A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

[Peg Leg Pom]

So the Anglo-French alliance will have The Bomb as will the Soviets by the end of the forties. No doubt the US will, if they hadn't already done it earlier, have one by the mid fifties. Personally I think they'd have one by 1950. The thing is in this reality will there be a Cold War to force the atomic powers to build huge numbers of the damn things?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

So the Anglo-French alliance will have The Bomb as will the Soviets by the end of the forties. No doubt the US will, if they hadn't already done it earlier, have one by the mid fifties. Personally I think they'd have one by 1950. The thing is in this reality will there be a Cold War to force the atomic powers to build huge numbers of the damn things?

Not one akin to OTL, but tensions will be there to prompt all of them to build at least modest stockpiles.

One interesting thing to speculate is if Japan will eventually get one. Even if they get kicked off Continental Asia by the Soviets, they'll still be something of a major regional power with their own aspirations of grandeur and lacking the mollification (with a distinct anti-nuclear slant) the OTL curb stomp gave them. Toss in the Chinese and Indians... fun times come the 60s and 70s.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

Definitely, for one thing possession of nuclear weapons will be seen as the mark of a great power and not having them would leave them vulnerable in any dispute with another great power. They'll have enough to be a deterrent but not thousands. Of course a lot depends on how the situation in Poland is resolved.

 

[What if]

Incorrect. The Soviets OTL did not begin a full project until 1945 due to having a pretty big distraction known as "defeating the Germans" to deal with. ITTL, the Soviets begin the full project in late-'42. The lack of intel adds 1-2 years, but provides a hidden benefit I'll get too later. This means the Soviets will take 5-6 years from initiating a full project to build a bomb, which comes out to 1947-48.

Can I see your sources then as I've referenced where I got my information from.

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273

Also it seems a few other sources agree with me on the start date

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project

Active 1943–49

http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946

In February 1943, the Soviets began their own program led by nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov and political director Lavrentiy Beria.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwpnprog.html

The Soviet weapons program proper began in 1943 during World War II, under the leadership of physicist Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov.

Not coincidentally, the British also estimated take around five-six years and the Anglo-French will begin a full project in 1942 once the war ends. OTL, it took the British 7 years from the initiation of an independent project in 1946 but pooling both their intellectual and industrial resources with the French should add time. Again, this comes out to 1947-48.

Now, that hidden benefit that comes from the lack of intelligence: OTL Beria's desire for certainty led him to rejecting an indigenous Soviet bomb design in favor of a direct copy of the Fat Man. When the Soviets did come back to that bomb design and tested it two years later, the result was a weapon at almost twice the yield (38 kilotons instead of 22) that consumed half the fissile material. This meant it was a much better design for mass production.

ITTL, the Soviets will have no choice but to go for this indigenous design and will thus wind-up starting out with what is actually a better bomb as it is they can produce more of more quickly.

So both the Soviet Union and British will likely acquire the bomb within months of each other. The ITTL Soviet Union will actually have the capacity to expand its arsenal faster then the OTL due to starting out with a better bomb design. The Anglo-French's larger economy compared to OTL will likewise probably allow them to ultimately build a larger arsenal then what the Anglo-French built OTL, but if it will allow them to build it faster... IDK.

PDF did already state he saw the USSR favouring bombs instead of conventional forces so their bomb building capacity isn't in dispute and I don't think the yields are in dispute just will it be more then the Entente because as Gaddis notes on page 73 the Soviet missiles took 20 hours to refuel in the late 50's/ early 60's (U2 spy plane era) and this means they would only perform one launch before the Worlds knows where there bases are making more missiles pointless and meaning they probably wouldn't have had more then the number of lunch sites. And whilst no Barbarossa means more alive to help correct this it also means Stalin will probably perform more purges.

So the Anglo-French alliance will have The Bomb as will the Soviets by the end of the forties. No doubt the US will, if they hadn't already done it earlier, have one by the mid fifties. Personally I think they'd have one by 1950. The thing is in this reality will there be a Cold War to force the atomic powers to build huge numbers of the damn things?

I would say yes as the Entente will remember that Stalin annexed the Baltic States, seized territory from Poland, Romania and Finland and provided Hitler with essential war materials whilst Stalin remembers the British and French giving aid to the White armies in the Russian civil war.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Can I see your sources then as I've referenced where I got my information from.

