Alternative to the Manhattan Project

[ZachScape]

Alternative to the Manhattan Project?

Suppose Albert Einstein is killed before he is introduced to Georg Alexander Pick; so roughly around 1911. This will prevent Einstein from successfully formulating General Relativity and would turn the man we know today as "as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history" into a blip on the radar of history.

I believe the butterflies are not strong enough to flap away the Second World War, but may alter some minor details. Germany still goes Nazi lead by none other than Adolf Hitler after its loss in the Great War and the harsh treaty of Versailles. Most things go roughly the same up until 1942, when the Manhattan Project should have began in OTL.

Now, with the Manhattan Project costing $2 billion and employing 130,000 people, some of the smartest men in arguably the most powerful country in the world, what could the US do with an alternate allocation of resources. With the opportunity cost (love those bolded two words in my economics textbook) being so colossal, we could see a much different end to the deadliest war in human history.

I'm not asking how many tanks (price equivalent to 40,000 extra M4 Shermans, AFAIK) can be made, or how many floating fortresses (price equivalent to over 25 Essex Class Aircraft Carriers) can be built with these funds, but instead wondering what kind of projects could* be feasible to secure a victory for the United States of America and the allies.

*Note that I italicized "could", to emphasize the fact that I'm not asking what it would do. Honestly, I believe that not much would change militarily with these extra funds, but would instead be used to further stimulate the economy. However, that is not the point of this thread.

So, in the year 1942, with the outcome of the war looking uncertain to the allies, what is the US capable of doing (preferably technologically) to prevent such a wretched future?

Could it:

Accelerate Battleship/Carrier/Aircraft Design to unimaginable levels?
Design its own version of the V2 Rockets?
Implementing Stealth Technology, similar to that sought after by the Philadelphia Experiment?
Experiment with mind control technology?
Anything else/use your imagination.

Contributions and 2¢ Donations Welcome

Thanks, Zach

 

[Workable Goblin]

Suppose Albert Einstein is killed before he is introduced to Georg Alexander Pick; so roughly around 1911. This will prevent Einstein from successfully formulating General Relativity and would turn the man we know today as "as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history" into a blip on the radar of history.

Hardly a blip. His Annus Mirabilis was in 1905, not 1915. Special relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect alone are enough to ensure his scientific reputation. He'd just be a Niels Abel-like figure (look him up, Norwegian mathematician). Wouldn't be as well-known to the world at large, but he would still be reasonably famous.

I believe the butterflies are not strong enough to flap away the Second World War, but may alter some minor details. Germany still goes Nazi lead by none other than Adolf Hitler after its loss in the Great War and the harsh treaty of Versailles. Most things go roughly the same up until 1942, when the Manhattan Project should have began in OTL.

And here's where you go a bit off the rails. Einstein was essentially irrelevant to the Manhattan Project (as was General Relativity--that would be handy if it were a project to make a black-hole bomb or something, but it has no relation to nuclear physics). At most, he signed that one letter to Roosevelt in 1939, but the British looking into Tube Alloys would have seen the start of a nuclear weapons program regardless. The really key discovery here was of nuclear fission in 1938/1939, which probably wouldn't have been affected by killing General Relativity (you'd divert theorists, of course, but the people who did that were experimentalists).

By the late 1930s, people might be rather close to GR, anyways. It was a bolt-from-the-blue discovery, but nevertheless...

Could it:

Accelerate Battleship/Carrier/Aircraft Design to unimaginable levels?
Design its own version of the V2 Rockets?
Implementing Stealth Technology, similar to that sought after by the Philadelphia Experiment?
Experiment with mind control technology?
Anything else/use your imagination.

Contributions and 2¢ Donations Welcome

Thanks, Zach

No. The personnel who worked on Manhattan were not naval engineers or aerospace engineers. They would not have been able to advance the state of the art that much. Resources might have been more available, so you might see earlier jets or some of the weirder prop designs flying (or maybe more ships, etc.), but there wouldn't be any huge jumps in the available technology.

Certainly not: the V2s were completely useless to the Allies.

No, that's a ridiculous conspiracy-theory like idea. Stealth technology requires technology considerably in advance of WWII levels.

Absolutely not. Psychology back then was primitive, and mind control is in any event ridiculous.

In any case, since the British Tube Alloys project had already started showing a few results by 1942, the Manhattan Project will still start, just a few years later than OTL, maybe (but it will not be much behind technically, it was given short shrift initially). The Brits and Canadians might play a bigger role than IOTL and end up with the Bomb right after the war rather than screwed over as per OTL.

 

[ZachScape]

Hardly a blip. His Annus Mirabilis was in 1905, not 1915. Special relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect alone are enough to ensure his scientific reputation. He'd just be a Niels Abel-like figure (look him up, Norwegian mathematician). Wouldn't be as well-known to the world at large, but he would still be reasonably famous.

