Ten Years Early - Manhattan Project, Tube Alloys, Ni-Go, Pervaya Molniya, Uranverein

Another thread on the Post-1900 forum got me thinking. Suppose that by September 1, 1939, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Empire of Japan, Soviet Union, and Third Reich are all well on their way to a deliverable (4000-5000 kg) and practical (15-25 kt) nuclear weapon, and that all five nations regard these bombs as simply bigger, better bombs (as they were regarded IOTL early on).

How does this happen? Who has to have a stroke of genius, when? Perhaps a couple unknown geniuses who IOTL died in the mud of Passchendale or in the snows of the Masurian Lakes return home ITTL?

How does WW2 go from here? Suppose that bombs start coming online after the fall of France, and all five nations at least have one deployable weapon by Barbarossa.
 

loughery111

Banned
Another thread on the Post-1900 forum got me thinking. Suppose that by September 1, 1939, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Empire of Japan, Soviet Union, and Third Reich are all well on their way to a deliverable (4000-5000 kg) and practical (15-25 kt) nuclear weapon, and that all five nations regard these bombs as simply bigger, better bombs (as they were regarded IOTL early on).

How does this happen? Who has to have a stroke of genius, when? Perhaps a couple unknown geniuses who IOTL died in the mud of Passchendale or in the snows of the Masurian Lakes return home ITTL?

How does WW2 go from here? Suppose that bombs start coming online after the fall of France, and all five nations at least have one deployable weapon by Barbarossa.

All of them being at this stage is utterly ASB. Having one or two might be possible, though.
 
Historical start dates of nuclear projects:
Manhattan Project: 1939
Tube Alloys: 1940 (when the Paris Group moved to Britain)
Ni-Go: 1939
Perveya Molniya: 1940
Uranverein: 1939

Timeline of nuclear fission development up to realization of weapons potential
1913: Bohr model of the atom
1932: Neutron discovered
1933: Nuclear chain reaction idea proposed
1934: Uranium bombarded with neutrons, barium found in results
1938: Results of neutron bombardment interpreted as nuclear fission
1939: Experimental confirmation of nuclear fission and chain reaction potential, Einstein-Szilard letter written

Is it really impossible for a few of these discoveries to be pushed back a year or two, leading to experimental confirmation of fission and the start of research by the 30s? The Ames process was discovered in 1942, which allowed production of pure uranium, and that didn't exactly involve any process more technologically advanced then a really tough steel casing. Plus, as I mentioned, there's the millions of young men who WW1 claimed, a dozen of which could easily live and become physicists.
 

loughery111

Banned
Historical start dates of nuclear projects:
Manhattan Project: 1939
Tube Alloys: 1940 (when the Paris Group moved to Britain)
Ni-Go: 1939
Perveya Molniya: 1940
Uranverein: 1939

Timeline of nuclear fission development up to realization of weapons potential
1913: Bohr model of the atom
1932: Neutron discovered
1933: Nuclear chain reaction idea proposed
1934: Uranium bombarded with neutrons, barium found in results
1938: Results of neutron bombardment interpreted as nuclear fission
1939: Experimental confirmation of nuclear fission and chain reaction potential, Einstein-Szilard letter written

Is it really impossible for a few of these discoveries to be pushed back a year or two, leading to experimental confirmation of fission and the start of research by the 30s? The Ames process was discovered in 1942, which allowed production of pure uranium, and that didn't exactly involve any process more technologically advanced then a really tough steel casing. Plus, as I mentioned, there's the millions of young men who WW1 claimed, a dozen of which could easily live and become physicists.

It's not that the science can't be pushed up; it's that not ALL of the major powers are going to be right at that stage of the project at the same time. If you want front-runners, I could see the UK and Germany having advanced projects and the US being in a position to catch up quickly when they pay attention, as IOTL. German and British projects would be slowed by mutual bombing attacks on the generation capacity needed to keep running major nuclear projects, so the US would have a chance to get to parity or even ahead. The Soviets and the Japanese simply aren't going to have advanced nuclear programs at this stage; without interference, Japan IOTL may have detonated a device in a decade, maybe more, while the Soviets (sans espionage) wouldn't have had one until at least 1952-53, if then. There's going to be a similar margin of superiority IOTL unless your POD is to make on of their leaders pay special attention to nuclear research. If you're just accelerating the early days of research to see what happens, the USSR and Japan will still be drastically behind.
 
