kernals12
Banned
Let's imagine that somehow the US gets the bomb 1 year earlier, with 3 ready by August 1944. So where do we drop them? We can't bomb Berlin because we need a functioning government to negotiate terms of surrender. Cities in the Ruhr valley would be okay but a lot of the bomb's blast would be wasted on civilian areas. In terms of effectiveness in damaging Germany's efforts to make war, the best target would be a 3 square mile industrial estate west of Leipzig known as Leunawerke. During the war, this complex used 35000 workers, including 10,000 slave laborers to produce the chemicals needed for battle including fertilizer, lubricants and synthetic fuel. It was defended with 150 AA guns and copious smoke screens. This made accurate conventional bombing virtually impossible, with only 29% of the bombs dropped reaching the inside of the factory gates during daylight raids, during radar guided raids this dropped to 5.1%. As this photo from nukemap shows, a 15 Kt blast would wipe most of the facility from the face of the earth and do severe damage to the German war effort even if Hitler chooses to go on fighting.
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