"Fat Man" fails to detonate....

""Fat Man" fails to detonate". The thread title is my source. Ok i suppose the bomb could magically dissaper of it but im thinking it would land in the city without exploding for some reason.


Um hi?:confused:

An atom bomb consists of a big chunk of uranium essentially wrapped in high explosives. A "failed to detonate" bomb might be in some sense salvageable - but it's not going to be anywheres near intact after hitting the ground.
 
An atom bomb consists of a big chunk of uranium essentially wrapped in high explosives. A "failed to detonate" bomb might be in some sense salvageable - but it's not going to be anywheres near intact after hitting the ground.

O right the whole break apart thing, I would think they were more sturdy than that. All well.

Also is this plan possable? Like having several small invasions to distract the IJN than sending glidertroopers/paratroopers to assassinate the emperor? It might be what the Allies need to get Japan to give up without Downfall. It could make the Japanese fight even harder but you got to take risks i guess.
 
Do I remember correctly that the bombs were equipped with a parachute to slow the descent and give the bomber crew tme to put more disrtance between themselves and the explosion? Or was it done in later tests only? If yes, it could put the Fat Man on the ground with only moderate damage - too much damage for it to be re-used immediately but still enough to understand it´s inner workings. It is of no use to the Japanese anyway but the Soviet spying apparatus would probably get the data quicker, resulting in an earlier first Soviet nuclear test, and an earlier start of the cold war standoff.
As to Japanese not surrendering after Hiroshima - this was not so much due to the high morale but to the lack of communication. Most of the city including communication hubs was suddenly destroyed, the land networks were also damaged due to months and years of US bombing raids, so that the military and the government in Tokyo didn´t get the extent of the destruction until much later. Even if the Fat Man doesn´t detonate, a few days later the Japanese government agents have surveyed Hiroshima and the surrender process will begin as OTL, just delayed by a few days.

Another remark - as the inner workings of the plutonium bomb were far more complex than of the gun-type device used in Hiroshima, more probable would be not the bomb entirely failing to detonate but a misfire - either a conventional-only explosion of 50-60 kg HE raining plutonium dust and chunks over Nagasaki, or a nuclear "fizzle" with several hundred tons yield - very dirty, and still a pretty impressive explosion but not a large-scale destruction like in Hiroshima. Still a few buildings get flattened, hundreds of casualties immediately and much more dying of radiation sickness or plutonium poisoning over short time (plutonium is aside from radiactivity extremely poisonous!)
 
I've heard Japan had a nuclear program too, but gave it up? Anyone know anything about that?
Anyway, I think the big technical challenge back then was obtaining enough fissile material for an explosion. If the Japanese actually recognize what they've got, I think it is a short way to them knocking up their own device.

Mind you, I don't think they had any time at all. But I could see this being snuck underground by militarists....
 
If the Japanese actually recognize what they've got, I think it is a short way to them knocking up their own device.

Have you considered checking how complex was the initiation sequence for the reaction? Do you know how much tentative where the Japanese scientists' ideas in this field? Do you know that while Little Boy was considered a fail-safe device, so much so that it was not tested, the whole purpose of Trinity was seeing whether Fat Man would work?
 
Even if it was only three weeks before another nuke was ready to deploy, the US might not even have that much time to wait.

There was another bomb ready to go by the third week of August with at least 6 more ready to go by American Thanksgiving Day.

The big debate with the A-bombs in regard with Operation Downfall was whether to use them all in one big fell swoop just before Downfall, use them in conjunction with Downfall, use them if Downfall failed or some combination thereof.

And Japan probably has a nuke now so if america instead of just waiting for another nuke launchs Downfall they might meet a nuke on the beach, lets see how they feel.

Assuming that a) It's still in one piece b) They actually know what the hell it is and c) They manage to ship it to the beach and rig some way to set it off.

I have a bridge to sell you if you think all that is probable.

I've heard Japan had a nuclear program too, but gave it up? Anyone know anything about that?

Everybody had a nuclear program. I bet even the Swedes had a nuke program.