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273

Giving me the link to some random book tells me nothing. Your better off actually quoting, like this on the bit that the Soviet project began to take root in 1942, not 1943:

"[In April 1941] Stalin summoned Kaftanov and other experts, including Peter Kapitsa, a pupil of Ernst Rutherford, and asked their opinion. They said the work was important. Two of them said that to build the bomb would cost as much as the entire Soviet war effort - and the Soviet Union was cracking. But Kaftanov argued in favour of the pojrect, whatever the cost. Otherwise, the Germans might have the bomb -which is what all the intelligence told Stalin the British and Americans feared - while the Russians did not.
After some hesitation, according to Kaftanov, Stalin said: "We should do it."" -Absolute War: Soviet Russia in WW2, Chris Bellamy, Pg 483.
"By September 1942, the Russians had picked Kurchatov as the right man to lead and manage the building of the Red bomb." -Absolute War, Page 484.

February 1943 date is just the time it was made official in Soviet documentation on the matter, but as you can see work had already been underway since September.

Yet, it was also pretty clear NOT yet an all out effort to acquire the bomb, as the USSR was too busy fighting the Germans to manage that:

"Stalin [in 1942] had merely commissioned a modest investigation of the possibilities for a Bomb, not a Soviet-style Manhattan Project. By this stage, he had received intelligence that his enemy would not be able to build a bomb and that his allies might be able to do so. A full-blown Soviet project therefore seemed superfluous to the task of defeating Germany. The wartime Soviet programme existed almost entirely on paper. Scientists did not have the resources to move beyond theoretical calculations to practical experiments." - The Bomb: A Life, Gerard J. Degroot, Page 131.
"The American experience demonstrated that it was not sufficient merely to understand how to build the Bomb - a hugbe industrial effort was also essential. This was not remotely possible [for the Soviets] during the war." - The Bomb: A Life, Page 132.

That the movement to a all-out effort to build the bomb began only after the war ended is also well established.

"Exactly two weeks after Hiroshima, Stalin turned the makeshift wartime operation into a crash programme to build a Bomb. A short time later he told Kurchatov: 'If a child doesn't cry, the mother doesn't know what it needs. Ask for whatever you like. You won't be refused.' The fact that he could even contemplate this while his country lay devastated is testimony to his determination." - The Bomb: A Life, Page 131.

And from your own links:

The Soviet atomic program during the war was puny compared to the Manhattan Project, involving approximately twenty physicists and only a small number of staff. They researched the reactions necessary to produce both atomic weapons and nuclear reactors. They also began exploring ways to generate enough pure uranium and graphite, and researched uranium isotope separation methods.

Work on the program sped up quickly in 1945, however, especially after the Soviets learned of the Trinity test. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Truman told Joseph Stalin about the United States atomic bomb program for the first time. According to Truman, "I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no special interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make good use of it against the Japanese."

While Stalin may have appeared uninterested, he privately told his top advisers to speed up work on the Soviet atomic program: "They simply want to raise the price. We've got to work on Kurchatov and hurry things up.”

The Soviet regime immediately stepped up their program. General Boris L. Vannikov (who has been compared to General Leslie Groves) headed an engineering council that oversaw the project. Its members included Kurchatov, M.G. Pervukhin, A.I. Alikhanov, I.K. Kikoin, A.P. Vinovgradov, Abram Joffe, A.A. Bochvar, and Avraamy Zavenyagin.

Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin called for an all-out crash program in atomic research and development. In 1946 Yuli Khariton was appointed by Kurchatov as the program's lead scientist. He was tasked with directing atomic research, development, design, and weapons assembly, and helped select and establish the site of the secret Soviet nuclear weapons facility, known as Arzamas-16 and nicknamed “Los Arzamas.”

On the relative importance of espionage:

"Implementing the stolen plans still required immense technical skill and a deep understanding of atomic processes. In addition, though the information was, as Ioffe claimed, always precise, Soviet scientists could not assume that it was. An immense amount of checking had to be done, since it was always possible that the Americans had intentionally released carefully constructed disinformation. And, in order to protect the secret of the stolen secrets, only the most senior scientists were aware that the designs had been pilfered. Most scientists went to their graves believing that their bomb was distinctively Russian." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 128.
"Fuchs himself did not believe that his contribution was crucial. In his interrogation, he remarked that he was 'extremely surprised that the Russian explosion had taken place so soon'. In common with other [Western] analysts, he had assumed that the information he had given 'could not have been applied so quickly and that the Russians would not have the engineering, design, and construction facilities thatr would be needed to build a production plant in such a short time.'" -The Bomb: A Life, Page 147

And again, from one of your own links:

Contrary to popular belief, there was no concrete "secret" behind the atomic bomb. The discovery of fission in 1938 meant that a nuclear chain reaction was possible and that the energy produced from this process could be used to produce a weapon of unusual force. Physicists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard knew that it was only a matter of time before other countries were able to develop their own atomic weapons. The only secret behind the bombs lay in their specifications, material composition, and inner workings. Any government with the determination and the resources to develop an atomic weapon could do so within a matter of time.

