians.

Mounting a nerve gas attack by releasing the agent in open air would in any case be unlikely to prove successful. Tabun wasn't a gas--it was a liquid that would have to be suspended in the air. Such aerosols are notoriously difficult to maintain and control. Winds are fickle. Rain scrubs the droplets out of the air. Many of them drop out of suspension and settle on the surface--the sea in this scenario. Fresh air would rapidly dilute the agent as the cloud drifted onshore. What's more, I believe that sunlight rapidly degrades nerve agents--they aren't persistent. So the submarine crew would likely be the first casualties. They would be closest to the most concentrated agent while working on a small, lively platform in open ocean. Also, if I remember corectly, Tabun was not a modern, military nerve agent like Sarin. It was a less potent organophosphate insecticide akin to those widely used post-war--definitely dangerous, but not likely to cause immediate mass casualties when present in small concentrations.

Mustard gas was, on the other hand, a very effective deterrent, because it is arguably a much more effective weapon than a nerve agent. A nerve agent kills those directly exposed to it and takes them out of action. Mustard gas maims, burns, and blinds those directly exposed to it, taking both the victims and a much larger number of rescuers and care-givers out of action (in WW1, I've read that a single mustard gas casualty took a total of at least three men out of the line). Mustard gas was a persistent chemical that contaminated buildings and equipment and permeated soil and clothing, often causing injuries long after the original attack and denying the enemy the use of ground and materiel.

Finally, even if we were to accept that a gas attack on Manhattan could somehow extend the war with Germany, this would only mean that the war would end with nuclear attacks on Berlin and other German cities. Hiroshima only suffered because Germany was out of the war by the time that Little Boy and Fat Man were ready--Germany was the anticipated target.
 
The best way Germany could have dealt with the US would have been not to ally itself with Japan.
If the Hitler gang had any political noise they would have understood the desire of many Americans to sort out problems at home and let the world go hang.
Many Americans, not just the large Irish community, had little sympathy for the arrogant, colonial power that was England. The British Empire had few friends in the States.
If Japan had not been allied with Nazi Germany the US would have focussed on avenging Pearl Harbour while quietly enjoying the demise of the European colonial outposts in Asia.
Germany had much in common with the US, not just in its views on race and religion. Both saw themselves as modern industrial countries superior to hidebound countries like Britain and the Soviet Union.
Add a President Lindbergh or Joseph Kennedy instead of Roosevelt and it would have been Lufthansa flying nightly to New York rather than the Luftwaffe.
 
The best way Germany could have dealt with the US would have been not to ally itself with Japan.
Nah, it would change nothing. The war between US and Germany was certain. The reason was simple; both sides wanted European market. Europe was the largest, most profitable market in the whole world, far surpassing everything else.

US simply could not allow Germans to get it all. In long terms, it would cause severe economical damage for US. And Germany simply could not let US into Europe. They fought for conquering the Europe, after all, not for giving it to some American moneymakers.

So essentially, there could be no compromise, no middle ground. No -

President Lindbergh or Joseph Kennedy
- would change the simple economical logic. A bit of raving from "free" American press, some provocations - which Germany produced enough, like "Reuben James" sinking - and all those isolationist presidents would be out of office (if not "shot by unknown killers").
 
Dilandu. I think this would be a bit like "Man in the High Castle" but with the US and Nazi Germany squaring off in in the 1960s (as in Robert Harris's Fatherland).
The US had large business interests in Nazi Germany which carried on all too happily under the Nazi Regime.
To come back to the subject of this thread, a US victorious against Japan and a Germany having also Atom bombed the Soviet Union would glower across the Atlantic with nuclear bombers and rockets.
 
Nor has bombing ever been achieved the purely morale effects that the Douhet school of thought anticipated. It makes everybody angrier and stubborner.
Truman, Fat Man and Little Boy disagree.
Nuclear attacks are a bit different. But even so, the Japanese military do not seem to have been convinced to surrender by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, even if the Emperor and what remained of the independent civilian and scientific leadership were. The Soviet declaration of war, followed by rapid liquidation of Japan's supposedly powerful, 700,000-man Kwantung Army-were at least as important motivations for the surrender.