Hardly one of the most influential figures in history, rather, is what I meant. However, I was under the impression that his Theory of Relativity wasn't successfully accepted until edits completed in 1915, though the concept was around since 1905.

And here's where you go a bit off the rails. Einstein was essentially irrelevant to the Manhattan Project (as was General Relativity--that would be handy if it were a project to make a black-hole bomb or something, but it has no relation to nuclear physics). At most, he signed that one letter to Roosevelt in 1939, but the British looking into Tube Alloys would have seen the start of a nuclear weapons program regardless. The really key discovery here was of nuclear fission in 1938/1939, which probably wouldn't have been affected by killing General Relativity (you'd divert theorists, of course, but the people who did that were experimentalists).

By the late 1930s, people might be rather close to GR, anyways. It was a bolt-from-the-blue discovery, but nevertheless...

Einstein was the man who sent a letter to FDR telling him to basically initiate such a project. It wasn't him alone, but from my PoV and all the research I have done, he has pretty much sparked the powder keg that became the MP. I imagine that after the letter, FDR asked his advisers whether or not the MP should be initiated; I know it wasn't a direct causation.

No. The personnel who worked on Manhattan were not naval engineers or aerospace engineers. They would not have been able to advance the state of the art that much. Resources might have been more available, so you might see earlier jets or some of the weirder prop designs flying (or maybe more ships, etc.), but there wouldn't be any huge jumps in the available technology.

You're telling me all 130,000 men were die hard physicists with no knowledge of the other sciences. And you're also telling me physics is not incorporated into almost every state-of-the-art science of its time? Here is where you go off the rails, IMO.

Certainly not: the V2s were completely useless to the Allies.

No, that's a ridiculous conspiracy-theory like idea. Stealth technology requires technology considerably in advance of WWII levels.

Absolutely not. Psychology back then was primitive, and mind control is in any event ridiculous.

In any case, since the British Tube Alloys project had already started showing a few results by 1942, the Manhattan Project will still start, just a few years later than OTL, maybe (but it will not be much behind technically, it was given short shrift initially). The Brits and Canadians might play a bigger role than IOTL and end up with the Bomb right after the war rather than screwed over as per OTL.

In the 1930s, an explosion amounting to 21 KT was a concept and sci-fi, as much as rocketry, mind control, or stealth. Sure the following are impractical, but are they impossible to be pursued? And the whole point of this thread is not what could be achieved, but what could be sought; should Atomic Research not be pursued.

I thank you for your input, sincerely. I just think you missed the point.

 

[Flubber]

Einstein was the man who sent a letter to FDR telling him to basically initiate such a project.

He signed a letter written by others, nothing more.

It wasn't him alone, but from my PoV and all the research I have done...

Your research is wrong. The US project "sparked" by the letter Einstein signed in 1939 was pretty much on idle until the UK's Oliphant/MAUD/Tube Alloy mission in August of '41

Here is where you go off the rails, IMO.

No. Your mention the "Philadelphia Project" is when this thread went off the rails. If your research includes that horseshit, then your research isn't research at all.

I just think you missed the point.

No, he didn't. The Manhattan Project was primarily an industrial engineering effort. The "super duper" scientists involved in it were few and handled rather esoteric topics with little application elsewhere. The monies spent on it could have helped accelerate developments elsewhere, but that's just money. After all, the B-29 project cost more than the bomb project.

Money is also not directly equivalent to materials because there are bottlenecks in material production and availability that money simply cannot make right. Using your own "example", while the cost of the Project does roughly equal the cost of 40K Sherman tanks or 25 Essex-class carriers, the Project did not use the same materials in the same proportions as the production of 40K tanks or 25 carriers would have done. The Project also used materials which had little if any application elsewhere, like teflon, and materials which were both hideously expensive and had not utility outside of the Project, like plutonium. Just as with the actual research involved in the Project, you cannot directly compare the dollars spent on the Project with dollars spent elsewhere.

The Bomb is a huge topic on these boards and there are dozens of threads discussing it's development each quarter. Because the Bomb had been discussed so often, you cannot expect to start a successful thread on the Bomb and the Manhattan Project with the poor level of understanding shown here.

Read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun" for a better understanding of what the Project was and what it involved.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

That money simply would not have been spent, and that industry not reallocated, the US could afford to pay for everything it really needed, by 1945 we were slowing down production of many war materials as they were unneeded, no speeding up the end of the war would occur, Japan would just be starved out by the end of 1945

 

[ZachScape]

He signed a letter written by others, nothing more.

Said letter could have been butterflied. That is what I am getting at.

