Most Effective Target for Atomic Attack on Nazi Germany

kernals12

Banned
Why has nobody suggested Essen? It's both an excellent strategic and tactical target. Strategic because it's at the heart of the Ruhr Valley and tactical because it's an important transportation center and nuking it would disrupt German efforts to hold back operation Market Garden.
 
What ultimately happened was

The USAAF Area bombed precision targets

The RAF Precision bombed area targets

Quite. The effects on the ground seem to have been fairly indistinguishable. And that's ignoring Japan, where the USAAF definitely did set out to destroy urban areas.
 

kernals12

Banned
in 1944 the Luftwaffe was merely shadow of it former self
a US bomber with atomic bomb supported by fleet of P-51 fighter will reach it target site

Nuremberg and Munich would be a ideological target because importance of Nazi cult
on Factories the Nazis had decentralized there production like Panther tanks build in Nuremberg, Hanover, Berlin, Kassel

but this is about most effective target that hit the nazi real hard, so my list of targets

-Frankfurt am Main railway junctions was during war most hit US bomber target, because it importance in transport ammo, weapons and troops to frontline

-Mittelwerk, the infamous SS underground V1 V2 production site save for conventional bombs but nor a nuke with ground impact.

-Ammunition propellant production there were several large factories in Germany the biggest were Werk TANNE who made TNT (near by Mittelwerk) also Sprengstofffabrik FASAN and Pulverfabrik Rottweil
you hit those with airburst Nuke, Wehrmacht suddly runs out of ammo...
Frankfurt also was home to the headquarters of IG Farben. The loss of senior management would hurt chemical production and several thousand war criminals would be killed.
 
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Why has nobody suggested Essen? It's both an excellent strategic and tactical target. Strategic because it's at the heart of the Ruhr Valley and tactical because it's an important transportation center and nuking it would disrupt German efforts to hold back operation Market Garden.

I'd considered that too until noting that conventional bombing had leveled something like 90% of the city, Chemnitz is less than 50% destroyed in early 1945 - hence why I added it to my list...

Why not the Fulda Gap along the proposed Soviet/Western occupational zone boundary?
 
I am often amused by how quickly althistorians try to steer debate back to OTL.

WI the British nuclear program (Tube Alloys) never loaned Professor Penney to the Manhattan Project?

OTL Penney was the scientist who analyzed blast radius, etc. and recommended a parachute-delayed air-burst. He was also the one who recommended targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki where surrounding hills would focus the blast to increase explosive damage.

ATL WI the first few A-bombs were fused to detonate on impact?
 
As for range, by late 1944, WALLIES had liberated much of France, Belgium and Holland. They could almost launch bombers from the Western bank of the Rhine River!
 

kernals12

Banned
As for range, by late 1944, WALLIES had liberated much of France, Belgium and Holland. They could almost launch bombers from the Western bank of the Rhine River!
On August 6, the Allies had barely broken out from Northern France. Paris wouldn't be liberated for 2 weeks.
 
I am often amused by how quickly althistorians try to steer debate back to OTL.

WI the British nuclear program (Tube Alloys) never loaned Professor Penney to the Manhattan Project?

OTL Penney was the scientist who analyzed blast radius, etc. and recommended a parachute-delayed air-burst. He was also the one who recommended targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki where surrounding hills would focus the blast to increase explosive damage.

ATL WI the first few A-bombs were fused to detonate on impact?

It was almost a decade before implosion bombs were robust enough for impact fuzing, the gun types, though would be fine, that why until the advent of the robust implosion bombs, gun types were the goto choice, plus that due to their construction, were penetrating, 'bunker busters' before that was a thing, both having stated from cannon barrels
 

Deleted member 1487

We didn't nuke Tokyo.
It was already fire bombed to oblivion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

The entire point of using the A-Bomb was to test it on an undestroyed city, so Dresden or a smaller city not yet hit might well be the target:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
The target selection was subject to the following criteria:

  • The target was larger than 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter and was an important target in a large city.
  • The blast would create effective damage.
  • The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.[74]
These cities were largely untouched during the nightly bombing raids and the Army Air Forces agreed to leave them off the target list so accurate assessment of the damage caused by the atomic bombs could be made. Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target."[74]
 
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WI the British nuclear program (Tube Alloys) never loaned Professor Penney to the Manhattan Project?

OTL Penney was the scientist who analyzed blast radius, etc. and recommended a parachute-delayed air-burst. He was also the one who recommended targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki where surrounding hills would focus the blast to increase explosive damage.

ATL WI the first few A-bombs were fused to detonate on impact?

The logic in air burst was apparent & the desirability for air bursts was reached independently of Penny. In this matter few to none of the top managers were taking one analysis, opinion, recommendations, or report alone. Everything was checked by other groups. Groves had enough engineering experience to understand the limits of single source recommendation and the budget to multi check everything possible. The same logic is why each bomb had three types of detonator, and each type was triple wired. If a circuit failed in a detonator system two other circuits carried the signal. If a detonator system failed two others were also operating.
 

