marathag
Banned
It was oversized enough it needed the Cordite charge to force the assembly together thru the gun 'barrel'Very possibly. Be a rather bad day for the gun crew.
They didn't want an oops while loading the bomb to set it off.
It was oversized enough it needed the Cordite charge to force the assembly together thru the gun 'barrel'Very possibly. Be a rather bad day for the gun crew.
Gun delivery has more issues than aerial bombs. There is the stress of firing and the need for a weapon, both the fission core and the electronics for the firing system.Mainly a question to sate my own curiosity and potentially have the Nazis waste more resources on an essentially useless super weapon, but couldn’t they have created nuclear artillery? Make the bomb, stick it in a modified Gustav gun, and fire it somewhere in range. It’s no B-29, but as far as I’m aware it should theoretically work as a delivery platform.
Submarine is about the only plausible way.Kamikaze Zeppelin is probably their best bet for a delivery system, except that they've already scrapped and recycled them.
The MK-3's 'X-unit' weighted a quarter-tonne, all hand wired lead acid batteries and capacitors. It was also known to have 'issues' with ESD hence Hornig's vigil over the Gadget.US solved that for VT fuzes.
You also need a battery. That seems to have been harder than the tubes
The MK1 didn't use hemispheres, the target was a solid cylinder and the projectile was a hollow composite cylinder, made from nine stacked rings.It's a gun-type weapon, won't firing it out of a giant cannon at 900 gees cause the hemispheres to assemble?
As you're no longer with us I'm replying for the edification of others.
3. Bollocks. The concept of fusion boosting for fission bombs wasn't even at the concept stage in WW2. In any case your assertion is irrelevant. The critical mass would still need to be assembled, a problematic matter given the mass of low enrichment HEU.
4. Because large critical mass weapons are a tricky engineering problem. A gun-barrel design wouldn't work, so you'd need to implode such a mass of HEU. Casting the core would be dangerous, storing and deploying it more. Look at the UK's issues with designs like Orange Herald.
5. Bollocks. Fusion boosting wasn't developed.
5a. I see you're now speculating that the HEU was enriched uranium-233? OK the critical mass would be even more dangerous to assemble due to uranium-232 CONTAMINATION.
6. Lots of speculation, no facts or evidence there.
7. So what? The German and Japanese programmes not nowhere. The Manhattan project explored other options and preferred plutonium anyway.
(Point 5) When I said "not necessary a plutonium implosion one. Or an uranium gun one" I was referring to fusion-fission or fission-fusion-fission (implosion, obviously) designs. I am dubious that the concept of fusion boosting or fusion initiation was non existent during WW2, when, fusion was 'invented' earlier, much earlier than fission.1. "Highly Enriched" is usually taken to be over 20% uranium-235.
2. You can build a bomb with that.
3. No-one has because while it is possible it is not easy. You need (assuming you have a initiator ['urchin'] and a good neutron reflector]) over 150kg of the metal. In practice you'd more.
4. Good luck persuading that to implode on command.
5. You say "not necessary a plutonium implosion one. Or an uranium gun one". What third option do you propose? Thin Man is unfeasible.
6. I'm really, really skeptical that "one centrifuge" would out put 2.5g of 20% HEW per month. In fact I don't believe it.
7. There's a reason centrifuge separation wasn't used until the Zippe-type in the '50s.
Has anyone ever done an audit of what that Germans had in terms of people, facilities, raw materials and inputs and what they had access to that might of been useful to a nuclear programme?
The reason I ask is because I have a vague memory that unlike the Manhattan project the German 'programme' was fragmented in several ways, not only were facilities not concentrated and not prioritised but that organisations were competitive, duplicated as well as creating gaps that needed to be filled.
I wonder what all of that adds up to. No doubt its get nowhere near the Manhattan project, but what about Britain's Tube Alloys effort, or what the French were doing? Was the German effort bigger than these, if so by how much, etc etc etc?
True. Though one imaging a bomb in a suitable case that was 'swum out' or deployed like a mine while the sub departed, slowly.One problem with suicide attacks is the Germans were remarkably reluctant to take part in them. Mind you manning a U-Boat in 1945 was pretty much a suicide mission.
There is one somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember where.Has anyone ever done an audit of what that Germans had in terms of people, facilities, raw materials and inputs and what they had access to that might of been useful to a nuclear programme?
The reason I ask is because I have a vague memory that unlike the Manhattan project the German 'programme' was fragmented in several ways, not only were facilities not concentrated and not prioritised but that organisations were competitive, duplicated as well as creating gaps that needed to be filled.
I wonder what all of that adds up to. No doubt its get nowhere near the Manhattan project, but what about Britain's Tube Alloys effort, or what the French were doing? Was the German effort bigger than these, if so by how much, etc etc etc?
I've seem the claims for German fusion weapons research before. I note you fail to cite any actual evidence for them.Alright, it seems while I was unavailable to answer or participate this thread had some activity and someone even got banned, huh? Anyway, I want to answer to a few things that had been said here.
(Point 5) When I said "not necessary a plutonium implosion one. Or an uranium gun one" I was referring to fusion-fission or fission-fusion-fission (implosion, obviously) designs. I am dubious that the concept of fusion boosting or fusion initiation was non existent during WW2, when, fusion was 'invented' earlier, much earlier than fission.
As a note, Paul Harteck, who was on the "Uranium Group" and ended up in Allied custody together with Heisenberg, Gerlach, Diebner etc. experimented with nuclear fusion in 1934, in England, later becoming an advisor for the Army Ordnance Office of Germany.