When Klaus Fuchs's espionage was discovered in 1950, many believed that his actions had been essential to the Soviet bomb. Fuchs did pass along important information about the bomb's design and technical specifications, and the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy concluded that "Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States but in the history of nations." However, there has been much debate surrounding the role of espionage in the Soviet Union's atomic program. Scholarship suggests that Soviet spying probably allowed the USSR to develop an atomic bomb six months to two years faster than they would have had there been no espionage

And that the rush to build an exact replica actually proved detrimental to the building of a Soviet stockpile:

"Beria was not remotely moved by the ideals that motivated his scientists. He was not an esoteric voyage of discovery but a practical quest to build a bomb in the shortest possible time. Therefore, he simply told his scientists to build an exact copy of the American bomb, the specification of which had been supplied by Fuchs and others. A specifically Russian design was cast aside even though it offered more promise than Fat Man.[Footnote here, when going to the bottom of the page to read it, it says:] When finally built and tested in 1951 (the second Soviet atomic test) it produced twice the yield, at half the weight." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 135.

It should be noted that when the Soviets did embark on their crash program, they had their first reactor up and running in less then a year and a half: the first Soviet nuclear test reactor went critical on Christmas Day, December 1946 (The Bomb: A Life, Page 144). The first production reactor was online by June 19th, 1948, a little under just three years after the crash program began (also Page 144). The Soviet program moved remarkably swiftly once the Soviets accorded it relevant priority.

The real key setter for the building of the Soviet bomb is the acquisition of raw uranium ore. But the prospecting for that came hand-in-hand with the beginning of the full-construction program, so we can expect things like the Soviet discovery of uranium ore in Kazakhstan and the expansion of uranium mining in places like Taboshar, Tajikistan to also be duly accelerated.

the Soviet missiles took 20 hours

The Soviet R-7 ICBM took 20 hours to fuel. The Soviet R-7 is not the sum total of Soviet ballistic missiles in the late-50s and early-60s.

 

[pdf27]

I don't see how you can say that. Getting many hundreds of nuclear-armed aircraft and missiles capable of striking the Anglo-French homelands from their own territory by the mid-1950s (thousands by the 1960s) was perfectly within the capabilities of the OTL war-damaged Soviet Union, much less the ITTL...

The thinking is that for the British at least (I'm afraid I don't know French thinking very well, but it seems to be similar) once they had a large stockpile of atomic weapons felt much more relaxed relative to the Soviet Union - and much more so once they had a number of Megaton weapons in service. The thinking was that the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on the USSR was enough to deter them from going to war, and later that provided they had the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union, the Soviets would be forced to retaliate - and the nature of the beast was that they'd have to do so against everybody, including the USA leading to unacceptable damage being inflicted on them. The big difference ITTL from OTL is that the UK and France can no longer be quite so certain about US actions - so they need to retain the capability that Bomber Command had before the shift to low level attacks of being able to destroy ~100 Soviet cities by themselves.
The point is that the Soviet capabilities don't really matter, except as they pertain to destroying weapons on the ground before launch - the UK and France both accepted that their homelands would be completely destroyed by any Soviet attack and that there was nothing they could do about it. That means in my mind they will seek to get two capabilities:

1. A "tactical" nuclear force capable of stopping any conventional attack by the Red Army in Europe, should one take place.
2. A "strategic" nuclear force capable of inflicting "unacceptable" damage on the Soviet Union. Realistically this will need to be at least 100 weapons on target.

Although I imagine the Soviets would be wary of an early August Storm just now, the Japanese and the Soviets have been building a closer relationship which seems to have some sort of long term goal, even if said goal is for the latter to throw the former under the bus when the time is right. Solving Chiang and the Entente's problems for them isn't really Stalin's M.O.

Yeah, he has no real interest in that. There are long-standing Russian interests in the area though, and Stalin did have a big thing about recovering the territory lost by the Tsars. By now he's succeeded everywhere except Finland and the Far East.

I am, since I'm talking about a intra-continental strike against Anglo-French home lands from the territory of the USSR, not a inter-continental strike against American territory, which is much harder. Historically, the Soviets nanufactured 847 Tu-4s between 1947 and 1952, when production ended in the USSR. Add to that the production of such nuclear-capable aircraft as the Il-28. Then there's the rapid development of ballistic missiles, with Soviet rocket tech easily allowing them to field an IRBM able to hit London from Belarus by 1956.

One thing to note here as well - there is some really interesting Soviet technology which never made it to the big-time in OTL, and I suspect that at least part of this is the ~20 million Soviet citizens who could have been doing more productive things with their lives had the Germans not intervened: Gnom is a good example.