Wallet

Banned
We didn't nuke Tokyo.
We were afraid that the Japanese wouldn’t accept surrender unless the Emperor himself surrendered. We didn’t want to face years of underground resistance. Even with the firebombing we made sure the royal palace wasn’t touched.

It was assumed that any Nazi could surrender, it didn’t matter if Hitler died. Of course they wanted to live because he was an idiot who kept messing up the war effort, but that’s beside the point.
 
Wiesbaden and Gorlitz were the largest German cities to survive relatively unscathed. Konstanz was a major industrial center of the war on the Swiss border and kept its night lights on to blur the boundaries, or so the story goes.
 
Wherever Hitler is.

Hitler will never surrender. The Nazis are loyal to Hitler and will fight on as long as he does (as in OTL). The Army is in a similar state of mind. Though a significant faction tried to get rid of Hitler to end the war, they failed and the rest of the Army fought to the end. But it's all held together by Hitler's will and personal command. (Much of the Army considered itself bound by the their personal oath of loyalty. You may consider that foolish, but to them, the whole point of being a soldier was to perform one's sworn duty, whether or not one liked the commander. Kill Hitler, that goes away.)

Nuking Hitler decapitates the Nazi regime, and demonstrates an irresistable weapon. That's all that's needed.

Nuking central Berlin won't prevent a German government from surrendering; the fall of Berlin in 1945 did not prevent a new government forming in Flensburg, which surrendered a week later.

Also, Hitler may not be in Berlin. If he's at Wolfschanze or Berchtesgaden, nuke that.

The B-29 or equivalent is not required to deliver the Bomb. The Bomb could be parachuted down to a soft landing, and detonated after 10 minutes by a timer. (No, the Germans are not going to be able to rush up and disarm the Bomb in ten minutes. If that is a real worry, have a bunch of small fragmentation bombs on the outside of the case, with a timer that detonates one every 30 seconds. That will keep any German UXB crew at a distance.)

It's possible that parachute technology of the time could not land a Bomb-size load with less shock than a Bomb could tolerate, and that an airburst is required.

OK, do this. Build the Bomb into a Lancaster. The Bomb plane flies under tow from a second plane which pilots the Bomb plane by wired remote control. (The two planes take off together; the Bomb plane take-off crew bails out after reaching cruising altitude.) 25 km from the target, the controller arms the Bomb, locks in the Bomb plane autopilot, and starts a timer. The tow/control cable is dropped, and the guide plane turns back at top speed. The Bomb plane continues for five minutes - then demolition charges shatter the fuselage, letting the Bomb fall free to the target for an air burst.

Some other targets have been suggested, some quite fatuous.

The Ploiesti oil fields cover hundreds of square km; a nuke would damage only a small part of it. In any case, the entire area was overrun by the Soviet Army at the end of August - but German resistance continued for eight months.

U-boats were built at yards in several different cities: Emden, Bremen, Hamburg, Flensburg, Lubeck, Kiel, Rostock, Stettin, and Danzig; nuking one site would have little effect. And by August 1944, U-boat operations were a net loss for Germany: the number of U-boats sunk was about equal to the number of merchant ships sunk.
 
As said by others: If the Americans want to see how much damage nuking does, they'll choose an undamaged city. OK, theoretically they might decide to leave some cities unscathed.

Also, most important Japanese cities are near the Pacific. I guess they'd choose a city that's not too far from either the sea or the current front. They wouldn't want to fly over hundred of kms of enemy territory. Which leaves less possibilities.

In "Hitler's Mediterranean Strategy", they chose Oldenburg (although it might be too small) and Graz. (No personal animosities involved.)
 
AKoD...

...All well and good, but eliminating Peenemunde gets rid of the cruise, ballistic and AA missile programmes and shows the Heer and the Luftwaffe what can happen. The installations would be destroyed, being in surface buildings and including the incredible Mach 4 wind tunnel. Collateral damage to civilians will also be minimised and the small residual fallout will fall in the Baltic.

Operation Hydra was night of 17/18 August 1943 and was followed by three daylight raids by the Eighth Air Force of the USAAF in July (1) and August (2) 1944 - missions 481, 512 and 570.

The wind tunnels were moved to Kochel in Bavaria after the Hydra attack, being undamaged, but I have no date for their move. Could the A-bomb be ready by August 1943, if plutonium breeding was the accepted method for producing fissile material, Oak Ridge being restricted to enriching fuel for the initial breeder run by Hanford's graphite-moderated piles?

The UK might then have to use the CANDU design to manufacture plutonium for its own bombs. No need for enrichment, if D2O moderator is used.
 
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Walter Thiel is already dead by late 1944, the Peenemunde rocket program is already hurting because of it and the prototype V2 (if not A4b) is already in production...
 
Could the A-bomb be ready by August 1943, if plutonium breeding was the accepted method for producing fissile material, Oak Ridge being restricted to enriching fuel for the initial breeder run by Hanford's graphite-moderated piles?

Doubtful. There were a number of ways to speed up U235 had Groves rolled some sixes at times, but no real way to speed up Hanford than OTL

Separation of the Pu from the irradiated Uranium slugs was a real problem, and no way to do that faster than OTL
Info on the 'Queen Mary' LINK
 
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