On the Difficulty of Operation Unthinkable

kernals12

Banned
Operation Unthinkable was drafted by London just after World War 2 ended. It called for World War 3 essentially, a full invasion of the Soviet Union with use of the new fangled atomic bomb. There are a few threads about this and the consensus seems to be that this war would be a disaster for the West as it would be a long drawn out battle against a massive Red Army and force the people to once again accept wartime hardships. The thing is though is that it seems that with one side having nuclear weapons and the other side not, it would be a quick victory with Soviet armored divisions, airfields, and industrial centers getting liberally nuked. I think the big thing to worry about would be communist guerillas after Moscow falls as well as the radiation.
 
There would have been no "liberal nuking" at that timeperiod,because they are scarcely any nukes,delivery methods or doctrine for it.
 
Honestly I'm not sure it would be a "quick victory" in such a war considering the fact that, at the time, the US had like very few atomic bombs available and that alone would complicate the Allied war effort. Though granted the US can and would be willing to make more, but it makes a difference if the war against the USSR breaks out in '45 or '46 compared to '48 or "49.
 

kernals12

Banned
Honestly I'm not sure it would be a "quick victory" in such a war considering the fact that, at the time, the US had like very few atomic bombs available and that alone would complicate the Allied war effort. Though granted the US can and would be willing to make more, but it makes a difference if the war against the USSR breaks out in '45 or '46 compared to '48 or "49.
What if you started with a surprise bomb drop on Moscow, taking out Stalin and most of the military leadership? Surely that would make things a lot easier.
 
What if you started with a surprise bomb drop on Moscow, taking out Stalin and most of the military leadership? Surely that would make things a lot easier.
Maybe but then the NKVD would take over and have the whole country go the route of "Decisive Darkness", i.e. a path of destruction wrought by their stubbornness.
 

kernals12

Banned
Maybe but then the NKVD would take over and have the whole country go the route of "Decisive Darkness", i.e. a path of destruction wrought by their stubbornness.
Wouldn't NKVD headquarters (along with their leadership and a ton of their agents) be vaporized by the nuclear attack?
 

kernals12

Banned
If we did this in 1947 instead, it might be better. We might be able to have bombs small enough to be dropped by fighter bombers or used as artillery shells. Also it would still be far too early for the Soviets to have their own bomb.
 

nbcman

Donor
If we did this in 1947 instead, it might be better. We might be able to have bombs small enough to be dropped by fighter bombers or used as artillery shells. Also it would still be far too early for the Soviets to have their own bomb.
I recommend that you research what weapons were available in 1947 and when weapons were reduced in size to be used as an artillery round before making assumptions as you’ve done above. The information is readily available.

EDIT: The first US Artillery with nuclear capabilities was Atomic Annie in 1953. But the first US rounds that could be fired out of a standard US Howitzer weren't produced until 1957. You are proposing US capabilities that are at least 6-10 years ahead of OTL.
 
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There would have been no "liberal nuking" at that timeperiod,because they are scarcely any nukes,delivery methods or doctrine for it.

Rhodes in his 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' states there were Plutonium cores for five more atomic bombs available in 1945. One was enroute to Titian in August, another set was being machined in August, Material for three more was being extracted or would have been during September-November. Rhodes goes on to estimate material for a minimum of 18 more bomb cores would be extracted during 1946. Other estimates are higher, or lower. The target production when the Haniford reactors were built was to have been 36 bomb cores in 1946. Rhodes bases his lower estimate on that there were problems with both production reactors at the Haniford facility. Since the reactors were shut down in September 1945 for modifications/improvements & did not restart production until late 1946 its difficult to judge.

If Rhodes is correct then only a half dozen Plutonium bombs would be available in 1945. I've not seen anything for additional Uranium bombs & have no idea if there were any remaining isotope for another Uranium device.
 
Is this an unwarranted aggressive invasion by the western Allies? The populace in Britain and America will riot over such an insane course of action.

If Stalin has decided his tanks should take a holiday on the Channel, which is also rather implausible, that'll change public perception in the west.
 