The Kwantung Army was psychologically important because it had been the poster child for Japanese militarism and colonialism since the beginning of the 20th century. It had also seen little recent war service and was thus expected to be Japan's major reserve and deterrent force should the western Allies contemplate invasion of the home islands. When the Soviets annihilated it outright in a matter of days and then invaded the Kuril Islands--Japan proper--any remaining hope, however irrational, was lost. Boots on the ground--Communist boots on Japanese soil--arguably closed a deal that B-29s could not on their own.
 
Dilandu. I think this would be a bit like "Man in the High Castle" but with the US and Nazi Germany squaring off in in the 1960s (as in Robert Harris's Fatherland).
Nah, US would not allow situation to deteriorate to that point (sans some kind of total idiocy from American elites)

The US had large business interests in Nazi Germany which carried on all too happily under the Nazi Regime.
Problem was, those business interests weren't exactly protected from being nationalized on the whim. Nazi done this even with their own companies, if they were displeased with their political inclination. Essentially US business in Germany could exist only as long as it did not compete with German's.

To come back to the subject of this thread, a US victorious against Japan and a Germany having also Atom
Germany could not have atomic weapon in any reasonable timescale. Not till way in 50s. Nazi Germany wasn't a Soviet Union; it was incredibly inefficient, anti-intellectual regime, that created incredible chaos and inefficiency everywhere. Nazi Germany could not maintain Cold War situation with USA; it lacked any internal stability for that.
 
The US had large business interests in Nazi Germany which carried on all too happily under the Nazi Regime.
US simply could not allow Germans to get it all. In long terms, it would cause severe economical damage for US. And Germany simply could not let US into Europe. They fought for conquering the Europe, after all, not for giving it to some American moneymakers....

Problem was, those business interests weren't exactly protected from being nationalized on the whim. Nazi done this even with their own companies, if they were displeased with their political inclination. Essentially US business in Germany could exist only as long as it did not compete with German's.
In the 1930s and '40s, US business was actually quite well disposed to Fascism in general and Nazism in particular--hence the well-known coup plot against Roosevelt and the seizure of the Union Banking Corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
 
The best way Germany could have dealt with the US would have been not to ally itself with Japan.
If the Hitler gang had any political noise they would have understood the desire of many Americans to sort out problems at home and let the world go hang.
ROFL
The little annoying Austrian wanted War with USA in WW3 (so in Mein Kampf and Book Two)
But he got little impatience and wanted that Japan attack Soviet Union.
So the Idiot declare War on USA...
nobody had inform him or Von Ribbentrop that Japanese use Yes also as polite meaningless form.
And Japanese had other serious problems as attacking the USSR
They piss off the USA and now they coming to annihilate the Japanese Empire

While Roosevelt was waiting on this moment to hit The Third Reich so hard as USA could...
Add a President Lindbergh or Joseph Kennedy instead of Roosevelt and it would have been Lufthansa flying nightly to New York rather than the Luftwaffe.

Lindbergh worked during WW2 as consultant, testing prototypes, evaluated proposals etc.
He debugged the B-24 production line, Improved the P-38 and F4U Corsair performance
He serve His country against there enemies

Kennedy sr. made so many gaffes as Ambassador in London, he was political sideline by Democrats...
His political carrier was quite dead by 1940
 
Ok, so how about a few U-boats each towing a 500 ton tanks of Tabun converted to an aerosol by a spray rigs. I don’t believe the US distributed gas masks to the general population, not that they’re any good against nerve agents. A favourable wind direction, starting at say 3.00 am, the surprise and shear terror, particularly if it significantly hit the Washington leadership would be difficult to assess. Using this means, a 5000 ton, nerve gas simultaneously attack against Boston, New York, Washington would have been completely within their capabilities.
The US stockpiled vast quantities of mustard gas in England against the possibility that the Germans might use nerve gas against Allied troops. Germany was well aware of the consequences should it use chemical weapons against anyone, much less against US civilians.

