AHC: Delay the Manhattan project as long as possible

How long can the Manhattan project be delayed? What I think is is must be pre-war, maybe something else if notable people who worked on the project had died before Hitler had taken power. Here is a list of those people: Enrico Fermi, Leo Tzilard, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Robert Oppenheimer. Possible sabotage for the project? Could isolationist politicians delay long enough for a bomb to come? Ultimately, how long do you think we can delay a nuclear weapon from being tested? I feel as if that a pessimistic response would be around six months while an optimistic response would be maybe up to two years.
 

trurle

Banned
Enrico Fermi was irreplaceable. Any event involving him dying early, abandoning research or ending up in the state other than US would delay project for may be 2 years. Another possible POD is delaying the general "chain reaction" concept experimental confirmation in chemistry by interfering with the Christiansen and Kramers work in 1923.
 
war ends quicker, would delay an extra couple of years. Say the French pre-empt in early 39 - late 38
Fermi and Teller dying in the 1920's. Cat was out of the bag by the late 30's as it was just a matter of money being thrown at things and the build up work during the 20's and 30's was spread around to a fair number of people around the world whos research was critical to progress. the Atomic age doesn't fall to anyone person but to a group of them. You can delay +5/10 years max. once a working reactor is in place, a bomb or dirty crude bomb is only a mistake away.
 
Have C. T. R. Wilson killed in that sudden thunderstorm on Carn Mor Dearg in June of 1895. Maybe he misses some of the signs that historically convinced him to run for shelter.
No Wilson means no cloud chamber, delaying the advancement of nuclear physics by several years, with a knock-on effect on the Manhattan Project. Without the ‘Wilson chamber’ (which Ernest Rutherford called it "the most original and wonderful instrument in scientific history" and Thompson described as having "been of inestimable value to the progress of science") many of the crucial early discoveries wouldn't have been made. Further, without his influence on students at Cambridge, there's have been fewer experimentalists in the field.
 
war ends quicker, would delay an extra couple of years. Say the French pre-empt in early 39 - late 38
Fermi and Teller dying in the 1920's. Cat was out of the bag by the late 30's as it was just a matter of money being thrown at things and the build up work during the 20's and 30's was spread around to a fair number of people around the world whos research was critical to progress. the Atomic age doesn't fall to anyone person but to a group of them. You can delay +5/10 years max. once a working reactor is in place, a bomb or dirty crude bomb is only a mistake away.

Whoa, let's focus on just the effects of a delayed Manhattan Project. Don't know where you get France striking early out of. I am aware it wasn't one person. That's why I listed multiple scientists in the thread.
 
Enrico Fermi was irreplaceable. Any event involving him dying early, abandoning research or ending up in the state other than US would delay project for may be 2 years. Another possible POD is delaying the general "chain reaction" concept experimental confirmation in chemistry by interfering with the Christiansen and Kramers work in 1923.

Why would one scientist delay the project by two years? I can see a couple months, but two years seems to be stretching it.
 

trurle

Banned
Why would one scientist delay the project by two years? I can see a couple months, but two years seems to be stretching it.
E. Fermi was the one who applied chemical concept of chain reaction to nuclear physics. It was not a straightforward assumption in the era.
 
Whoa, let's focus on just the effects of a delayed Manhattan Project. Don't know where you get France striking early out of. I am aware it wasn't one person. That's why I listed multiple scientists in the thread.

my point was if you have a quick war, then the need for the bomb is not so critical and may not get the funding, which would delay it.

over all effect means that it gets used somewhere else, and maybe with a build up in arms it's first usage is that more are used at once.
 
Why would one scientist delay the project by two years?
The trick to delaying it is to do so early, its much easier to not get it started in 39 when its just a handful of scientist thinking than it is to stop it in 1944 when its a huge project.

Einstein–Szilárd letter gets lost in the post? :p OK not that easy but still only need 2 or 3 people to change or die.

while an optimistic response would be maybe up to two years.
I think you can do much better, without a successful US project I think it takes others much longer and if not paid for in WWII peacetime might add 10+ years.
 
Also, don't have Plunkett accidentally discover Teflon. Nobody expected freon to be polymerizable, so that might delay things by a few extra months while chemists and engineers try to find a gasket sealant that UF6 doesn't immediately destroy.
 
My favorite is having Hahn under surveillance for his Jewish connections. His discussions with Meitner is intercepted and he is hidden away by the SD. Only Nazi Germany knows the atom Can be split in the first place.
 
My favorite is having Hahn under surveillance for his Jewish connections. His discussions with Meitner is intercepted and he is hidden away by the SD. Only Nazi Germany knows the atom Can be split in the first place.

And so how long does the Manhattan project get delayed in that scenario?
 
Otto Hahn's Discovery was "out-of-the-blue". Until someone else rediscovers the phenomenon. 5 years, 10 years, more if after the war.
Now, if the Germans go for it.... obviously the rumor Will spread at some point and we are back at a few years delay.
 
Otto Hahn's Discovery was "out-of-the-blue". Until someone else rediscovers the phenomenon. 5 years, 10 years, more if after the war.
Now, if the Germans go for it.... obviously the rumor Will spread at some point and we are back at a few years delay.

So how do the Germans cover it up? How long do you think they can hide Hahn's discovery?
 
Put someone who isn't Leslie Groves in charge of the Manhattan Project. Groves got the job precisely because he was the go-to guy when the Army needed an engineering project completed yesterday. A different, more low-energy manager might need a couple of more years to get the bomb completed. Remember, that when the SECRETARY OF WAR, Henry L. Stimson asked to speak to Groves, the latter, a mere colonel at the time, asked him to make an appointment for a meeting because he simply couldn't spare the time at present. Colonels do not typically tell cabinet secretaries to take a number and get in line because their time is too valuable to be wasted on unscheduled meetings. Amazingly, Stimson agreed to phone ahead in future. That incident speaks volumes as to Groves' personality, and to the driving will that brooked absolutely no obstacles in getting the job done. Different manager, and the project might flounder, just as it had done under Groves' OTL predecessor. You know, that other colonel who gets a paragraph or two in the history books and whose name hardly anyone can recall.
 
So how do the Germans cover it up? How long do you think they can hide Hahn's discovery?
The tricky part is that once the discovery was made, it spread like a wildfire. Scientists talk. So it has to stay small until they stop talking. Eg either in isolation which Will create rumours Pre-war, or after the war when communications are sewered.
Then there are a few critical experiments like calculating the mass needed for chain reaction based on experiments (both sides did that in 1941) and how to produce it. The US made it with very pure grafite, the Germans had less pure grafite and that it wasnt viable. Thus they went for heavy water reactors.. so, it could be kept down for a few years, then reactor capacity has to be developed which is large scale and hard to keep secret. But then they have made the organisation and are a few years ahead.
 
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