Now obviously the Tu-4 isn't likely to be a thing ITTL, not least because the Soviets don't have a B-29 to copy, but the requirements for a bomber capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the Anglo-French home land will still be very obvious once the size and weight of the bomb and what the Tu-4 really demonstrates is that the USSR was perfectly capable of constructing such an aircraft. IATL, what happens is the Soviets prioritize and develop something like the ANT-64.

Probably. They will eventually have to be able to hit the USA as well, but the British and French will be the first priority.

And a bigger economy means that they can build both a sizeable nuclear stockpile and not have the level of privations suffered by Soviet citizens in the late-1940s, which was a function of war damage anyways and didn't actually last.

Emphatically agree here.

Again, you cite the OTL US vs the OTL USSR when the real metric here is the ITTL Anglo-French vs ITTL USSR, both of whom have stronger economies then OTL and get the bomb earlier then OTL (about 1947-1948 for both sides instead of 1949 for the USSR, 1953 for the British, and 1960 for the French).

I think you're making some weak assumptions here. Absent the Manhattan Project starting, Churchill had already made the decision to go ahead with a UK-only bomb project anyway, albeit it would have been one with fairly limited resources thanks to the demand of the war effort. That decision won't change here - indeed, IIRC it has already been made. The UK also made all the right guesses in the MAUD report, which will be the blueprint for an early version of Tube Alloys: that probably means a uranium implosion device will become available only very slightly later than OTL. What will change is the building capacity for weapons - any UK project will be much, much smaller than Manhattan so you're only looking at a few weapons per year. Plenty when you have a nuclear monopoly, but when the Soviets start to get weapons that will give them problems.

So both the Soviet Union and British will likely acquire the bomb within months of each other. The ITTL Soviet Union will actually have the capacity to expand its arsenal faster then the OTL due to starting out with a better bomb design. The Anglo-French's larger economy compared to OTL will likewise probably allow them to ultimately build a larger arsenal then what the Anglo-French built OTL, but if it will allow them to build it faster... IDK.

There is also the fact that the MAUD report envisaged a handful of weapons being decisive so the UK probably isn't going to think in terms of mass production when setting up their weapons programme. The Soviets are likely to have a more realistic view.

One interesting thing to speculate is if Japan will eventually get one. Even if they get kicked off Continental Asia by the Soviets, they'll still be something of a major regional power with their own aspirations of grandeur and lacking the mollification (with a distinct anti-nuclear slant) the OTL curb stomp gave them. Toss in the Chinese and Indians... fun times come the 60s and 70s.

Almost certainly, but they'll need to see someone else actually deploy one before the higher echelons really understand what it means and that they need to commit the resources to it. In OTL they just didn't get it.
The far more fun reaction, actually, will be on Capitol Hill...

 

[What if]

Giving me the link to some random book tells me nothing. Your better off actually quoting, like this on the bit that the Soviet project began to take root in 1942, not 1943:

"[In April 1941] Stalin summoned Kaftanov and other experts, including Peter Kapitsa, a pupil of Ernst Rutherford, and asked their opinion. They said the work was important. Two of them said that to build the bomb would cost as much as the entire Soviet war effort - and the Soviet Union was cracking. But Kaftanov argued in favour of the pojrect, whatever the cost. Otherwise, the Germans might have the bomb -which is what all the intelligence told Stalin the British and Americans feared - while the Russians did not.
After some hesitation, according to Kaftanov, Stalin said: "We should do it."" -Absolute War: Soviet Russia in WW2, Chris Bellamy, Pg 483.
"By September 1942, the Russians had picked Kurchatov as the right man to lead and manage the building of the Red bomb." -Absolute War, Page 484.

A book to look out for, now however you don't seem to regard research being as actually conturing towards work on the project despite that being the case for even backyard work like the creation on Penicillin.

February 1943 date is just the time it was made official in Soviet documentation on the matter, but as you can see work had already been underway since September.

Yet, it was also pretty clear NOT yet an all out effort to acquire the bomb, as the USSR was too busy fighting the Germans to manage that:

"Stalin [in 1942] had merely commissioned a modest investigation of the possibilities for a Bomb, not a Soviet-style Manhattan Project. By this stage, he had received intelligence that his enemy would not be able to build a bomb and that his allies might be able to do so. A full-blown Soviet project therefore seemed superfluous to the task of defeating Germany. The wartime Soviet programme existed almost entirely on paper. Scientists did not have the resources to move beyond theoretical calculations to practical experiments." - The Bomb: A Life, Gerard J. Degroot, Page 131.
"The American experience demonstrated that it was not sufficient merely to understand how to build the Bomb - a hugbe industrial effort was also essential. This was not remotely possible [for the Soviets] during the war." - The Bomb: A Life, Page 132.