Mounting a nerve gas attack by releasing the agent in open air would in any case be unlikely to prove successful. Tabun wasn't a gas--it was a liquid that would have to be suspended in the air. Such aerosols are notoriously difficult to maintain and control. Winds are fickle. Rain scrubs the droplets out of the air. Many of them drop out of suspension and settle on the surface--the sea in this scenario. Fresh air would rapidly dilute the agent as the cloud drifted onshore. What's more, I believe that sunlight rapidly degrades nerve agents--they aren't persistent. So the submarine crew would likely be the first casualties. They would be closest to the most concentrated agent while working on a small, lively platform in open ocean. Also, if I remember corectly, Tabun was not a modern, military nerve agent like Sarin. It was a less potent organophosphate insecticide akin to those widely used post-war--definitely dangerous, but not likely to cause immediate mass casualties when present in small concentrations.

Mustard gas was, on the other hand, a very effective deterrent, because it is arguably a much more effective weapon than a nerve agent. A nerve agent kills those directly exposed to it and takes them out of action. Mustard gas maims, burns, and blinds those directly exposed to it, taking both the victims and a much larger number of rescuers and care-givers out of action (in WW1, I've read that a single mustard gas casualty took a total of at least three men out of the line). Mustard gas was a persistent chemical that contaminated buildings and equipment and permeated soil and clothing, often causing injuries long after the original attack and denying the enemy the use of ground and materiel.

Finally, even if we were to accept that a gas attack on Manhattan could somehow extend the war with Germany, this would only mean that the war would end with nuclear attacks on Berlin and other German cities. Hiroshima only suffered because Germany was out of the war by the time that Little Boy and Fat Man were ready--Germany was the anticipated target.
The big issue with mustard gas is that it's based on a benzene ring and it is persistant. That is, it can remain in place and effective for anywhere from weeks to years and takes concentrated effort to clean up. Nerve agents evaporate in short order, breakdown into other chemicals and are gone.
If the Germans used gas on an Allied city, the Allies would have returned the favor tenfold or more ASAP.
 
The best way Germany could have dealt with the US would have been not to ally itself with Japan.
If the Hitler gang had any political noise they would have understood the desire of many Americans to sort out problems at home and let the world go hang.
Many Americans, not just the large Irish community, had little sympathy for the arrogant, colonial power that was England. The British Empire had few friends in the States.
If Japan had not been allied with Nazi Germany the US would have focussed on avenging Pearl Harbour while quietly enjoying the demise of the European colonial outposts in Asia.
Germany had much in common with the US, not just in its views on race and religion. Both saw themselves as modern industrial countries superior to hidebound countries like Britain and the Soviet Union.
Add a President Lindbergh or Joseph Kennedy instead of Roosevelt and it would have been Lufthansa flying nightly to New York rather than the Luftwaffe.
under the terms of the axis pact Germany was under no obligation to declare war on the US since Germany had not been told of the attack ahead of time.

They could have just sat back and let the Japanese twist in the wind.

Or if they were more adroit politically declared war upon Japan for the sneak attack... that would made a real mess for the UK/US
 
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Dilandu. I think this would be a bit like "Man in the High Castle" but with the US and Nazi Germany squaring off in in the 1960s (as in Robert Harris's Fatherland).
Nah, US would not allow situation to deteriorate to that point (sans some kind of total idiocy from American elites)

The US had large business interests in Nazi Germany which carried on all too happily under the Nazi Regime.
Problem was, those business interests weren't exactly protected from being nationalized on the whim. Nazi done this even with their own companies, if they were displeased with their political inclination. Essentially US business in Germany could exist only as long as it did not compete with German's.