But if you're asking useful nuclear program that's actually getting semi-decent results, then no --the Japanese were on par with the Nazis -- i.e. waaaaay behind the Manhattan Project.
 
Assuming that a) It's still in one piece b) They actually know what the hell it is and c) They manage to ship it to the beach and rig some way to set it off.

A is iffy ill give it a 15 to 30% chance. B is a probably. C is once agian debatable, the transportation system and roads were in the s**ter at the time but by putting explosives around it thats a dumbed down way of how it originally worked. And the japanese were scraping for weapons then because they were low on guns and tank rounds and war material and stuff.
 
A is iffy ill give it a 15 to 30% chance. B is a probably. C is once agian debatable, the transportation system and roads were in the s**ter at the time but by putting explosives around it thats a dumbed down way of how it originally worked. And the japanese were scraping for weapons then because they were low on guns and tank rounds and war material and stuff.

A is 15-30%? How you figure that?

B is *very* unlikely unless there was a nuke scientist looking at it.

C ... is a lot harder than you think. Fat Man was an implosion device which required a very careful set of explosives going off and compressing the plutonium. If the compression was not *perfectly* symmetrical it would cause the plutonium to be ejected from the weapon, making it a "dirty bomb" instead of a nuclear bomb.
 
A is 15-30%? How you figure that?

B is *very* unlikely unless there was a nuke scientist looking at it.

For A cause anything higher is too high.

For B its round and it has that tail thing chances are its some type of bomb. Remember they were using anything that could vaguely kill as a weapon.

For C your probably right about that.
 
O right. Um more like 5% i guess.

Once again --how did you calculate that?

And I reinterate my previous post -- Fat Man was an insanely complicated bomb being dropped from an altitude of several tens of thousands of feet. Even if the bomb didn't detonate, it's going to be nothing more than a big pile of debris when it hits the ground. There won't be anything to salvage other than a few tons of very radioactive scrap metal.
 
There is even more to that.
Sometimes, conventional bombs whose fuse malfunctioned could be found more or less in one piece. A skilled, lucky unexploded ordnance specialist might disarm and secure them, at which point the bomb could be studied and/or the payload used against the producer.

But some of those unexploded conventional bombs had been unloaded at low altitude, and thus had not reached terminal velocity. Some had a parachute, further slowing them. Virtually all of them were not intended for air burst, but to hit the ground and then explode; some were intended to dig into depth (say, though a tall building's upper floors, or right into the ground, or into a RC submarine pen top, or into a battleship's armored deck). This meant they dedicated a sizable proportion of their total weight to a thick casing, rather than to pure explosive payload. Such a casing equates to them being armored, which increased their chances of not breaking up upon impact. And finally, virtually all of them had one fuse.

Fat Man, OTOH, would have reached terminal velocity when hitting the ground. It was intended for air burst, and though it did have the equivalent of armor (for reasons linked with nuclear physics, and also as a precaution against any stray AA fire), it was not that thick. It had multiple, redundant fusing devices. And finally, those fusing devices activated no less than 32 detonators.
So the sequence needed for the Japanese to retrieve something is:
- the redundant multiple fuses do not work;
- the bomb does not break up on impact;
- the impact does not accidentally activate one of the 32 detonators;
- the Japanese bomb disposal crew also does not.

My own assessment of the likelihood of this sequence is under 0.1%. Definitely, a dirty-bomb "fizzle" is the more likely result of a malfunction.



 
I like the idea of the Japanese finding the nuke and rigging it up on the beach, hiiamthief.

Shows how kids brains work different to adults. :)
 

burmafrd

Banned
While all the details were not available the Army (who really ran the country) had a pretty good idea what had happened at Hiroshima. The more fanatical militarists believed that in all likliehood we only had a few bombs like that and in the end would not be that big a factor. They were indeed right that we only had a few bombs but wrong in how big a factor they could be. The surrender very nearly got derailed by some young fanatics and who knows if more of the older fossiles had wanted a fight to the end it just might have gone that way.
 
Top