In 1934 Some physicist writes a short SF story about the horrible potential use of the atom as a weapon, giving detailed explanations of how it can be used. This is read by some scientists that decide to study the subject and conclude it is possible.
 

loughery111

Banned
In 1934 Some physicist writes a short SF story about the horrible potential use of the atom as a weapon, giving detailed explanations of how it can be used. This is read by some scientists that decide to study the subject and conclude it is possible.

And the science fiction nerd reveals himself! (The other one, that is.) :D
 
And the science fiction nerd reveals himself! (The other one, that is.) :D
that was brought up on this forum earlier so that's why I now about it.

Also I think Russia could have one closer to 48 without espionage. It isn't clear how much espionage factored in OTL.
 

loughery111

Banned
that was brought up on this forum earlier so that's why I now about it.

Also I think Russia could have one closer to 48 without espionage. It isn't clear how much espionage factored in OTL.

Well, espionage certainly didn't slow their project. At worst, it didn't help, in which case they'd have gotten the bomb in '49 anyway. Why do you say '48?
 
It's not that the science can't be pushed up; it's that not ALL of the major powers are going to be right at that stage of the project at the same time. If you want front-runners, I could see the UK and Germany having advanced projects and the US being in a position to catch up quickly when they pay attention, as IOTL. German and British projects would be slowed by mutual bombing attacks on the generation capacity needed to keep running major nuclear projects, so the US would have a chance to get to parity or even ahead. The Soviets and the Japanese simply aren't going to have advanced nuclear programs at this stage; without interference, Japan IOTL may have detonated a device in a decade, maybe more, while the Soviets (sans espionage) wouldn't have had one until at least 1952-53, if then. There's going to be a similar margin of superiority IOTL unless your POD is to make on of their leaders pay special attention to nuclear research. If you're just accelerating the early days of research to see what happens, the USSR and Japan will still be drastically behind.

Fair enough, and I agree with your assessments of nuclear potential. Regarding your point of power generation, I'm positing that development begins in the early 1930s, which gives us 6-7 years of peace to work with. Given that, do British and German bombs by the Fall of France and an American bomb by Barbarossa sound plausible?

My thoughts are that the Soviet Union, out of simple paranoia of the capitalists with these new-fangled weapons, Five-Year Plans it and after a couple of unfortunate accidents has a working device by Stalingrad, while Japan hears about this "kamikaze in a can" and is determined to wield it, developing a usable weapon by late 1941 (I just want a mushroom cloud over Battleship Row:p). IOTL, the Soviet program really kicked into gear by 1942, and they had a bomb seven years later, which does show that the People's Bomb is possible within a decade. How's that?
 

loughery111

Banned
Fair enough, and I agree with your assessments of nuclear potential. Regarding your point of power generation, I'm positing that development begins in the early 1930s, which gives us 6-7 years of peace to work with. Given that, do British and German bombs by the Fall of France and an American bomb by Barbarossa sound plausible?

My thoughts are that the Soviet Union, out of simple paranoia of the capitalists with these new-fangled weapons, Five-Year Plans it and after a couple of unfortunate accidents has a working device by Stalingrad, while Japan hears about this "kamikaze in a can" and is determined to wield it, developing a usable weapon by late 1941 (I just want a mushroom cloud over Battleship Row:p). IOTL, the Soviet program really kicked into gear by 1942, and they had a bomb seven years later, which does show that the People's Bomb is possible within a decade. How's that?

Still pretty borderline, if you ask me. For starters, you'd better have a very good butterfly net if you want WWII to unfold in the same way; if every power knows the others are working on nuclear weapons, they'll either refrain from war or declare war to try to keep the other side from getting the bomb in the first place.

Anyway, for a timeline that assumes war breaks out as IOTL... it's hard to know exactly what level of effort each project would have attracted; the Manhattan Project was an all-out wartime effort; anything it wanted, it did get, almost without fail, and it pursued every avenue of research that was discovered. Not even the United States will do this in peacetime, and I doubt that Germany or the UK can even afford to. So we can assume that any bomb programs will focus on a uranium gun-type device out of necessity.

If we say that the UK starts its program in, say, 1933, at the same level as Tube Alloy started IOTL, and gradually throw more and more funding towards them as Europe accelerates towards war, then I think a decent estimate for their arriving at a bomb is 1940. This is, again, a rough guess. I couldn't see Germany beginning a program until the occupation of the Rhineland, so call it 1936. If they manage to take advantage of their physicists and push it hard, they could get one in 1942, maybe 1941 (probably not). This assumes that they don't do what they did IOTL and politicize the entire project. The United States won't start a program until they notice that the other two have done so or the British give them a good, thorough kick in the pants. Call it 1936, just after the German program begins. If they start one at all, they'll kick it into high gear quickly, given that it offers a huge advantage over Japan. I'd say that a decent estimate is sometime after the British bomb, but before a German one. They have resources and are collecting scientists as quickly as the Germans kick them out.

