Allies getting the Atomic Bomb Before Dday

Really, the only realistic answer is that you have to start the entire program that many months sooner.
You can probably eke out a month here and a month there through various expedients (as @Crowbar Six said, one of the big ones is that fundamental physics...you could definitely move the discovery of fission up plausibly) and get where you need to go...it's certainly not the most likely sort of timeline, but it's within the realm of plausibility. Of course, a lot of this would also accelerate the German bomb program, though OTL suggests they wouldn't have gotten anywhere in any case.
 
There were goofs in building the Y-12 Calutrons and the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion compressors.

Gone as planned, that would have increased U-235 production enough for a years earlier use, and not needing to test Little Boy also saves a month

Possibly. But the safer bet is just to start the program sooner. Not at all certain they wouldn' have hit those obstacles.

Truth is, the whole program was at breakneck speed as it was. You can't roll sixes every time.
 
... with Bomb #2 being dropped just behind the beaches, maybe on Caen.
I'm not really sure the French are going to shrug it off with a simple "C'est la guerre" as they did with the conventional damage that was caused in our timeline.


... one of the big ones is that fundamental physics... you could definitely move the discovery of fission up plausibly...
Ida Noddack is potentially useful advancing the discovery of fission by a few years.
 
Say things were going slightly worse in Europe and FDR decided the Germans needed an atomic dope slap. However they were uncertain the crew would survive the blast. Could this have lead to an Operation Aphrodite type mission? If so, what if the fusing malfunctions and the plane crashes after running out of fuel? Does the Reich get an A Bomb gift?

ric350
 
I'm not really sure the French are going to shrug it off with a simple "C'est la guerre" as they did with the conventional damage that was caused in our timeline.
Nobody really understood nuclear weapons in 1944 - and the bombs weren't the city killers of the 1960s and 1970s either. As far as the Allies are concerned, they've dropped a powerful bomb on the beaches and are getting a crash course in radiation poisoning. Also, if they drop the bomb at sunrise, before the disembark, the winds will blow the irradiated particles towards the sea (I think, sea breezes are rather localized)
 
I'm not really sure the French are going to shrug it off with a simple "C'est la guerre" as they did with the conventional damage that was caused in our timeline.
581px-Charnwood.svg.png

June 7 'Operation Charnwood' 467 Bombers, 2650 tons of Bombs
caen-after-allied-bombing10201216.jpg

350 Civilians killed, 3/4th of that population had been evacuated from the City by that timehttps://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/..._opt=2&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=1650&psi=20,5,1&zm=12

For a nukemaphttps://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/...66&lng=-0.3639221&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=1650&zm=12
12thSS and 16th LW really won't have any combat effective troops. Goto the SE for the drop, I SS and LXXVI Panzer Corps won't be a combat force, and 12th SS and 16LW have a huge mess behind them, forget about logistics
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/...82&lng=-0.3199768&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=1650&zm=13
 
I will say in passing that there is a big difference between damage done through heavy urban fighting - especially when most of it is unplanned - and deliberately nuking a city.

I think the French reaction, from de Gaulle to all other factions, is going to be deeply unhappy if this is tried.
 
Say things were going slightly worse in Europe and FDR decided the Germans needed an atomic dope slap. However they were uncertain the crew would survive the blast. Could this have lead to an Operation Aphrodite type mission? If so, what if the fusing malfunctions and the plane crashes after running out of fuel? Does the Reich get an A Bomb gift?

ric350
The idea with APHRODITE was for the bomb plane to score a direct hit on a point target. Thus the control plane had to observe the bomb plane and control it right to the last second.

With an atomic bomb, against an area target, such precision is not needed.

Load the Bomb into a carrier plane. A Lancaster can easily take the load, especially when stripped of all defensive armament and ammunition, and all crew except a 3-man takeoff crew, who bail out once the plane is aloft. The control plane can steer the Bomb plane by radio, or by a tow cable. When the Bomb plane is 20 km from the target location (five minutes at 240 km/hr), the control plane arms it and breaks off in the opposite direction. When the Bomb plane reaches the target, demolition charges blow it apart, releasing the Bomb. It may be off the intended position by a kilometer or so, but if the target is Berlin, who cares?

If failure of the fusing is that much of a worry, then the Bomb can't be used at all. However, as with the actual Bomb, multiple independent fusing systems should provide enough redundancy.
 
If so, what if the fusing malfunctions and the plane crashes after running out of fuel? Does the Reich get an A Bomb gift?

No.

As mentioned in a parallel thread, there were four independent radar altimetric fuzes, one of which working would have sufficed.

In the incredibly unlikely event that all fuzes malfunction, you have a terminal-velocity crash into the ground (by the bomb or by the aircraft carrying it). Now, the way in which these bombs worked was very simple: their internal fissile parts were quickly moved together by conventional explosive (Fat Man was appropriately called the "implosion" device). The impact with the ground will not work as perfectly and quickly as that, but the components of the bomb will collapse together anyway. That's critical mass. Probably a botched explosion will take place, with just a few kilotons instead of 15-20. Or it is even possible that you will have only a combination of extremely high radiation with conventional explosives in it, aka a very dirty bomb.