To come back to the subject of this thread, a US victorious against Japan and a Germany having also Atom
Germany could not have atomic weapon in any reasonable timescale. Not till way in 50s. Nazi Germany wasn't a Soviet Union; it was incredibly inefficient, anti-intellectual regime, that created incredible chaos and inefficiency everywhere. Nazi Germany could not maintain Cold War situation with USA; it lacked any internal stability for that.
take a very close look at Heisenberg's "virus house" reactor.. it was the bomb. Fill the void spaces between the rings of uranium with heavy water to breed enough plutonium etc to sustain a chain.. drain and replace with kerosene to inhibit neutron flow... total weight of the whole thing is under the delivery limit of a dive bomber.. all the rings are attached to the oddly shaped device with breakaway attachments: The impact of the device against a hard object breaks them free and allows the critical mass to smash together.

It wasn't a good design I grant you, but it was a workable one.
 
take a very close look at Heisenberg's "virus house" reactor.. it was the bomb. Fill the void spaces between the rings of uranium with heavy water to breed enough plutonium etc to sustain a chain.. drain and replace with kerosene to inhibit neutron flow... total weight of the whole thing is under the delivery limit of a dive bomber.. all the rings are attached to the oddly shaped device with breakaway attachments: The impact of the device against a hard object breaks them free and allows the critical mass to smash together.

It wasn't a good design I grant you, but it was a workable one.

Ah no, not even the slightest bit close.

There was no HEU which is essential for fast reactions

Had this been HEU, it wouldn’t achieve anywhere near the critical assembly rate of around 1500m/s for 85% U235. .

Reactor breeding Pu, occurs at parts per million over a period of days typically 20-30 days for optimal PU239 and still less than 0.01 %.

Germany could not have atomic weapon in any reasonable timescale and didn’t have access to materials particularly Nickel, necessary to support the project.
 
In the 1930s and '40s, US business was actually quite well disposed to Fascism in general and Nazism in particular--hence the well-known coup plot against Roosevelt and the seizure of the Union Banking Corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
It was BEFORE Germany started to conquer Europe. After that, US business quickly lost any remaining sympathy to them, because from their point of view, Germany was blatantly robbing them.
 
take a very close look at Heisenberg's "virus house" reactor.. it was the bomb. Fill the void spaces between the rings of uranium with heavy water to breed enough plutonium etc to sustain a chain.. drain and replace with kerosene to inhibit neutron flow... total weight of the whole thing is under the delivery limit of a dive bomber.. all the rings are attached to the oddly shaped device with breakaway attachments: The impact of the device against a hard object breaks them free and allows the critical mass to smash together.

Firstly, there is no indication that Heisenberg even considered a bomb. ALSOS records are pretty clear, that even in 1945 he still consider bomb as very far-fetching goal, and was utterly shocked, when learned about Hiroshima.

Secondly, smashing the critical mass together at subsonic velocities would not cause several layers of uranium to become a bomb. You would got a reaction, but a weak, sub-critical one; the heat would threw uranium around before anything happens. At most, you would have a very weak explosion, most likely less than weight of the "bomb" in TNT.

The whole point of assembly - gun-type or implosive-type - is to smash nuclear fuel into critical mass FAST.
 
take a very close look at Heisenberg's "virus house" reactor.. it was the bomb. Fill the void spaces between the rings of uranium with heavy water to breed enough plutonium etc to sustain a chain.. drain and replace with kerosene to inhibit neutron flow... total weight of the whole thing is under the delivery limit of a dive bomber.. all the rings are attached to the oddly shaped device with breakaway attachments: The impact of the device against a hard object breaks them free and allows the critical mass to smash together.

Firstly, there is no indication that Heisenberg even considered a bomb. ALSOS records are pretty clear, that even in 1945 he still consider bomb as very far-fetching goal, and was utterly shocked, when learned about Hiroshima.

Secondly, smashing the critical mass together at subsonic velocities would not cause several layers of uranium to become a bomb. You would got a reaction, but a weak, sub-critical one; the heat would threw uranium around before anything happens. At most, you would have a very weak explosion, most likely less than weight of the "bomb" in TNT.