As for the Soviets, I cannot see them being able to devote major effort to a bomb before 1940... if you choose to butterfly the Purges to some degree, you can probably get a half-hearted effort in 1938. The saving grace for them is that the NKVD and the KGB are good. Very good. They can probably, as IOTL, steal secrets from the Americans, the British, and the Germans to speed things up. A date isn't something I would care to guess at, but I suspect the British would help things along after Barbarossa kicks off. Japan... I doubt they get a bomb before the 1940's are through. They lack the manpower, the scientific or research base, the electrical generation, in short, they have NOTHING that they can use to design and build a bomb without outside assistance and a lot of it.

Now, again, you have to remember... this involves a major butterfly-netting expedition. There is almost NO way, in reality, that WWII would start in the same way. I suspect that one of two things would happen: Either no war occurs as all sides hold one another's major cities hostage, or Britain and France bite the bullet, declare war over the Sudetenland because they know Germany cannot possibly have a bomb yet and they're not far away, and crush them utterly. As for the Pacific, Japan would have no choice but to sit down and shut up, with both the Americans and the British sitting on superbombs. There's almost no chance that WWII occurs in recognizable form if you push this research this far up.

'49, '48, more or less the same.

Lol. From what I've read, they got a few key advances from us that pushed up their bomb from, as I said, the early 50's, to '49. Could be wrong, of course.
 
Like you were saying, Manhattan got what it wanted, when it wanted it. Congress was totally in the dark on what was spent and if they had, hoo-boy, that would not go over well "General, let me try and understand you we are spending xxx millions of dollars for some kind of fancy gadget?" I don't know how it would get funded if not for the secrecy involved.
 
Well, the prevailing attitude of the 1940s and 50s towards nuclear bombs was a "big bomb" sort of deal, rather like the world's reaction to HMS Dreadnought, so I don't see MAD stopping WW2. Besides, both sides already had two sides of the WMD triangle, and if being able to depopulate Berlin or London with toxins wasn't going to stop the train, being able to blow them to kingdom come probably wouldn't have either. Our attitudes towards the bomb are forged from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Without those warnings, we'd be a lot more cavalier with atomics, just as we were so flagrant with chemical weapons in WW1.

Your points re. British - agreed, is cooperation between them and France likely?

Germany - I had a thought. What if Hitler starts getting his hourly glucose shots and whatnot from that crazy hack earlier and starts going off on the Wunderwaffe angle as soon as he's elected, with a nuclear program by 1934-35? After all, there's no treaty saying Germany can't have atomic bombs. Further posit that as he's less and less capable of leading the Third Reich, a under-the-table power struggle breaks out, with more pragmatic elements taking control. This tones down the persecution of Jews, which advances the German bomb at the same time as delaying the American one. German loyalty holds firm through the crises of OTL, until the Fuhrer dies of a heart attack (considering that the cocktail he was taking made Jagerbombs look like a drink for old ladies, I'm surprised he didn't keel over of one OTL) around, say...the Battle of Moscow. That'll let him get Germany well and stuck in with everybody, and now the Heer has to get about its business. Would that give the Luftwaffe a bomb by Barbarossa?

United States - the American public, I think, could be sold on the bomb as a further extension of isolationism, just like battleships and bombers. "Millions for defense, not a cent for tribute" is an American quote, and the bomb's publicity could be as the ultimate guarantor of American safety. Call its start point a few months after Germany starts its - 1935.

Soviet Union - if we take OTL's seven years, tack on an extra for political issues, and set the bomb date as 1943, we get a 1935 start date. I'm thinking that the KGB gets a hold of information suggesting the start of British, German, and American nuclear projects one after the other, making Stalin very nervous. Given that historically Stalin did recognize exactly what was needed (his letter to the Shturmovnik factory), this doesn't seem too ASB.

Japan - but I just want a nuclear Pearl Harbour :( is it plausible for the Germans to start sending them research after the formation of the Axis, and get them a bomb diagram by early 1941? There's uranium in Liaoning Province in China, so if the IJA doesn't push south as hard, they could secure the mine well enough.
 

loughery111

Banned
Japan - but I just want a nuclear Pearl Harbour :( is it plausible for the Germans to start sending them research after the formation of the Axis, and get them a bomb diagram by early 1941? There's uranium in Liaoning Province in China, so if the IJA doesn't push south as hard, they could secure the mine well enough.