And it seems extremely unlikely for nuclear physicists, who were experimenting with nuclear fusion (I believe this was a way to measure the cross section of different elements), a clear source of neutrons, to be unable to think/suggest/propose to use fusion as a source of neutrons to start a fission reaction.
A great example of this idea was Erich Schumann's patents published post-war, though, there is the mention that he tried to publish in 1942 some patents but were either rejected or failed the requirements for a patent, and his 1948 to 1952 patents were based on his previous work. Or Kurt Diebner's 1956 thermonuclear one, but by this point such weapons were already in use. (Though, this is not really that important, it at least shows that the German physicists were not oblivious to this concept even if it was a few years after WWII but before 1954 when the first fusion-fission weapons were tested.)
(Point 6/7 centrifuge) It seems I have been mistaken, it was not a gas centrifuge but a ultracentrifuge, with development starting from 1941.
David Irving's 1967 The Virus House has more information about that (Page 154 - https://www.ba.infn.it/~cufaro/copenhagen/1967_Irving_VirusHouse.pdf ) (I think this was one of the first works that had anything more detailed about the German Nuclear Program.)
As controversial as Irving is, a feeling shared by the people on this thread; I will play the devil advocate and say that this was before he started to become what he is today, before he started to go down the route of holocaust denial and Nazi apologist. So, his earlier works should be decent given the limited data available at the time (if his pro-axis inclination).
There is more information about these ultracentrifuges in G-82, G-83, G-95, G-107, G-148, G-149, G-158, G-330 to 336. Which I don't think are on the internet. (https://www.chemie.uni-hamburg.de/institute/pc/publikationen/db/groth.html here are some of them)
- Those have nothing to do with the above text -
(Mostly interesting things)
Heisenberg's Critical Mass Paradox, this talks about the discrepancy of Heisenberg's numbers (tons, kgs) for a bomb. (Or the possibility of a bomb)
This is the manuscript of the lecture delivered February 26, 1942 at the House of German Research.
This is a research study on the B-VIII (Nuclear Reactor), the study concludes that if the materials were 100% pure it would have reached criticality (with unenriched uranium, it is fair to conclude that if the cubes were enriched to 5%-10% U-235 it would have reached criticality with the other impurities)
If you insist on citing Irvine (most of whose research is half-a-century old) then perhaps you'll address the various flaws in it? Take a look at the reviews, especially those concentrating on his errors of physics and science for details of his errors.
Well back in the sixties, which is when he did most of his Nazi Nuclear Bomb work he wasn't a full-on Hitler hugging, Holocaust denying, anti-Semitic fruitcase. Though there were signs.Indeed. It's almost as if Irving is an unreliable source.
He has been barred from Austria, Germany, Italy, Australia and Canada for Holocaust denial. We actually arrested and deported him from Canada in 1992. At which time he outright lied to the court about the circumstances of his entry to Canada, which probably did not help his case. He was later called to present before a French Court, but as extradition was not included, refrained from appearing.Indeed. It's almost as if Irving is an unreliable source.
Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.[145]
Sigh, I was trying to make the point that the concept of using fusion to initiate fission wasn't unknown or hardly to come to it during the early 40s to physicists. (From Forgotten Creators, on the topic of fusion-fission, it gives the source of G-367. Wolfgang Ferrant. Proposal for a New Method of Releasing Nuclear Energy by a Beam of Heavy Particles. 1945.)I've seem the claims for German fusion weapons research before. I note you fail to cite any actual evidence for them.
Really? I don't understand how people are so certain that Germany had not even one heavy water plant throughout the war. Or that they were incapable to build one compared to the Norwegians. What made the Norwegian D2O plant so good was that it was cheap.And where were the Germans to get the deuterium and tritium for this?
Where did I denied that?Further you seem to lack an understanding of the physics of nuclear weapons. A fusion-boosted fission bomb is still a fission bomb; it requires a critical mass of fissile material (which the Nazis utterly lacked).
I was referring to fusion-fission or fission-fusion-fission (implosion, obviously) designs.
A fusion boosted/initiated bomb still requires the fissionable material (U-233,235/Pu-239) but at a much smaller scale compared to the simple fission designs of the Manhattan Project, the W54 warhead I think had around 2 Kgs of Pu 239 and 1 of Uranium. (What I had in mind about this is the fact that requiring a smaller fission material would be more economical to Germany)to be unable to think/suggest/propose to use fusion as a source of neutrons to start a fission reaction.
It is an unreliable source. But it is the only source that I currently have (on ultracentrifuges), if any of you have a more up to date one, that I wish I had, I sincerely hope that you will post it to shine some light on the German ultracentrifuges development. (Better if there are the G reports) (I also think he based everything regarding the ultracentrifuge development on the contents of said reports)Indeed. It's almost as if Irving is an unreliable source.
Well they are kind of constrained by the fact that fission was not discovered until late 30s. Maybe the Kriegsmarine get more interested in the concept of a nuclear engine and fund the project from 1939 to 45, designing a new (better?) submarine of the size of the Typ XXIX or I-400 class?How likely is it that Germany in the 1930s would seek to develop nuclear submarines: either as a weapon of war, or as a means to import food that could circumvent a British naval blockade (the threat of which is what motivated the Nazis to seek to depopulate Eastern Europe in the first place)?
It would obviously be more likely if the Nazis don't take over Germany in the first place...
Well they are kind of constrained by the fact that fission was not discovered until late 30s. Maybe the Kriegsmarine get more interested in the concept of a nuclear engine and fund the project from 1939 to 45, designing a new (better?) submarine of the size of the Typ XXIX or I-400 class?
He is about as discredited as you can get as a historian. Now most of this centred on his Holocaust denial, but it still speaks to his general credibility when discussing the third reich in general.