That the movement to a all-out effort to build the bomb began only after the war ended is also well established.

"Exactly two weeks after Hiroshima, Stalin turned the makeshift wartime operation into a crash programme to build a Bomb. A short time later he told Kurchatov: 'If a child doesn't cry, the mother doesn't know what it needs. Ask for whatever you like. You won't be refused.' The fact that he could even contemplate this while his country lay devastated is testimony to his determination." - The Bomb: A Life, Page 131.

And from your own links:

Expect that does ignore other evidence like Beria being the political head of the project from 1943

http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946

Soviet physicists paid close attention to the news of the discovery of fission in Germany in 1938. Throughout 1939, leading Soviet physicists attempted to reproduce the fission experiment that Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had conducted in Berlin and began to make measurements and calculations to determine under exactly what conditions, if any, a nuclear chain reaction would take place.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Soviet nuclear physics work largely ceased. Scientists and engineers were drafted or assigned to work on projects, such as radar, that were seen as more pressing. However, a small fraction of physicists continued to explore the possibilities of uranium. Peter L. Kapitza, a high-ranking physicist, remarked in October 1941 that the recent discovery of nuclear energy could be useful in the war against Germany and that the prospects of a uranium bomb seemed promising. Soviet leaders learned that both the United States and Germany had embarked on efforts to build an atomic bomb. In February 1943, the Soviets began their own program led by nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov and political director Lavrentiy Beria.


The Soviet Atomic Bomb during World War II

The Soviet atomic program during the war was puny compared to the Manhattan Project, involving approximately twenty physicists and only a small number of staff. They researched the reactions necessary to produce both atomic weapons and nuclear reactors. They also began exploring ways to generate enough pure uranium and graphite, and researched uranium isotope separation methods.

Work on the program sped up quickly in 1945, however, especially after the Soviets learned of the Trinity test.

Beria was approaching the height of his power around and did originally succeed Stalin so I think to ignore his involvement from such an early date I think is an error.

On the relative importance of espionage:

"Implementing the stolen plans still required immense technical skill and a deep understanding of atomic processes. In addition, though the information was, as Ioffe claimed, always precise, Soviet scientists could not assume that it was. An immense amount of checking had to be done, since it was always possible that the Americans had intentionally released carefully constructed disinformation. And, in order to protect the secret of the stolen secrets, only the most senior scientists were aware that the designs had been pilfered. Most scientists went to their graves believing that their bomb was distinctively Russian." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 128.
"Fuchs himself did not believe that his contribution was crucial. In his interrogation, he remarked that he was 'extremely surprised that the Russian explosion had taken place so soon'. In common with other [Western] analysts, he had assumed that the information he had given 'could not have been applied so quickly and that the Russians would not have the engineering, design, and construction facilities thatr would be needed to build a production plant in such a short time.'" -The Bomb: A Life, Page 147

And again, from one of your own links:

And its from the same link noting Beria's involvement in the project from 1943 and I do think its important to point out that sense the central argument is on if the USSR will have a larger stockpile then the UK and if it there is a 2 year delay then that will effect how many nukes the USSR will have for the remainder of its life span which some have hinted as being shorter without nationalist from various nations within the USSR being tainted by the NAZIs.

And that the rush to build an exact replica actually proved detrimental to the building of a Soviet stockpile:

"Beria was not remotely moved by the ideals that motivated his scientists. He was not an esoteric voyage of discovery but a practical quest to build a bomb in the shortest possible time. Therefore, he simply told his scientists to build an exact copy of the American bomb, the specification of which had been supplied by Fuchs and others. A specifically Russian design was cast aside even though it offered more promise than Fat Man.[Footnote here, when going to the bottom of the page to read it, it says:] When finally built and tested in 1951 (the second Soviet atomic test) it produced twice the yield, at half the weight." -The Bomb: A Life, Page 135.

Given Beria's involvement fin the project started in 1943 this does reinforce my point about the starting date.

It should be noted that when the Soviets did embark on their crash program, they had their first react up and running in less then a year and a half: the first Soviet nuclear test reactor went critical on Christmas Day, December 1946 (The Bomb: A Life, Page 144). The first production reactor was online by June 19th, 1948, a little under just three years after the crash program began (also Page 144). The Soviet program moved remarkably swiftly once the Soviets accorded it relevant priority.

The real key setter for the building of the Soviet bomb is the acquisition of raw uranium ore. But the prospecting for that came hand-in-hand with the beginning of the full-construction program, so we can expect things like the Soviet discovery of uranium ore in Kazakhstan and the expansion of uranium mining in places like Taboshar, Tajikistan to also be duly accelerated.