The rest of this is a stretch, but IMO not entirely ASB. So go for it. There is no way in hell, however, that Germany would give Japan the bomb. It was an alliance of convenience and nothing more. IOTL, the Germans only tried handing the Japanese real weapons plans as a spoiler against the Americans when it was clear they were going down for real. They're more likely to give the plans for the bomb to the ITALIANS than they are the Japanese. I doubt the Axis would even be founded ITTL, for a number of reasons. Even if you handwave that, I don't think there's enough electricity generation in the whole country in the 1930's to allow it to refine enough uranium for a bomb before the US starts blowing up generation capacity. If the bomb research gets pushed up, I think one general theme is going to be that the Axis is the side getting hurt the most. WWII will likely occur earlier, when the Allies are much better armed and prepared relative to a newly-rearming Germany and a Japan stuck balls-deep in China. (forgive the imagery, it was too good to pass up :D) Everyone will be less prepared, but the Germans and Japanese will be more less prepared, if you follow my (nearly incomprehensible) meaning.
 
Well, Axis getting hurt the most isn't exactly ASB :p

Is there not a single way Japan can have their hands on a bomb (hell, even a midget sub bomb that's 6000-7000 kg) by December 1941? IIRC they way they enriched Uranium wasn't very efficient, so if they get on centrifugal separation from the start? They have the raw materials, I'm sure that expertise could be found SOMEWHERE.
 

loughery111

Banned
Well, Axis getting hurt the most isn't exactly ASB :p

Is there not a single way Japan can have their hands on a bomb (hell, even a midget sub bomb that's 6000-7000 kg) by December 1941? IIRC they way they enriched Uranium wasn't very efficient, so if they get on centrifugal separation from the start? They have the raw materials, I'm sure that expertise could be found SOMEWHERE.

They lack the electricity. They also lack the expertise, and it really could not be found for them; what reason does a physicist have to move there?

I can think of no non-ASB way to get Japan a bomb before 1945, even if you push the entire field up 5 or 6 years.
 
Warning--Very Long Post Ahead

They lack the electricity. They also lack the expertise, and it really could not be found for them; what reason does a physicist have to move there?

I can think of no non-ASB way to get Japan a bomb before 1945, even if you push the entire field up 5 or 6 years.

You make Japan sound like a land without scientists. I don't disagree that Japan would have the fewest industrial, and even monetary, resources for competing in a nuclear weapons race, but they had some able talent. Just picking from people involved in the two historic Japanese atomic weapons projects, you have: (borrowing liberally from Wikipedia)

Yoshio Nishina-- He studied at some of the most prestigious European universities and institutions, including Cavendish Laboratory, Georg August University of Göttingen, and University of Copenhagen. He personally mentored two Japanese future winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Hideki Yukawa and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He is also described as a "good friend" of Niels Bohr and a "close associate" of Albert Einstein. Nishina built a 26 inch cyclotron in 1936, another 60 inch 220 ton cyclotron in 1937, and then in 1938 purchased a cyclotron from the University of California, Berkeley.

Bunsaku Arakatsu--Also studied at Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge University), and at Berlin University with Einstein. By 1945, he had managed to complete a design for an ultracentrifuge, despite the incredible strain on Japanese society caused by the war and allied bombing.

Hideki Yukawa--First Japanese citizen to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1949. In 1935 he published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles.

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga--Did not technically work on the Japanese atomic bomb projects. However, he returned to Japan during the outbreak of the war, and remained there during the duration of the conflict. From 1937 until war broke out, he studied and preformed research in Leizpig under Werner Heisenberg.

Japan may not have been the powerhouse of science research that Germany was before the war, but they had more than their fair share of important early particle physicists. Furthermore, I see no reason why Japan could not make use of at least some foreign talent. As early as 1931, Nishina invited some Western scholars to study in Japan, including Heisenberg, Dirac and Bohr. If studying with Nishina and other scientists of his ilk was not incentive enough to bring them to Japan, then Japan could've brought them over the same it way it brought over German airplane design talent in the early '30s--by paying top dollar for it.