By 1945, the Allies were exhausted by war and the populations of the US, UK, and USSR never would have tolerated an unprovoked attack on the other. The British economy was wrecked while something like 60% of males born in the USSR in 1923 were dead by 1945. By 1945, the US had no interest in starting an "unnecessary" war. Truman would have, at best lost re-election in 1948, and quite possibly been impeached.

What if you started with a surprise bomb drop on Moscow, taking out Stalin and most of the military leadership? Surely that would make things a lot easier.

How exactly do you surprise bomb Moscow in 1945 or 1946? Democracies are not very good at conspiring for such things. But even if you get such a point, the B-29s combat radius was 1,500 miles, which means it can barely reach Moscow and it's possible you are on a one way mission. And even then, you will have to fly a considerable distance over Soviet territory to get there at a point in time when the Soviet air forces are at their maximum strength. You have a real risk of starting the war without your nuke ever being lit. Nuts.
 
Wouldn't NKVD headquarters (along with their leadership and a ton of their agents) be vaporized by the nuclear attack?
Good point but I'd imagine that many of its remnants take over what's left of the USSR and do that stubborn thing I mentioned earlier.
 
If Rhodes is correct then only a half dozen Plutonium bombs would be available in 1945. I've not seen anything for additional Uranium bombs & have no idea if there were any remaining isotope for another Uranium device.

By time the Y-12 Calutron production had been switched to the more efficient Gaseous method at K-25 at the end of 1946, 1000kg of HEU had been processed
An all HEU implosion core would need 15kg, vs 64 for a gun type
 
How exactly do you surprise bomb Moscow in 1945 or 1946? Democracies are not very good at conspiring for such things. But even if you get such a point, the B-29s combat radius was 1,500 miles, which means it can barely reach Moscow and it's possible you are on a one way mission. And even then, you will have to fly a considerable distance over Soviet territory to get there at a point in time when the Soviet air forces are at their maximum strength. You have a real risk of starting the war without your nuke ever being lit. Nuts.

Not to mention Soviet spies in some really key positions, like including the nuclear weapons program, who can easily give the whole “surprise” thing away.
 

kernals12

Banned
By 1945, the Allies were exhausted by war and the populations of the US, UK, and USSR never would have tolerated an unprovoked attack on the other. The British economy was wrecked while something like 60% of males born in the USSR in 1923 were dead by 1945. By 1945, the US had no interest in starting an "unnecessary" war. Truman would have, at best lost re-election in 1948, and quite possibly been impeached.



How exactly do you surprise bomb Moscow in 1945 or 1946? Democracies are not very good at conspiring for such things. But even if you get such a point, the B-29s combat radius was 1,500 miles, which means it can barely reach Moscow and it's possible you are on a one way mission. And even then, you will have to fly a considerable distance over Soviet territory to get there at a point in time when the Soviet air forces are at their maximum strength. You have a real risk of starting the war without your nuke ever being lit. Nuts.
That's a very misleading figure. Most of them were dead long before the war started from the natural afflictions that plagued every preindustrial society.
 
That's a very misleading figure. Most of them were dead long before the war started from the natural afflictions that plagued every preindustrial society.

Wow. Quite a few levels of WTF here. Natural afflictions? Pre-industrial society?

For the sake of the thread Ill continue. The number I gave was a convenient one but there are numerous, more insightful ways to look at it. While estimates vary greatly, I'll go with the USSR lost roughly 30 million people between 1941 and 1945, 15% of the populace, with about 75% of the deaths being male. The male to female ratio declined from 0.96 to 0.71. I grabbed the data from the paper cited below - feel free to disagree or provide better sources. I am not pounding the table on the preciseness of the data but suggesting it's close enough to reality to support the same conclusion. This isnt a population that is going to want to fight WWIII and the government will take exceptional measures to avoid it.

https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2007_820-4g_Brainerd1.pdf
 

kernals12

Banned
Wow. Quite a few levels of WTF here. Natural afflictions? Pre-industrial society?