The whole point of assembly - gun-type or implosive-type - is to smash nuclear fuel into critical mass FAST.
The impact velocity of the bomb could reach close to the speed of sound at impact, and definitely in the nose of a V2. Heisenberg and those that worked with him when hearing about Hiroshima are quoted as saying "did they drop a reactor on them?"

As I said it is not a very good "bomb" design but it is a functional one that is just practical enough to try if desperate but not reliable enough to use under any other circumstances. High speed dive bombing with gravity assist gives you an impact exceeding 600-650 MPH extremely easily(about the speed of .45 caliber bullet at the muzzle)...yes I am leaving a couple parts out for obvious reasons.

Now Heisenberg was no dummy so his using pure metallic uranium in the device is kind of a tip off for me that he was playing a game here: The oxidation would generate enough heat to ignite the uranium itself: Fun fact uranium burns and you can "enrich" uranium oxide just as easily as metallic uranium. You could almost think he was intentionally sabotaging things...
 
The best way Germany could have dealt with the US would have been not to ally itself with Japan.
If the Hitler gang had any political noise they would have understood the desire of many Americans to sort out problems at home and let the world go hang.
Many Americans, not just the large Irish community, had little sympathy for the arrogant, colonial power that was England. The British Empire had few friends in the States.
If Japan had not been allied with Nazi Germany the US would have focussed on avenging Pearl Harbour while quietly enjoying the demise of the European colonial outposts in Asia.
Germany had much in common with the US, not just in its views on race and religion. Both saw themselves as modern industrial countries superior to hidebound countries like Britain and the Soviet Union.
Add a President Lindbergh or Joseph Kennedy instead of Roosevelt and it would have been Lufthansa flying nightly to New York rather than the Luftwaffe.
In the real world and reality Nazi Germany and the US were already increasingly in a state of undeclared war in the Atlantic before the Pearl Harbour attacks and drifting towards a likely formal war in a similar manner to the US entering WW1.
And this idea of hostility to the UK and sympathy for Nazi Germany is very overplayed; indeed isolationism was somewhat on the wain well before Pearl Harbour thanks to reactions to Axis actions and it’s influence can be overstated, at least as WW2 began. For example Roosevelt was more avowedly “isolationist” than his Republican rival in the 1940 Presidential Election with both party establishments recognising the reality of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and the likely war to come.
Whoever was realistically actually likely to be president in the 1941 timescale would have very likely taken very similar positions and decisions as FDR re: the Axis powers.
Both of the leaderships of the 2 main Axis powers had strangely fatalistic attitudes to the US; they tried reassuring themselves by trying to reinforce their own prejudices and perceptions of the US as a fractious, divided and weak-willed people and country while also struggling with their own simultaneous (partially repressed) recognition of the US’s actual massive strength and their own bankruptcy of ideas of how to even survive against yet alone defeat such a power who they both thought would eventually intervene militarily against them.
 
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The impact velocity of the bomb could reach close to the speed of sound at impact, and definitely in the nose of a V2. Heisenberg and those that worked with him when hearing about Hiroshima are quoted as saying "did they drop a reactor on them?"
Basically you are proposing that crude gun-type bomb where assembly is made by the power of impact could be designed. Problem is, that the shape is all wrong for that. The suggested uranium pancake would simply shatter on the impact, not be pressed together (especially if you put kerosene between layers... kerosene is non-compressible, and the impact shock in liquid would just shatter "bomb" into powder).

But even if you put the design into something more sensible - like Little Boy arrangement - Germany plainly did not have enough HEU to produce an atomic bomb. Highly enriched uranium at this time was enormously hard to produce. Before USSR successfully pioneered gas centrifuges for uranium isotope separation, the only way was gaseous diffusion with electromagnetic separation on industrial-scale mass-spectrometers. Germany have nothing even remotely close to massive American uranium-production facilities.
 