The way I see it, Japan had one big problem that prevented it from making progress: the Japanese government was slow to get interested in the project. Nishina was worried about the US developing these weapons and using them on Japan as early as 1939, but work didn't begin in earnest until April 1941. After that, you still have the problems of two competing projects, underfunding, and the rest. The US was the only power that was wealthy enough (and geographically isolated enough) to spend whatever amount was needed to develop the bomb. For any other power, funding this project at the level it needs to be funded means a lot less of everything else--less tanks, less ships, maybe fewer divisions. It's a very big gamble to make.

I don't think it's impossible, though. The Empire of Japan in the 1930's had just one foreign policy goal--to make herself strong enough that no nation could challenge her in East Asia. This was seen as the only route to long-term security. If you could somehow convince the Japanese High Command of the true potential of these weapons, they will see that nuclear bombs are the only thing in existence that might have actually get them to their goal. It doesn't fit in with your "just a really big bomb" idea, and I don't think it's too likely, either. But if you can make it happen in your timeline, I think the Japanese government would be willing to pay the price if it could.

Japan already had electrical grids. Japan already had, as of 1926, a heavy water production plant that could rival Norway's. She had access to uranium. She had the academic talent, too. If you can convince the Japanese government that it's worth the price--worth insane amounts of money, worth less military spending, worth hiring expensive foreign researchers who are probably subversive, even worth cutting off half the nation's electricity for half the day every day to give it to the lab--I think they can get there. Will the Empire of Japan be the first nation to get a bomb? No--but they WILL get one.
 
If you can convince the Japanese government that it's worth the price--worth insane amounts of money, worth less military spending, worth hiring expensive foreign researchers who are probably subversive, even worth cutting off half the nation's electricity for half the day every day to give it to the lab--I think they can get there.


You have utterly no comprehension of the economic conditions Japan was operating under even before the Pacific war.

There is literally nothing left to spend and nowhere left to save. Japan is devouring itself in it's attempts to prosecute the war in China while building for the war with the "imperialist powers". Japan is starving itself too as both the population of the Home Islands and the armed forces are being fed at subsistence levels or lower.

Need an example of how desperate things were? Among other things, the vaunted Zeros were built without self-sealing gas tanks. Not because Japan didn't know how to manufacture them and not because Japan couldn't get the materials to manufacture them, but because by choosing not to install self-sealing tanks Japan could build a few dozen more fighters. They even skimped on radios for the same reason.

Thinks about that for a moment. They deliberately chose to leave self-sealing gas tanks out of their front line fighter to save the money needed for more a few more fighters.

Beginning to understand now?

The Manhattan Project coast the US something close to 1.9 BILLION in 1945 dollars or 20 BILLION in 1995 dollars. That's not all of the costs associated with dropping two nukes either.

What people suggesting Germany or Japan or some other nation developing the bomb always forget is that you need a bomber to drop the Bomb and not any old bomber will do. The B-29 development Project cost the US 3 BILLION 1945 dollars or 31.5 BILLION 1995 dollars.

That's right, the bombers cost more than the Bomb.

Japan's munition workers were already enjoying soup made from tree bark a couple times each week even before Pearl Harbor and you believe there was over 50 BILLION 1995 US dollars in loose change a Bomb/bomber program would need just waiting to found between the cushions of Japan's national sofa?

Sure.

Only one nation in the 1940s could afford to fight a global war AND develop two atomic bomb designs AND develop/operate two fissionable production streams AND develop the bomber to deliver the results. That nation was the United States.

Even the postwar Soviet Union with the Manhattan Project blueprints in their hands took five years after the war to build, fuel, and test an exact duplicate of Little Boy.
 
Would it be possible for the late 1930s/early1940s state of chemistry to run diffusion enrichment process instead of centrifuge? You would probbaly need perfluorinated polymers for the membrane, but first experiments producing PTFE were performed in the late 1930s OTL, the scientists simply didn't recognize what they hand on hand...
 
Did read a book (you know the paper stuff) sometime a go for another WI project; a biography of Niels Bohr - you've probably heard of the guy. Well didn't read all of it only parts of the story of 1934-1945, but during a visit to the USA if I remember correct in 1936 giving a lecture at Princeton Bohr before going home as asked by a US journalist "when are we going to build a fissionbomb" - "well, not yet".

My high-school physics teacher had worked as an assistant to Bohr and recounted that Bohr very well knew of the German nuclear programme because of his close relationship to Heisenberg and the other German scientists; remember the Copenhagen School of physics headed by Bohr was quite sought for by physists due to Bohr nobel laureate. Bohr comment on the German programme what Hitler would allow them to do or what they were able to were all out of the window.
Heisenberg even tried to recruit Bohr for the programme but he of course rejected that.
 
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