For the sake of the thread Ill continue. The number I gave was a convenient one but there are numerous, more insightful ways to look at it. While estimates vary greatly, I'll go with the USSR lost roughly 30 million people between 1941 and 1945, 15% of the populace, with about 75% of the deaths being male. The male to female ratio declined from 0.96 to 0.71. I grabbed the data from the paper cited below - feel free to disagree or provide better sources. I am not pounding the table on the preciseness of the data but suggesting it's close enough to reality to support the same conclusion. This isnt a population that is going to want to fight WWIII and the government will take exceptional measures to avoid it.

https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2007_820-4g_Brainerd1.pdf

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet/
"The overall mortality of the Soviet 1923 male birth cohort can be distributed over four stages of life. Around 800 thousand died in their first year. These died of birth defects, disease, accidents, abuse, and neglect. Another 800 thousand died between the ages of 1 and 18 from a range of causes that included those just mentioned and extended beyond them to famine and political violence. Then, from age 18 to 22, another 700 thousand were carried off in the war. That left just over a million to live on into middle and old age.

It may be surprising that war was not the major cause of premature death up to 1946 for the young men born in 1923. But in this there should be two harsh reminders. The first reminder is that nature is wasteful: everywhere until very recently only a minority of babies survived to adulthood, even in peacetime. This was still the situation for the Soviet Union in 1923. The second reminder is that 700,000 wartime deaths from a single birth cohort of young men is still a shocking figure. It is, for example, more than twice the total number of British military and civilian casualties in World War II."
 

nbcman

Donor
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet/
"The overall mortality of the Soviet 1923 male birth cohort can be distributed over four stages of life. Around 800 thousand died in their first year. These died of birth defects, disease, accidents, abuse, and neglect. Another 800 thousand died between the ages of 1 and 18 from a range of causes that included those just mentioned and extended beyond them to famine and political violence. Then, from age 18 to 22, another 700 thousand were carried off in the war. That left just over a million to live on into middle and old age.

It may be surprising that war was not the major cause of premature death up to 1946 for the young men born in 1923. But in this there should be two harsh reminders. The first reminder is that nature is wasteful: everywhere until very recently only a minority of babies survived to adulthood, even in peacetime. This was still the situation for the Soviet Union in 1923. The second reminder is that 700,000 wartime deaths from a single birth cohort of young men is still a shocking figure. It is, for example, more than twice the total number of British military and civilian casualties in World War II."

What exactly is your point in citing whether there was a significant number of Soviet males that died before the start of Operation Barbarossa with respect to your claims in the OP of this thread? The Soviets took ruinous casualties to their population no matter how you phrase it.

There won't be the 'liberal nuking' of anything by the WAllies using fighter bombers, artillery, or any other method in 1945 or 1947.
 
"Operation Unthinkable envisaged using as many as 100,000 German troops to back up 500,000 British and American soldiers attacking the Soviet forces through Germany and Poland, with July 1, 1945, as a possible starting date." https://www.economicsvoodoo.com/wp-...Envision-Deploying-100000_Chicago-Tribune.pdf

Is it really necessary to emphasize what an utter fantasy this was politically even apart from the military objections? For one thing, it is a recipe for Communist revolutions in France and Italy, for another it would appall public opinion even in countries where Communist influence was relatively small (like the US and the UK) and really only could be accomplished if Truman and Churchill were to declare themselves dictators (with Churchill cancelling the upcoming elections), etc.? (I can just hear Truman on the radio saying "My fellow Americans, with Japan still undefeated, I have decided to launch a new war in Europe against the people we thought of as our gallant allies just last month...") BTW, it is more than doubtful that an operation that large could be planned without Soviet espionage finding out about it. And also BTW, if July 1 is an unrealistically early date, anything more than very slightly later will have Churchill out of office anyway, and Attlee hardly seems likely to...oh, what's the use? If people don't understand that nations often have contingency plans for things there is about a zero chance of their implementing, and that this was one of them, nothing is going to persuade them.
 
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