OK Einstein writers the letter to Roosevelt, who oks the preliminary test at the University of Chicago that proves that you can do a controlled nuke reaction, and
theoretically produce a bomb.
So the next question from Washington is, "How much is it going to cost."
Well, in order to build three devices, it cost
A bomb.
To build them took 115,000 engineers and cost the equivalent of 24 billion modern dollars.
The actual cost of the devices was relatively small, less than 5% of the total.
After all that effort and expense in discovering how to build one, copy cats using american plans were able to build their own very shortly after for little more than the cost of materials.
I want to know if you think spending the money on more aircraft and aircraft carriers, tanks, fuel transports etc would have been a better use of the money. Three more carriers in the pacific, 300 more gas trucks behind the 3rd army might have shortened the war considerably faster and with better result. Delivering more gas to the third army would have got Patton across the Rhine in October and perhaps to the Oder by February.
Three more air craft carriers in the pacific with round the clock coverage of Tokyo plus visits all up and down the the islands, lots more aircraft dropping lots more bombs, Hirohito sees reason in 1944.
But the main big super advantage is that Stalin and Mao don't get the bomb.
All the resources that were thrown at the bomb could have been better used in radio telcoms, aircraft design, ship engineering, better utilization of fuel.
Do any of you agree that more conventional spending would have shortened the war faster with better post war results?