Soviets (post WW2) get the bomb first – when do they use it?

whitecrow

Banned
Let’s say the Trinity Test is a dud and the Manhattan Project is seen as a waste of cash & is canceled (this may or may not be ASB, I don’t know). Thus the Western Allies don’t develop the atomic bomb towards the end of WW2.

If it is the Soviets that are first to create the atomic bomb, during which conflict would they it?
 

iddt3

Donor
If the trinity test doesn't work all it means is they just got for Gun type bombs, like little boy, which they were so sure would work they didn't bother testing it.
 
I don't know that they would use it at all. It ruins all the industry in an area, since it lays waste to it. It defeats the point of conquest. I think they'd just use it to bully the West. If WWIII occured immediately after WWII, they may use it on Paris or London (as they couldn't get it to Washington D.C. or New York.
 
It depends when it occurs, 1949 as in OTL, earlier or later but I doubt wouldn't use it without a direct war against the west. They would use it instead to extract concessions such as with Turkey, Iran and Korea, the notes on a neutral Germany may be given more discussion as well. If the Cuban revolutionary war still succeeds and the US still dismisses them, it's like that the Cuban missile crisis comes out as a clear Soviet victory.

The reaction in the west will be the panic caused by Sputnik x 100 for the public, their representatives and the military. Ridiculous amounts of money will be thrown into an American bomb project, much higher than OTL's Manhattan Project with scientists being forced to cut every corner to deliver a bomb as quickly as possible.

We also need to look at the possible butterflies of this though, without the Atomic bombing of Japan it's probable Stalin would have unified Korea and taken Hokkaido, possibly even a part of northern Honshu. This may set things up for a Japanese civil war instead of Korea.
 
We also need to look at the possible butterflies of this though, without the Atomic bombing of Japan it's probable Stalin would have unified Korea and taken Hokkaido, possibly even a part of northern Honshu. This may set things up for a Japanese civil war instead of Korea.
Korea yes, parts of the Home Islands no, Stalin lacked the Sealift for a successful Invasion and we will not give it to him, US will still occupy all of Japan
 
Korea yes, parts of the Home Islands no, Stalin lacked the Sealift for a successful Invasion and we will not give it to him, US will still occupy all of Japan

The Soviets had already successfully conducted naval operations against the Japanese, considering their total naval and aerial superiority at this point it would only be an issue of how quickly troops could be supplied.
 
The Soviets had already successfully conducted naval operations against the Japanese, considering their total naval and aerial superiority at this point it would only be an issue of how quickly troops could be supplied.
Okay you are right there, just going to point out that without US help supplying any attack on the Home Islands will be extremely difficult and such an event might turn out to be a Soviet Sea Mammal that must not be named
 

iddt3

Donor
If you want to get rid of Americans getting the bomb, you need to get rid of the Manhatten project. If you do that, ironically, you might butterfly away the Soviet program as well, at least for the immdiate future. It was piggybacked off the american one and was only urgent because the Americans got the bomb in the first place. If the trinity test fails, the US still has developed the bomb first, they just go with the gun type bombs.
 
The Soviets had a copy of the Fat Man bomb at the time of Trinity reproduced down to the thumbtacks. It lacked only enriched U-239. It took them four years to reproduce the nuclear fuel needed. Such operations cannot be shortened by slave labor. You can build factories with slave labor, but building breeder reactors and mass ultracentrifuges in precision sequences takes a level of perfection requiring a very long time to put together.

Without the American Manhatten Project, Stalin isn't going to spend the incredible level of resources required to build his own from scratch. If he had, the Soviets would not have completed their own project until well into the Kruschev Era. With the needs of a nuclear navy in the USN, it truly strains credulity that the US would not have begun work on such a project by this time.

ASB.:(
 
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iddt3

Donor
The Soviets had a copy of the Fat Man bomb at the time of Trinity reproduced down to the thumbtacks. It lacked only enriched U-239. It took them four years to reproduce the nuclear fuel needed. Such operations cannot be shortened by slave labor. You can build factories with slave labor, but building breeder reactors and mass ultracentrifuges in precision sequences takes a lever of perfection that takes a very long time to put together.

Without the American Manhatten Project, Stalin isn't going to spend the incredible level of resources requited to build his own from scratch. If he had, the Sovoets would not have completed their own project until well into the Kruschev Era. With the needs of a nuclear navy in the USN, it truly strains credulity that the US would not have begun work on such a project by this time.

ASB.:(
didn't know that, interesting.
 
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