Now Heisenberg was no dummy so his using pure metallic uranium in the device is kind of a tip off for me that he was playing a game here: The oxidation would generate enough heat to ignite the uranium itself: Fun fact uranium burns and you can "enrich" uranium oxide just as easily as metallic uranium. You could almost think he was intentionally sabotaging things...
Nah, he just was absolutely persuaded that he could not be wrong.
 
The impact velocity of the bomb could reach close to the speed of sound at impact, and definitely in the nose of a V2. Heisenberg and those that worked with him when hearing about Hiroshima are quoted as saying "did they drop a reactor on them?"

As I said it is not a very good "bomb" design but it is a functional one that is just practical enough to try if desperate but not reliable enough to use under any other circumstances. High speed dive bombing with gravity assist gives you an impact exceeding 600-650 MPH extremely easily(about the speed of .45 caliber bullet at the muzzle)...yes I am leaving a couple parts out for obvious reasons.

Now Heisenberg was no dummy so his using pure metallic uranium in the device is kind of a tip off for me that he was playing a game here: The oxidation would generate enough heat to ignite the uranium itself: Fun fact uranium burns and you can "enrich" uranium oxide just as easily as metallic uranium. You could almost think he was intentionally sabotaging things...

Impact velocities are not even close.

No HEU = No chain reaction

Uranium oxide cannot be enriched as it’s a solid , it’s needs Uranium Hexafluoride which is a gas….. that’s because enrichment is inherently a flow process.

The author of the Virus house thing had next to no understanding of the physics required.
 
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The planes then bomb targets of opportunity in the Chicago area-- or things like known steel mills in Indiana
Hm. The main problem would be to find such objects at night.
That wouldn't be a huge problem given the targets and navigation points using towns or cities would be lit up as in peacetime since the US had no reason to impose blackouts on cities.
Aah....the Germans are attacking before 8 Dec 1941. This would not be particularly wise as it would just succeed in annoying us. Shortly after, blacking out coastal areas was policy, albeit not consistently enforced, as the Germans just about immediately started attacking US coastal shipping.
 
Aah....the Germans are attacking before 8 Dec 1941. This would not be particularly wise as it would just succeed in annoying us. Shortly after, blacking out coastal areas was policy, albeit not consistently enforced, as the Germans just about immediately started attacking US coastal shipping.
Exactly. Considering that Germans aren't well-accustomed with flying over America, I suspect that they would took targets that they at least could reliably find - like New York and Boston.
 
The impact velocity of the bomb could reach close to the speed of sound at impact, and definitely in the nose of a V2. Heisenberg and those that worked with him when hearing about Hiroshima are quoted as saying "did they drop a reactor on them?"
Basically you are proposing that crude gun-type bomb where assembly is made by the power of impact could be designed. Problem is, that the shape is all wrong for that. The suggested uranium pancake would simply shatter on the impact, not be pressed together (especially if you put kerosene between layers... kerosene is non-compressible, and the impact shock in liquid would just shatter "bomb" into powder).

But even if you put the design into something more sensible - like Little Boy arrangement - Germany plainly did not have enough HEU to produce an atomic bomb. Highly enriched uranium at this time was enormously hard to produce. Before USSR successfully pioneered gas centrifuges for uranium isotope separation, the only way was gaseous diffusion with electromagnetic separation on industrial-scale mass-spectrometers. Germany have nothing even remotely close to massive American uranium-production facilities.
I know, the virus house device was also the breeder reactor.. in essence you would have to "ripen" the device like a bunch of very green bananas before it was usable which would take a ton of time. With what he had to work with this is about as good as he could get... as I said it is NOT A GOOD bomb design it just can function as one if you are very lucky and desperate enough to try it.

I doubt that the kerosene would still be in the device by the time it hit the ground.. the "reactor" had a drain plug.. Don't confuse when I say "functional" as my saying it would reliably work, just that it was also his bomb design as crappy as it was.
 
The impact velocity of the bomb could reach close to the speed of sound at impact, and definitely in the nose of a V2. Heisenberg and those that worked with him when hearing about Hiroshima are quoted as saying "did they drop a reactor on them?"

