Manhattan Project fails

And one must take into account the nearly unlimited budget, single minded purpose and the world's best scientists on the job. All of this means they are going to produce it. They really left no stone unturned in the quest to make the bomb. IMHO, with some luck, The Bomb could have been produced even earlier...

Hmmm so WI the US catches a lucky break and the bomb is ready for deployment by, say, shortly after D-Day?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
One must discover its simplicity first. If they knew it before hand, then there would be no way to stop the A-bomb.

Not from a scientific/engineering point of view, perhaps. But politicians can be stupid and they are often the ones who control the purse strings.
 
I'm wondering if the B-29 is?

Otl, the first b29 mission, out of china, was flown the day before dday. Given the logistics problems of flying out of china, if the first missions were to germany, they could probably have been ready a week to a month earlier.

Otoh, these were certainly not silverplates, but rather early models. Im sure they could have carried an abomb to france or hamburg, say, but berlin or dresden might have been out of reach.
 
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PODs might include:
Key scientists being stopped and incarcerated while trying to leave Eastern Europe
No Einstein letter
Lack/reduced/issues with cooperation between the British and American programs
Less funding
Engineering issues regarding enriching uranium
Isolationist USA which is still attacked by Japan, but doesn't start the Manhattan Project until years later

Any of these options, or several, should end up with no bomb by '45
 
OK, I've made some updates to OP which will hopefully be more palatable.

I suppose there are three main threads here,

1) What are the plausible divergencies from OTL that could delay the Manhatten Project.

2) What are the implications Geopolitical, etc, of a Land Invasion of Japan.

3) I see scepticism about an emboldened Stalin, please suggest how this might this play out rather just dismiss as obvious failure.
 
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MartinWyke said:
Land Invasion of Japan
Not going to happen. It's completely unnecessary.
MartinWyke said:
I see scepticism about an emboldened Stalin, please suggest how this might this play out rather just dismiss as obvious failure.
Given no Bomb, or a delayed Bomb, & no use over Japan, I really have to wonder why Stalin doesn't push in Eastern Europe.
 
Hmmm so WI the US catches a lucky break and the bomb is ready for deployment by, say, shortly after D-Day?

Not reasonable. The U.S. Bomb project started in 1941, at the time of Pearl Harbor. (The key meeting pf the S-1 Committee was 6 December.)

The Bomb was ready for use in mid-July 1945, 43 months later. D-Day was 13 months before that. No possible combination of lucky decisions could shave almost 1/3 off the development time.

However, the original hope was to have the Bomb by January 1945. Had that been achieved...

Even in March 1945, the Bomb could have substantially changed the final stage of the war in Europe. The Battle of Seelow Heights alone cost over 40,000 lives.
 
Rich Rostrom said:
the original hope was to have the Bomb by January 1945. Had that been achieved...

Even in March 1945, the Bomb could have substantially changed the final stage of the war in Europe. The Battle of Seelow Heights alone cost over 40,000 lives.
From what little I know about it, IMO March isn't out of the question. Even January might not be. There appears to have been quite a bit of fussiness at Los Alamos which, if conditions in the field warranted, could have been set aside.

How you get things to go so much worse is a bigger change than accelerating the Bomb to begin with...:eek:
 

Cook

Banned
There appears to have been quite a bit of fussiness at Los Alamos...
‘A bit of fussiness at Los Alamos’? You did see the post concerning the lethal radiation overdose of Harry Daghlian during an experiment didn’t you?

The lab was working with materials that would produce the most powerful explosive ever used by humankind. They knew that to be the case, they also knew that they didn’t know exactly how much of the material was required to produce the most powerful explosive… etc. In those are circumstances, remarks like ‘this is taking too long - let’s cut a few corners’ tend not to be well received.
 
Perhaps the OP would want to setback the development of the bomb so that it will not have an effect on the war. If that is so, there are a bunch of simple PODs.
 
Cook said:
‘A bit of fussiness at Los Alamos’? You did see the post concerning the lethal radiation overdose of Harry Daghlian during an experiment didn’t you?

The lab was working with materials that would produce the most powerful explosive ever used by humankind. They knew that to be the case, they also knew that they didn’t know exactly how much of the material was required to produce the most powerful explosive… etc. In those are circumstances, remarks like ‘this is taking too long - let’s cut a few corners’ tend not to be well received.
It was over whether the damn thing would work reliably, not over how much fissionable material they'd need.:rolleyes: How many test drops do you need before you know the mechanisms function correctly?:rolleyes:

So yes, "a bit of fussiness", a bit of wanting to put too much polish on it instead of "second best tomorrow" & get in service.
 
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