Alt 1945 Nuclear Weapons fail

[uk 75]

Perhaps one of the greatest what-ifs of post World War Two history is what would have happened if the US and UK had succeeded in getting the Atomic Bomb to work?
President Truman and Curtis Le May's round the clock bombing of Japan drawing on the destruction of Dresden by the RAF and USAAF is credited with persuading the Japanese Emperor to surrender after nearly every major city had been flattened. Le May commented in his autobiography in 1962 "if the damn Bomb had worked a lot of aircrew would be alive today".

Even without the A Bomb the USAF and RAF deployed bombers capable of reducing enemy cities to rubble with increasingly nasty firestorm and thermobaric effects.
Until the invention of thermobaric warheads the bomber rather than the missile was needed to "truck" enough weapons to destroy enemy cities and industry.
The USSR soon deployed its own bomber force based on B29s that fell into Soviet hands. Tupolev and Myasichev vied to build ever bigger and faster bombers with Boeing, Convair and North American.
Unfortunately for "deterrence by bomber" the anti aircraft missile soon offered a way of thinning down the waves of city slamming bombers.
The US bombing of North Vietnam showed that even SAC's B70 Valkyrie was no match for the flying telegraph poles or SAMs.
But SAC did succeed in bombing Hanoi and Haiphong flat albeit using tactical strike aircraft and carrier borne strikes to help the Valkyries and Hustlers.
The cost of the big bombers let to SALT talks in 1972 to reduce their numbers without losing the ability to destroy.
Napalm and Thermobaric bombs could easily stop modern cities from functioning.
Missiles had started to take on some of the job. They were much harder to shoot down but required in very large numbers.
The B2 stealth bomber entered US service in 1988. This aircraft could penetrate SAM defences and deliver newly developed buster ordinance. The Soviet Union was losing the bomber race.
By 1991 the superior economic muscle of the US left SAC the global striking force which no other country could match.

 

[kaiserd]

Until much much later advances in technology and precision there was no real substitute for the raw power of nuclear weapons in a strategic sense; potentially only chemical or biological weapons would have been anywhere near as powerful and the most likely substitute if nuclear weapons “never happened”.

Similar without nuclear weapons it’s all but certain that the bomber wouldn’t have received nearly the same focus of resources post-war; while a significant factor in WW2 it would have become evident in the post war analysis that the WW2 bomber fleets were significantly less effective than advertised/ intended (a truth that becomes significantly more important if not overshadowed by the step change in power brought about by the A-bomb then the H-bomb).
Hence a lot more resources directed to conventional armies, tactical airpower. Etc.

And due the distances involved, number of targets, etc. the absence of the nuclear weapons would greatly reduce the credibility and scope of US and/ or RAF strategic strikes - sufficient forces to attack the likes of Moscow and Leningrad “conventionally” may still be thought worthwhile but a wider actually impactful “deep” strategic campaign looks almost impossible to achieve, suggesting a likely move to missions more directly to supporting NATO armies and impeding Soviet armies in their supplies etc.

 

[JWilly]

The USSR soon deployed its own bomber force based on B29s that fell into Soviet hands.

In OTL, this took about three years with a crash effort. That would seem to suggest that the USSR would not have participated in the bombing campaign, at least not by using B-29 clones.

Plus, some B-29-copy components could not be made in Russia...the relevant technologies did not exist there...so were bought from scrapyards in Arizona and other locales where surplus B-29s were demolished and sold. Tires, for instance, initially all came from the US and were smuggled out of USA via mislabeled shipments to third countries where they could be re-directed to USSR without suspicion. That could only happen after V-J day and the return of much of the B-29 fleet to the US for de-activation and disposition. That of course would be inconsistent with the USSR being able to get scrapped parts from commercial scrap dealers while the war was still ongoing.

My Dad was the (very young--first mission out of training) co-pilot of one of the B-29s for which Vladivostok was the only available emergency field to avoid coming down in Japanese territory. So, the Tu-4 program is a particular interest of mine.

 

[jstar]

I seem to recall a short story or novella from the 70's or 80's where the atomic bomb worked fine if assembled and tested in stationary towers, but if carried in aircraft never detonated . Anyone reading this have any idea of the title of this work?

 

[uk 75]

The Jesus Factor - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[uk 75]

In the Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World a deadly "Nine Years War" is fought with Anthrax bombs being used against cities.
However, for all the horrors of the Second World War neither chemical nor biological weapons were used against cities (the scenes in the 1936 Film "Things to Come" by contrast show British civilians dying from gas bombs and a subsequent "wandering sickness" implies biological warfare).
The Berlin Airlift which was the first major crisis in relations with the Soviet Union that might have led to war was resolved in the face of overwhelming conventional Soviet forces in Europe and the A Bomb was not used.
The B29 and B36 would have been significant even without A bombs as being the only means the US had of taking a war to Soviet cities.
The Korean War saw B29 raids used on a massive scale.
The Soviet Union's grip on Eastern Europe except Yugoslavia occasioned the Colliers Magazine special "The War we do not want" in which the Soviet Union attempts to kill Tito and take power in Belgrade.
The war that follows involves widespread use of the A Bomb but B29 raids could have achieved similar results albeit over a longer period.
By 1961 the H Bomb had arrived and the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis obviously would not have happened the same way in a non-nuclear world.
In the absence of the nuclear deterrent could Curtis Le May's SAC still have been the US big stick as I suggest?
Kaiserd above correctly points out that conventional forces learning the lessons of Blitzkrieg and with money spent on armour and tactical airpower might have been the focus instead.
However, the US was reluctant initially at least to return forces to Europe and the 1956 Hungary uprising might have provoked a wider war in the absence of the Bomb. Again SAC would have been the only response from US soil.
Britain and France could not have hoped to emulate SAC as easily as they did SLBM forces because their airbases would be too vulnerable to Soviet bombers and missiles. Britain could have built the Avro 730 or a similar bomber but without the Bomb it could not have afforded the numbers required.
Similarly the US Navy could not hope to match SAC without nuclear weapons and the Forrestal class carriers might not have been built as the Essex class were more than adequate for limited wars like Korea.