In either case, the Germans don't get a gift.

In the astoundingly unlikely event this does not happen, what the Germans get still is insanely unhealthy to work on, nor is it going to be able to be reused as is.
 
If so, what if the fusing malfunctions and the plane crashes after running out of fuel? Does the Reich get an A Bomb gift?
That requires, as Michele stated above, that all fuses fails and the aircraft lands relatively intact... Not impossible but highly unlikely.

Of cause, with an intact A-Bomb at hand the Germans are probably gonna be keener on taking it apart and trying to learn from it than blowing it up, well, it would provide useful pointers for the Germans (e.g. that you only need a few kilos of enriched Uranium to Plutonium to get a boom, rather than the 100s of kilos the Germans believed IOTL; some rather useful pointers on which A-bomb designs are workable and things like that), but the German A-Bomb programs was far behind the Allies in OTL, so they'd need time to catch up and fully understand the whys and hows of weapons construction which likely means at least six-months to (much more likely) years before they can successfully clone the bomb.
On top of that, they lack the enrichment infrastructure to produce a useful amount of enriched uranium or a reactor to produce a useful amount of plutonium, the time to develop the necessary tech and build the infrastructure to do either of those means they're limited to the fissile material they can extract from the captured weapons for at least a year, more likely two or three after the bomb falls into their hands.

So, reverse engineering the bomb puts any plausible German A-Bomb well after the Western Allies and USSR meet on the Oder.

Using the bomb? Deployment by bomber against a British target is out due to the weakness of the Luftwaffe's bomber arm by 1944 and the strength of allied air defence. Deployment by bomber out East could work, but the yield of a 1940s weapon is relatively low and by '44 soviet industry is relatively dispersed, so poor odds of slowing them down short of taking out Moscow... and that probably means taking on the best air defence the soviets' can put up, and at fairly long range. Using it as a landmine against troops on either front? You vaporize maybe three divisions... Not gonna slow either the west or the soviet down for more than a month or two. A U-boat based attack on US port could work but is risky and will only serve to piss the Yanks off even more while barely harming their industrial capacity...

Yeah, none of those look like a winning move...
 
Instead of a fuse malfunction, how about if some safety malfunctioned. But yeah I guess even if the bomb survived the crash intact, the Germans would really just get the worlds most dangerous, and expensive, paperweight!

ric350
 
Say things were going slightly worse in Europe and FDR decided the Germans needed an atomic dope slap. However they were uncertain the crew would survive the blast. Could this have lead to an Operation Aphrodite type mission? If so, what if the fusing malfunctions and the plane crashes after running out of fuel? Does the Reich get an A Bomb gift?

ric350

Gun type bombs were so precarious there’s a good chance that if the Enola Gay had crashed on takeoff its payload would have exploded iirc.
 
Gun type bombs were so precarious there’s a good chance that if the Enola Gay had crashed on takeoff its payload would have exploded iirc.
The gunpowder charge was not loaded until in the air, and the projectile was tight enough fit, a crash would not jar it loose
 
Gun type bombs were so precarious there’s a good chance that if the Enola Gay had crashed on takeoff its payload would have exploded iirc.

The gunpowder charge was not loaded until in the air, and the projectile was tight enough fit, a crash would not jar it loose

Both devices had triple redundant detonators. Three independent electric wire nets to the detonators, redundant detonating charges, proximity fuzes, barometric initiators, clock initiators. Parsons & his techs handcrafted the devices & repeatedly ran systems checks. The devices were loaded partially assembled & the detonators and initiators instaled inroute.

IIRC there was a safety pin or rod to keep the ''bullet' component aligned until enroute. Parsons & his tech spent much of both flights in or near the bomb bay preparing the devices.
 
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Sorry, but I have to ask a fundamental question: how does one accelerate the fundamental science and engineering sufficiently to have one or more nuclear weapons ready about 14 months sooner than IOTL? This would require a successful prototype test in late 1943 (I'd guess) and accelerated production of fissionable materials. That has the reverse ripple effect of a successful nuclear chain reaction almost at the time of Pearl Harbor. It's a bit difficult to swallow that research would be at that point by then.

One departure covering part of the gap would be the Brits taking the research seriously 1939-1941. After their own PAPERCLIP Operation accquired the French group & their research the Brits actually started a organized project. Vs the academic level previous. Even at that the initial outlay seems to have been only £15,000 divided amount four universities.

Initial exclusion of the numerous refugee physicists slowed things as well. Finally the initial report of early 1941 underwent a long edit. The French project seems to have covered more relative ground in it's very short existence, and the Yanks who started much further behind had near caught up.

So have the Brits approach this with some sense of urgency in 1939 or 1940 & sacrificing some other project for funds and physicists (radar) might accelerate things 6-10 months.
 
I'm not really sure the French are going to shrug it off with a simple "C'est la guerre" as they did with the conventional damage that was caused in our timeline.

270,000+ dead inflicted by the Allies
by one secondary source. Anyone have any reliable sources for French civilians killed directly in WWII?
 
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