Your research is wrong. The US project "sparked" by the letter Einstein signed in 1939 was pretty much on idle until the UK's Oliphant/MAUD/Tube Alloy mission in August of '41

Well in either case, that's not the point of the thread. The point is that the bomb isn't going to be taken seriously by America. The thing about Einstein was just an example of a PoD that could make this happen.
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No. Your mention the "Philadelphia Project" is when this thread went off the rails. If your research includes that horseshit, than your research isn't research at all.

My god, I wasn't suggesting it was real. I was suggesting a project along those sci-fi lines. Something that can be pursued, whether all 21st century science has proved it impossible.

No, he didn't. The Manhattan Project was primarily an industrial engineering effort. The "super duper" scientists involved in it were few and handled rather esoteric topics with little application elsewhere. I know. The rest of the people though weren't specialists capable of doing only one thing. The monies spent on it could have helped accelerate developments elsewhere, but that's just money. After all, the B-29 project cost more than the bomb project.

Elaborate on this and we may be able to get on topic. You know, the reason this thread went up. What other projects could have been initiated, even if said project couldn't be complete.

The Bomb is a huge topic on these boards and there are dozens of threads discussing it's development each quarter. Because the Bomb had been discussed so often, you cannot expect to start a successful thread on the Bomb and the Manhattan Project with the poor level of understanding shown here.

If the people I am trying to get to answer my question are as thick as you, maybe you're right. Maybe I didn't explain my question well enough, but maybe you should also be a little more open and stop dismissing everything that is not OTL or presented in a very elaborate TL as ASB.

Read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun" for a better understanding of what the Project was and what it involved.

Maybe you should read a fictional book to stir your creativity; for that is what this board is about. Now, when we get to the part when I ask if getting to the moon is feasible in the 40s, like the Nazis did, then you can jump back in to tell me this thread is off the rails. Until then, thanks for being real helpful.

And for the record, most TLs are taken in a direction the author knows is not probable. What is possible is what an AH author looks for. This thread, once again, is not what would happen, but what could happen.

That money simply would not have been spent, and that industry not reallocated, the US could afford to pay for everything it really needed, by 1945 we were slowing down production of many war materials as they were unneeded, no speeding up the end of the war would occur, Japan would just be starved out by the end of 1945

I believe you missed the point. I am asking what other projects could be taken seriously at the time. I addressed in the OP that I don't think the money would have been spent on military means, entirely. What I am trying to do is see how skewed history can get without going ASB, leaving the realm of probability and entering the realm of possibility. Taking a stealth project seriously isn't ASB. Having it work as well as first generation stealth fighters and submarines relative to the radar of the era however, very well may be; and making a ship literally invisible is ASB.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Maybe you should read a fictional book to stir your creativity; for that is what this board is about. Now, when we get to the part when I ask if getting to the moon is feasible in the 40s, like the Nazis did, then you can jump back in to tell me this thread is off the rails. Until then, thanks for being real helpful.

And for the record, most TLs are taken in a direction the author knows is not probable. What is possible is what an AH author looks for. This thread, once again, is not what would happen, but what could happen.

Writing in red is poor manners and I know on some boards frowned upon as it implies Moderator powers. It also hurts the eyes!

I thought there was a special section for alternate history fiction - if its on the main boards its counterfactuals (emphasis on fact) so criticism on less plausible ideas are part of the game?

 

[ZachScape]

I know typing in caps is rude and hard to read, never thought writing in red was though. It's a solution to having to address multiple parts of a post without having to making too many quote bubbles. If it is true that is is rude/informal/anything else derogatory, I will change it.

There is a special section for AH where plausibility, as opposed to probability, goes out the window. There are some pretty far fetched timelines that are unanimously suggested as not ASB because it is possible given alternative choices, however unlikely, somebody makes.

 

[Sternberg]

Gosh, I'm bad at this...

Without the Manhattan Project, I'm seeing a space race between the United States and Nazi Germany earlier than OTL during the Cold War. Probably starting sometime during the mid-1940s at the earliest. The Manhattan Project-type weapon probably wouldn't come until sometime in the 21st century, assuming that the Third Reich and Nazi Party don't collapse by then.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Gosh, I'm bad at this...

Without the Manhattan Project, I'm seeing a space race between the United States and Nazi Germany earlier than OTL during the Cold War. Probably starting sometime during the mid-1940s at the earliest. The Manhattan Project-type weapon probably wouldn't come until sometime in the 21st century, assuming that the Third Reich and Nazi Party don't collapse by then.

The Nazi's were defeated without the Manhattan project OTL

 

[ZachScape]

Honestly, I can't see Nazi Germany not collapsing, since the Manhattan Project didn't really effect the fall of Nazi Germany since the bombs were used solely on Japan.

Second, Atomic Warheads accelerated the space race because the Soviet ICBM rocket was used to launch the worlds first artificial satellite. Without atomic weapons. The only thing that can happen is if the US or the USSR gets their hands on the V2 and slowly develop it into a a rocket capable of carrying a massive payload into Low Earth Orbit. Space is not much of a priority without ICBMs.