 

[Dilandu]

There would be much more interest in high precision weapons - capable of taking out industrial targets and logistic nodes with accurate hits. So, a lot more efforts would be put into both self-homing and radio-controlled bombs, missiles and drones. There would be no post-war loss of interest in guided weapon (like it happened in OTL in 1950s), so by mid-1950s the majority of dropped munitions would be guided ones.

Since the weight of munitions would be important, the carrying capacity of the bombers would be considered as one of key parameters.

 

[zen]

Yes the bombing campaigns of WWII mostly highlighted how difficult it was to achieve the desired effects.
Navigation was key.

In this then the high speed reconasense aircraft gains more traction.

But without the Bomb, Soviet Union is a safer bet to stop supplies of grain and other commodities. So it's more likely that a collapse and conflict would erupt after WWII.

Western Powers would not be able to draw down conventional forces in favour of the cheaper and more dramatic nuclear weapons.

 

[uk 75]

British experience in WW2 with the Mosquito fed into the postwar Canberra.
The Canberra received the French AS30 in the early 60s as it's missile armament.
The Buccaneer with Martel was a logical next step.
Without a Red Beard/WE177 bomb to deliver TSR2 would also have had to be designed round precision guided weapons.
Unlike SAC the RAF had not been engaged in bombing Japan so it would not have gone down the heavy bomber route.

 

[jstar]

The Jesus Factor - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

That's the one. This site, and the people on it, are amazing. Thank you.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The Jesus Factor - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

That's the one. This site, and the people on it, are amazing. Thank you.

From the wiki: Its fictional premise is the discovery during the development of nuclear weapons that only detonate if stationary in a gravitational field, making their use as air-dropped bombs impossible.

Ummm... if all a nuke needs to go off is to be stationary... that's what "laydown" bombs are for. You could achieve that with Fat Man by giving it huge parachutes and some sort of landing cushion.

 

[Hood]

I wouldn't write off the "Bomber Barons", lack of evidence never stopped their rise post-1918 with lots of fanciful claims.
Post 1945 they can point to flatten cities and town and say "look it worked". Sure the official surveys might take a more nuanced view of the actual economic damage caused, but given the amount of Bomber Command (RAF & USAAF) staff officers still in the upper echelons of both air forces well into the early 1960s it's not likely they would let their pet theories go. Plus with the advent of jet power its a whole new argument, they could claim improved penetration and surviveability.

There would be much more interest in high precision weapons - capable of taking out industrial targets and logistic nodes with accurate hits. So, a lot more efforts would be put into both self-homing and radio-controlled bombs, missiles and drones.

True, but there already were very extensive efforts in these fields even with nuclear weapons, plus conventional capability was never ignored - though it seems from files I have seen that the SAC was cooler about its accuracy targets than RAF Bomber Command during the 1950s. The USAF seem to have felt BIG kaboom = doesn't matter too much where it hits, the RAF wanted the boom smack in the centre of the target, they didn't have bombs or aircraft to waste, every hit had to count.
The only thing that flip-flopped was high versus low altitude bombing accuracy and which was best - until the 60s when low became mandatory.

 

[alertken]

Contemplate the fate of the only 2 Nations to indulge in Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament: Kazakhstan, now a satrapy of Russia, and Ukraine, succeeding in not becoming another, because the rest of us are taking much pain, short only of boots-on-the-ground/in-the-grave.

Ukraine appears to demonstrate that Western fears of being submerged by a Red sunami of iron and flesh were irrational: defending their hearth and home against ill-led, ill-motivated conscripts, Ukraine has busted the myth of Russia's invincibility in iron warfare. But, no.

Putin has hobbled his Forces precisely as Nixon did in SE.Asia, and as Macarthur protested Truman did in Korea as he was being pushed into the Pusan sea, and as France did when Ike would not nuke-defend Dien Bien Phu: safe havens. Putin could defeat Ukraine tomorrow by interdicting, lethally, supply from NATO Nations protected by US/UK/French AW. Which he respects, just as Truman respected USSR's AW umbrella over PRC and Nixon respected PRC's own umbrella: so: safe havens of supply from PRC to Kim and Ho.

Can anyone really doubt that Berlin Airlift, Berlin Wall, Cuba...would have been lost by the West in the absence of AW?

 

[riggerrob]

What if WALLIES had been able to predict how badly nukes would have been deteriorated by the vibration of transport by rail, ship and airplane?
Who could have predicted that fractured nukes would only conflagrate (burn) instead of explode (supersonic shock waves)?
Sure, the fire storm flattened Hiroshima, but few died from radiation ... more like casualties caused by "dirty" bombs.