I do think tis fair to say resource re-allaocation and speeding up projects aren't the same things as starting them however and the reallocation would set back given it was a successful American test that gave the new priority when the Soviets get the bomb and further reduce the amount that will be built by the USSR.

http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946

Work on the program sped up quickly in 1945, however, especially after the Soviets learned of the Trinity test. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Truman told Joseph Stalin about the United States atomic bomb program for the first time. According to Truman, "I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no special interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make good use of it against the Japanese."

While Stalin may have appeared uninterested, he privately told his top advisers to speed up work on the Soviet atomic program: "They simply want to raise the price. We've got to work on Kurchatov and hurry things up.”

The Soviet R-7 ICBM took 20 hours to fuel. The Soviet R-7 is not the sum total of Soviet ballistic missiles in the late-50s and early-60s.

There is a difference between total sum and the one in production.

"By the end of 1959 his engineers had only six long rang missile launch sites operational. Because each missile took 20 hours to refuel , leaving them vulnerable to attack by american bombers, this meant the total amount of missiles could count on lunch was precisely that: six.51"

51 is Ibid., pp. 542,546

And this is reinforced by a incumbent for the White House spokesman

"[W]e have a second strike capability which is at least as extensive as what the Soviets can deliver by striking first. Therefore we are confident the Soviets will not provoke a major conflict"54

54 Gaddis What We Know Now., page. 58-58

And Further looking at production capabilities

"His son Sergei, himself a rocket engineer put it more bluntly "We threatened with missiles we didn't have" 41"

41 is Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Running Circle, 1945-1953 2004 p 35-36

 

[ObssesedNuker]

regard research being as actually conturing towards work on the project

Because such work doesn't mean anything unless the resources can be put into to make it reality. Case in point: the Soviets already had figured out how to build an experimental reactor by the time Kurchatov and Beria were made the official heads of the program (The Bomb: A Life, Page 131)... but construction didn't start until the end of 1945, a full two years later. Had the project had the same level of resources that it received from August 1945 onwards, that experimental reactor would have likely come online sometime in early-1944...

But it didn't, so until 1945 "the game itself existed only in the mind" and "in the mind" is not "in reality".

Expect that does ignore other evidence like Beria being the political head of the project from 1943

So? Beria was always the political head of the program, from 1942 onwards, even if the assignment was only made official in 1943 like Kurchatov's appointment. But that means nothing as to the nature of the program itself. If you want to make the claim the program was more then a paper one in 1943, then you are going to have to provide actual evidence that it was. I have already provided extensive detail that it wasn't, which include your own sources. The professional scholars are saying that it wasn't a serious project yet because serious resources were not devoted to it... in fact, because barely any resources were devoted to it. All you can come up with is that it must have been a serious project because Beria was appointed to head it... but that isn't really evidence at all, because Beria was the head of a lot of things major and minor by this point.

The simple reality is that the Soviets did not make the bomb a serious project until 1945, because the exigencies of war meant they could not do so. Beria's own appointment means nothing as, to quote the Bomb: A Life:

In truth, there was little Beria could do.

-Page 132.

Theres a difference between total sum and the one in production.

Actually, no there isn't. Because they are one and the same. The R-7 was not the only Soviet ballistic missile, even in 1957. The R-5 had entered service in 1956 while the R-1 and R-2 were ten and eight (respectively) years old by then. All had much shorter fueling times. Once again, you look at what it takes for the Soviet Union to strike the United States and cite sources about that, when the conversation is actually what it takes for them to strike at Britain and France.

The point is that the Soviet capabilities don't really matter, except as they pertain to destroying weapons on the ground before launch

How about after they get off the ground? By the mid-60's, the Soviets are gonna have a pretty serious IADS which could have the Anglo-French rethinking their emphasis on bombers...

They will eventually have to be able to hit the USA as well, but the British and French will be the first priority.

Yeah, I mean to focus on missiles: first they'll try and get an IRBM that can strike the Anglo-French from Soviet territory, then they'll look at getting an ICBM to hit the US. OTL, that priority list was more the other way around.

What will change is the building capacity for weapons - any UK project will be much, much smaller than Manhattan so you're only looking at a few weapons per year. Plenty when you have a nuclear monopoly, but when the Soviets start to get weapons that will give them problems.

Interesting! In that case, the Soviets are likely to wind-up having a head start (or at least, quickly overtake the Anglo-French) in the quantity of weapons pretty early on.

Almost certainly, but they'll need to see someone else actually deploy one before the higher echelons really understand what it means and that they need to commit the resources to it. In OTL they just didn't get it.
The far more fun reaction, actually, will be on Capitol Hill...

Oh, I was thinking really long term there. Obviously even the US will have likely caught up with everyone by then.

 

[What if]

Because such work doesn't mean anything unless the resources can be put into to make it reality.