I appreciate your input very much. I just can't see that being an outcome of no MP.

 

[Sternberg]

The Nazi's were defeated without the Manhattan project OTL

But we're also putting the butterfly effect into the equation. Even if Nazi Germany were to still exist with Albert Einstein dying in 1911, we could still be seeing Pearl Harbour butterflied away, amongst other changes.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

But we're also putting the butterfly effect into the equation. Even if Nazi Germany were to still exist with Albert Einstein dying in 1911, we could still be seeing Pearl Harbour butterflied away, amongst other changes.

He said things were roughly the same until 1942, by which point Nazi Germany is doomed anyways, Lend-Lease which was the key part had occurred months, with Lend-Lease the USSR cannot lose before Pearl Harbor and the US lost 2 DD to U-Boats and almost lost a BB already, we would have joined eventually

 

[Flubber]

It's a solution to having to address multiple parts of a post without having to making too many quote bubbles.

I don't know about the red font and don't really care either. Multiple quote bubble are okay, everyone uses them. Anyway, I'll have a response to your response later today after work. I've first got to put your response in a condition which can be quoted from because you somehow managed to put most of your post inside a quote attributed to me.

In the meantime, you might want to find a thread begun by a member named "Amerigo Vespucci" which examines an alternate Manhattan Project in a far more plausible manner than this current thread. I found it while trawling the archives for threads about the Project and enjoyed it very much.

There is a special section for AH where plausibility, as opposed to probability, goes out the window. There are some pretty far fetched timelines that are unanimously suggested as not ASB because it is possible given alternative choices, however unlikely, somebody makes.

There's both an ASB section and a Fiction section. While both follow Sturgeon's Law, as this section does, there are some delightfully silly pieces in ASB and some absolutely excellent pieces in Fiction.

Each of those sections have their own standards, just as this one does. As Derek explained, this section is supposed to be for counterfactuals in which facts take precedence. While that doesn't always occur, people do expect it.

 

[Municipal Engines]

It's not really a technological innovation, but the British had Operation Vegetarian to fall back on if they felt they couldn't beat Germany in conventional warfare.

The result would have been very nasty.

 

[bsmart111]

I'll make a quick response that I think relates to the original question

It is generally accepted that when the 'B-29 program' was initiated that the plans of the U.S. Army were reduced from a 200 Division army to an 89 Division army. I believe (and this is probably somewhat shakey) That some of the effort that was blended into the 'B-29 program' as well as the priority given that program was due to the tiein with the Manhatten project.

One good source for information on the Manhatten project would be
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/011/11-10/index.html

The U.S. Armys official history of the Manhatten projcet in their 'Green Book Series' the entire 600+ page book is downloadable as a PDF

It might go into the priority choices that were made to support the program (now that someone has rasied my curiosity I'll probably at least glance at it tonight)

 

[ZachScape]

I'll make a quick response that I think relates to the original question

It is generally accepted that when the 'B-29 program' was initiated that the plans of the U.S. Army were reduced from a 200 Division army to an 89 Division army. I believe (and this is probably somewhat shakey) That some of the effort that was blended into the 'B-29 program' as well as the priority given that program was due to the tiein with the Manhatten project.

One good source for information on the Manhatten project would be
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/011/11-10/index.html

The U.S. Armys official history of the Manhatten projcet in their 'Green Book Series' the entire 600+ page book is downloadable as a PDF

It might go into the priority choices that were made to support the program (now that someone has rasied my curiosity I'll probably at least glance at it tonight)

The only thing I found relating the two in terms of the purpose of the B29 Superbomber Program was Silverplate; which began in 1943, when the B29 Program began in 1939. Therefore, the extra costs to the B29 Program is only $76 million, a grain of sand compared to the $3 billion spent on the project as a whole.

Though relating the two inspired me to research the B29 Program, which taught me a lot, so thanks a lot for that. The information, I bet, will come in handy for me.

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New scenario. Einstein is still no more, however WWII is changed significantly. Lack of Nazi funding to physics based projects butterflies a successful SeaLion (like my reference to Philadelphia experiement, I'm not suggesting the Operation Sealion was possible. Given though, that the PoD is in the 1910s, anything is possible--not saying everything is plausible--, in terms of a German occupied British Isles).

On the Pacific Ocean, America goes to war against a Japan that has won the war in China. How did they do this? America never issues an embargo on Japan, yet instead fills the orders for raw materials. This Japan has a very high chance of winning in terms of conquering the Malay Archipelago and Southeast Asia to become more self-sufficient (but NOT Hawaii, obviously).

Why am I changing these two aspects of WWII? I want to give the US the least amount of hope possible, yet the most amount of determination. I just want to see what the United States is capable of [pursuing].

Please put in your two cents in what you think is plausible, whether you have the facts to back up your posts or not.