What plausible war situations could have slowed the Manhattan Project?

Satrap

Donor
Enrico Fermi.

How much of an impact did Fermi and his research team have?

What if, for whatever reason, they didn't leave Italy?
 
It wouldn't require Trinity to explode prematurely. All it would take is for Trinity to sit there and go PFFFTTTT when the button is pushed. That might delay the Project for a bit, especially if it failed again on the 2nd test. (Due to a math problem or impurities or something.)
 

Satrap

Donor
It wouldn't require Trinity to explode prematurely. All it would take is for Trinity to sit there and go PFFFTTTT when the button is pushed. That might delay the Project for a bit, especially if it failed again on the 2nd test. (Due to a math problem or impurities or something.)

Trinity was to test the Plutonium bomb, they where so sure the Uranium device would work.

The first weapon dropped was a Uranium bomb which worked, therefore they would deploy Uranium bombs until Trinity worked
 
Here's something out of Left field--no B-29, then no USAAF weapons delivery system for atomic bombs in WWII. And I don't think America adopting the Lancaster is as simple a solution as it's been made out to be.

There was the B-32, developed as a fallback for the B-29, though it, too, had development issues.
 
Nazi Germany and Japan are defeated in 1944 before the Bomb is ready. If that happens the urgency that drove the Manhattan Project in @ will dissapear; however IMVHO the US would still develop the A-bomb and without use against Japan it might be used in a post-war conflict, e.g. Korea.
 
The key event in the creation of the Manhattan Project and hence the atomic bomb wasn't, contrary to popular opinion the Einstein-Szillard memo to FDR, which was written in 1939.

The letter resulted in the S-1 Uranium Committee, which basically did very little and had a tiny budget. This was partly due to the fact that their understanding was that tons of Uranium 235 would be required, and hence the project was not very practical.

In 1940, the British (in fact Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls working for the British) correctly appreciated that the amount of Uranium 235 required was far less than previously thought (pounds rather than tons).

In late 1940, the British MAUD committee produced a report outlining the feasibility of the bomb, which was sent to the Americans but ignored. The British started their "Tube Alloys" project but couldn't afford to prioritise it as they were fighting for their lives.

The key event was the visit of Mark Oliphant of the MAUD committee to the USA in 1941, where he impressed on the US scientists the feasibility and urgency of manufacturing the bomb. After these meetings, in December 1941 Vannevar Bush created the Office of Scientific Research and Development, after that the Manhattan Project took off and quickly eclipsed the British project, which was eventually (1943) folded into it.

So, there's a simple way to delay the Manhattan Project: Oliphant's plane crashes. The S1 committee then carries on doing nothing much and the MAUD report carries on being ignored.

Eventually, the British send another envoy or the US put two and two together on their own and the project kicks into gear. Six months to a year delay, easy.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Szilárd_letter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-1_Uranium_Committee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch-Peierls_memorandum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAUD_Committee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys
 
Newt Gingrich's book "1945" features a victorious-over-USSR Nazi Germany conducting a ridiculous uber-air-raid on both Oak Ridge and the Trinity site.

This requires beating the Soviets and had other issues (like Sgt. York and local rednecks defeating the SS commandos outright rather than delaying or distracting them long enough for regular troops to arrive), but...

Maybe the Nazis find out about the Manhattan Project, take it seriously, and try to sabotage it?

Instead of just the usual saboteurs, maybe instead of some of OTL's White Elephant projects, they build an Amerika-Bomber and crew it with death-wish types for a one-way bombing raid?

New Mexico is too far away, but maybe Oak Ridge?
 
Newt Gingrich's book "1945" features a victorious-over-USSR Nazi Germany conducting a ridiculous uber-air-raid on both Oak Ridge and the Trinity site.

This requires beating the Soviets and had other issues (like Sgt. York and local rednecks defeating the SS commandos outright rather than delaying or distracting them long enough for regular troops to arrive), but...

Maybe the Nazis find out about the Manhattan Project, take it seriously, and try to sabotage it?

Instead of just the usual saboteurs, maybe instead of some of OTL's White Elephant projects, they build an Amerika-Bomber and crew it with death-wish types for a one-way bombing raid?

New Mexico is too far away, but maybe Oak Ridge?

Slipping a commando unit across the Mexican border to hit Los Alamos might be feasible?

The only way I can think of the Nazis finding out about the Manhattan Project is via the Russians though, and even that seems v. unlikely.
 
Slipping a commando unit across the Mexican border to hit Los Alamos might be feasible?

The only way I can think of the Nazis finding out about the Manhattan Project is via the Russians though, and even that seems v. unlikely.

Did any of the Soviet espionage of the MH pass through German or German-occupied territory?

Maybe someone could get hold of a diplomatic pouch they're not meant to read or something.
 
Did any of the Soviet espionage of the MH pass through German or German-occupied territory?

Maybe someone could get hold of a diplomatic pouch they're not meant to read or something.

According to Richard Rhodes in his book 'Dark Sun' (I think its Dark Sun, its one of his books), the Soviets were flying planeloads of suitcases full of material on US military and industrial systems out of Alaska on a weekly basis, all with the approval of the US Government...I say approval as they appear to have done nothing to stop it,...this was in addition to what they openly handed over in Lend Lease.

Given the volume that was being flown out, it doesn't take too much imagination to say

Also, according to Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts 'Warlords', Soviet spying in the UK was 'officially' allowed to not annoy them so again, it doesn't take much imagination to suggest that the same happended in the US.
 
If there's stuff coming out of Alaska, maybe it can be captured by the Japanese somehow?

Of course, getting it to Germany could be problematic and the Japanese wouldn't have the means of attacking Los Alamos from the Pacific.
 
What about the war going better for the allies, leading to a quicker victory. Weapons projects, including Manhatten, would suddenly be of lower priority and recieve less support and funding.


That's what I was thinking.

This could include a successful assassination of Hitler in 1943 (or even as late as 1944) sufficiently influencing the course of the Pacific war to have the whole war wrapped up before the date of OTL's first a-bomb explosion (July '45).
 
Magniac makes an interesting point - there's not much point to an operational weapon if you don't have a delivery platform. The B-29, being a technically ambitious design, was far from a sure thing, and it took a lot of effort for Boeing and the USAAF to make it a really effective combat aircraft. Suppose something had gone wrong, and the Superfortress never made it into service. Adapt the Lancaster? Then you've got a considereably less powerful aircraft that would be more vulnerable; ditto the B-32. And if you can't get the B-29 working, getting the B-36 into service will be an even more difficult job.

Or, say there's a math error - not as bad as a 120-ton bomb, but resulting in one big/heavy enough that a B-29 couldn't carry it for any appreciable distance? Do you develop tankers, push the B-36 (which existed in mockup form before Pearl Harbor), or try to develop a smaller bomb?
 
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