As I said it is not a very good "bomb" design but it is a functional one that is just practical enough to try if desperate but not reliable enough to use under any other circumstances. High speed dive bombing with gravity assist gives you an impact exceeding 600-650 MPH extremely easily(about the speed of .45 caliber bullet at the muzzle)...yes I am leaving a couple parts out for obvious reasons.

Now Heisenberg was no dummy so his using pure metallic uranium in the device is kind of a tip off for me that he was playing a game here: The oxidation would generate enough heat to ignite the uranium itself: Fun fact uranium burns and you can "enrich" uranium oxide just as easily as metallic uranium. You could almost think he was intentionally sabotaging things...

Impact velocities are not even close.

No HEU = No chain reaction

Uranium oxide cannot be enriched as it’s a solid , it’s needs Uranium Hexafluoride which is a gas….. that’s because enrichment is inherently a flow process.

The author of the Virus house thing had next to no understanding of the physics required.
terminal velocity for a US 1600 lbs AP bomb was 270m/s... 885 ft/sec. muzzle velocity of a .45 ACP round range which is usually around 930 ft/sec if you use a more streamlined unit you can exceed 1000.. not as good as a gun type device but a lot lighter and within the carrying capacity of what you got.

The entire point of a breeder reactor is to enrich a solid.. but without gas separation it is going to be grossly inefficient and leave you with a bunch of other crap that is not useful to going BOOM.. without gas separation to concentrate the useful isotopes he had a generally workable design that could not go boom except in some ludicrous act of blind luck.

Replace the disks in the device with 90% HEU and it stands a decent chance of lighting off... so he was in the general postal code just not the right address
 
terminal velocity for a US 1600 lbs AP bomb was 270m/s... 885 ft/sec. muzzle velocity of a .45 ACP round range which is usually around 930 ft/sec if you use a more streamlined unit you can exceed 1000.. not as good as a gun type device but a lot lighter and within the carrying capacity of what you got.

The entire point of a breeder reactor is to enrich a solid.. but without gas separation it is going to be grossly inefficient and leave you with a bunch of other crap that is not useful to going BOOM.. without gas separation to concentrate the useful isotopes he had a generally workable design that could not go boom except in some ludicrous act of blind luck.

Replace the disks in the device with 90% HEU and it stands a decent chance of lighting off... so he was in the general postal code just not the right address

Woefully low and non feasible assembly velocity, no appreciation of what constitutes a the design of a breeding reactor (they didn’t know of Pu and hence had no idea of its neutron cross section), zero understanding of the physics. Clueless response.
 
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terminal velocity for a US 1600 lbs AP bomb was 270m/s... 885 ft/sec. muzzle velocity of a .45 ACP round range which is usually around 930 ft/sec if you use a more streamlined unit you can exceed 1000.. not as good as a gun type device but a lot lighter and within the carrying capacity of what you got.

The entire point of a breeder reactor is to enrich a solid.. but without gas separation it is going to be grossly inefficient and leave you with a bunch of other crap that is not useful to going BOOM.. without gas separation to concentrate the useful isotopes he had a generally workable design that could not go boom except in some ludicrous act of blind luck.

Replace the disks in the device with 90% HEU and it stands a decent chance of lighting off... so he was in the general postal code just not the right address

Woefully low and non feasible assembly velocity, no appreciation of what constitutes a the design of a breeding reactor (they didn’t know of Pu and hence had no idea of its neutron cross section), zero understanding of the physics. Clueless, an utterly clueless response.
I think you are jumping the gun here... Both you and Dilandu are assuming I am saying that the damn thing would work.. which I am not, what I am saying is that Heisenbergs reactor design was also the bomb design: All of your and Dilandu's points are completely valid, but they do NOT invalidate the fact that the reactor design was also the bomb design.

They do show that it was not a very good one.. which I state upfront.

Edit: And to say that the design of the reactor and bomb are both a bit crap is a fair point, just as it is fair to point out that this was one of the first few ones built so it is bound to be kind of crap.
 
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