I would think most of us believe nuclear fusion research and renewable energy should be given more funding but that doesn't mean there hasn't been any work on the subject at all.

Case in point: the Soviets already had figured out how to build an experimental reactor by the time Kurchatov and Beria were made the official heads of the program (The Bomb: A Life, Page 131)... but construction didn't start until the end of 1945, a full two years later. Had the project had the same level of resources that it received from August 1945 onwards, that experimental reactor would have likely come online sometime in early-1944...

I would argue the fact they did come up with a design is proof of a project as a non existent project wouldn't be designing anything.

Lets look at something resent example

in the early 2010's Woodside started looking at Carbon Capture and assembled a team on it http://www.woodside.com.au/Working-Sustainably/HSEQ/Pluto Compliance/Pluto_LNG_Project_-_Greenhouse_Gas_Abatement_Program.PDF

Woodside is the operator of the Pluto LNG Project, located on the Burrup Peninsula, and is also the owner of the project

However it was decided it was too expensive so thus it was canceled without any construction being done however it was called a project so I think your incorrectly applying labels.

But it didn't, so until 1945 "the game itself existed only in the mind" and "in the mind" is not "in reality".

However my point is on research and I think its fair if they can design something they are a project.

So? Beria was always the political head of the program, from 1942 onwards, even if the assignment was only made official in 1943 like Kurchatov's appointment. But that means nothing as to the nature of the program itself. If you want to make the claim the program was more then a paper one in 1943, then you are going to have to provide actual evidence that it was. I have already provided extensive detail that it wasn't, which include your own sources. The professional scholars are saying that it wasn't a serious project yet because serious resources were not devoted to it... in fact, because barely any resources were devoted to it. All you can come up with is that it must have been a serious project because Beria was appointed to head it... but that isn't really evidence at all, because Beria was the head of a lot of things major and minor by this point.

Considering the Woodside Carbon Capture example I think its fair to say your being both bold (you haven't named any schoolers and are in fact negating what my sources saying about the change in pace in 1945


I think your being a bit bold because your using one book and haven't mentioned any scholars that states the project didn't have enough resources and further your frankly ignoring how more sources say what the difference between 1943 and 1945

http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946

Work on the program sped up quickly in 1945,

The implication which you seemed to have missed is that work was already happing thus making it a project) and incorrectly applying wording as evident by how the canceled Carbon Capture project is labelled.

Plus I think its fair to point out that even if a project isn't serious as you term it a non serious project does exist so

The simple reality is that the Soviets did not make the bomb a serious project until 1945, because the exigencies of war meant they could not do so. Beria's own appointment means nothing as, to quote the Bomb: A Life:


-Page 132.

See I think what your doing is calling anything under resourced to not be actual projects which is incorrect when looking at how cooperation are labelling what is and isn't a project.

Actually, no there isn't. Because they are one and the same. The R-7 was not the only Soviet ballistic missile, even in 1957. The R-5 had entered service in 1956 while the R-1 and R-2 were ten and eight (respectively) years old by then. All had much shorter fueling times. Once again, you look at what it takes for the Soviet Union to strike the United States and cite sources about that, when the conversation is actually what it takes for them to strike at Britain and France.

Below

How about after they get off the ground? By the mid-60's, the Soviets are gonna have a pretty serious IADS which could have the Anglo-French rethinking their emphasis on bombers...

However given the shorter distance there will be less places to launch from combined with a change of priorities as radar and other in OTL got a lot of resources due the NAZI invasion and I think its fair to say in TTL without that invasion radar and other things needed for IADS will be delayed due to a lesser need to have them.

Yeah, I mean to focus on missiles: first they'll try and get an IRBM that can strike the Anglo-French from Soviet territory, then they'll look at getting an ICBM to hit the US. OTL, that priority list was more the other way around.

However I think its fair to say that the result of German falling in 42 (43 at the very latest) the V2 might not exist even in blue prints causing a delay in the tech.

Interesting! In that case, the Soviets are likely to wind-up having a head start (or at least, quickly overtake the Anglo-French) in the quantity of weapons pretty early on.

I would argue that looking at what happened in the original cold war the US didn't expect to have to expand its nuclear forces significantly and I think the implication is the Entente will increase there stockpiles after finding out the Soviets have the bomb.

Oh, I was thinking really long term there. Obviously even the US will have likely caught up with everyone by then.

Long term the butterflies like no Barbarossa have the potential to delay to key areas like radar.

 

[Saphroneth]

first they'll try and get an IRBM that can strike the Anglo-French from Soviet territory, then they'll look at getting an ICBM to hit the US. OTL, that priority list was more the other way around.

If they were focusing on ICBMs first OTL, they did it very wrong - they had about four ICBMs in 1960 but a lot more IRBMs.

 

[pdf27]

Interesting! In that case, the Soviets are likely to wind-up having a head start (or at least, quickly overtake the Anglo-French) in the quantity of weapons pretty early on.

That's my thinking, yes - the very early UK stuff is all thinking if terms of one or two bombs providing a war-winning weapon. The Americans seem never to have thought this way, and I suspect the Soviets would not have either. Of course, once the first few are built it becomes apparent that the forces required are actually much stronger, which will force a major rethink in the way the UK and France do things.

 

[Archibald]

For the record: USSR heavy bomber from 1936
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petlyakov_Pe-8
Not much better than a B-24 or a Lancaster and a real risk it might be vaporized by the nuclear blast...

 

[Saphroneth]

For the record: USSR heavy bomber from 1936
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petlyakov_Pe-8
Not much better than a B-24 or a Lancaster and a real risk it might be vaporized by the nuclear blast...

The specs in the article are 1941 or later, they use the AM-35A engine. (Just for clarity.)

 

[Gannt the chartist]

The specs in the article are 1941 or later, they use the AM-35A engine. (Just for clarity.)

and 93 built, so not quite lanc or B24, unless you want to spend at that level.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

IIATL, what happens is the Soviets prioritize and develop something like the ANT-64.

Antonov 64? what's that? I tried looking up lists of Antonov planes and didn't see anything that looked like a '64'.

 

[Astrodragon]

Actually I'm not sure that a small number of bombs wouldn't have been a war-winner in the 40's.
We're rather looking at later cold war, where destroying a country was seen as necessary (or at least, that's what the leaders said). And after the massive bombing campaign against Germany didn't cause collapse.

Yet after the first 1,000 bomber raid in Germany, it was felt by the Nazis (hardly the most likely people to care about it) that a few more such raids would cause them to collapse. The difference is that this was new, and if Bomber Command had, say, 10 nukes which they had dropped every couple of days, it very likely would have ended the war.

Without (ITTL) the heavy city-busting raids on Germany, I wonder if the thoughts on the use and effectiveness of nukes would be somewhat different?

 

[MrP]

Antonov 64? what's that? I tried looking up lists of Antonov planes and didn't see anything that looked like a '64'.

ANT stands for Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev. The ANT-64 was a heavy bomber project developed from the Tu-2. In OTL it was cancelled because reverse-engineering the B-29 turned out to be easier.

 

[pdf27]

Antonov 64? what's that? I tried looking up lists of Antonov planes and didn't see anything that looked like a '64'.

This is allegedly it:

Actually I'm not sure that a small number of bombs wouldn't have been a war-winner in the 40's.
We're rather looking at later cold war, where destroying a country was seen as necessary (or at least, that's what the leaders said). And after the massive bombing campaign against Germany didn't cause collapse.

Yet after the first 1,000 bomber raid in Germany, it was felt by the Nazis (hardly the most likely people to care about it) that a few more such raids would cause them to collapse. The difference is that this was new, and if Bomber Command had, say, 10 nukes which they had dropped every couple of days, it very likely would have ended the war.

Without (ITTL) the heavy city-busting raids on Germany, I wonder if the thoughts on the use and effectiveness of nukes would be somewhat different?

Initially at least I think they will, although different countries will probably think differently: there was at least a strain of thought after WW1 that bombing civilians for shock value was more humane than repeating the battles of the Western Front. I could see that attitude working in France for instance, and maybe the UK or Italy. I can't see the Soviets thinking like that at all, while I should think the whole "more bang for the buck" thing would appeal to the USA very strongly. The other issue is that without them actually being used, the public revulsion for nuclear weapons probably won't be there: any test ban treaty will probably be later and mostly aimed at atmospheric testing once people start noticing the increased level of Strontium in the atmosphere.

 

[Workable Goblin]

The other issue is that without them actually being used, the public revulsion for nuclear weapons probably won't be there: any test ban treaty will probably be later and mostly aimed at atmospheric testing once people start noticing the increased level of Strontium in the atmosphere.

I'm not sure about that; there was a surprising amount of pre-existing thought about how awful nuclear weapons would be, there was already talk of bombers being able to level cities (of course inaccurate), and doubtlessly when the time comes to publicize these weapons their destructive power will be talked about in terms of city-busting, just because that's something the "man on the streets" can envision. So people will probably think of them as city-killing weapons and they'll be frightening--and hence repulsive--on that basis. Of course they'll lack the visceral images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I wonder if that might not make them scarier; they say that the unknown is the most frightening thing, after all...

 

[torten]

I could see the Japanese playing up the "Anti-Western imperialism" front in places like Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies, which might prove to quite good "Partners" for Japan.