WI: German's develop an atom bomb late 1944?

Which doesn't change the fact that Heisenberg was just plain wrong by several orders of magnitude about critical mass.

To quote German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power:

"Both the Germans and the American sides carefully reviewed the feasibility and potential of nuclear power during the winter of 1941/42, and it is at this point that a comparison of the German achievement to the American is most instructive and relevant. Even though the American research had been qualitatively superior to that conducted in Germany, their German colleagues had performed the same sort of experiments, had made the same calculations and had come to similar conclusions as the allies - for example, the estimate of explosive critical mass mentioned by the Germans in January of 1942, 10 to 100 Kg is comparable to the American estimate of 2 to 100 Kg."
 
Which doesn't change the fact that Heisenberg was just plain wrong by several orders of magnitude about critical mass.

To quote Dale Gribble from King of The Hill:

"The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the man who was wrong about The Bomb, but correct about uncertainty" :p:)
 
I wonder what will inspire you to use the Search function and spare us these repetitive thread on topics you know nothing about?

Why my dear Don, the greatest way for me to be inspired by such a thing would be for the search function to work properly 100% of the time.

Besides, to be blunt, if it bothers you that much, don't comment. While I value and care (somewhat) about your opinions on the topic or topics, my concern level regarding a comment like that is a few miles beneath my feet.

EDIT:Forgot to actually comment on anything.

I believe that what has been said here is correct when it comes to the German Nuclear Program. Once again though, the main premise of this topic is what Germany could do with an Atom bomb in late 1944, or possibly even early 1945.

It does make more sense to target the Soviets, as they do rely on mass attacks to a degree. There's also the fact that the Soviets were drawing closer to Berlin at the time, so anything that could save the capital would likely be used on the Soviets.

An interesting thought, if they use it against the soviets, what would the Soviets do? I can figure that the Allies would feel a need to push their advance into Germany up so as to prevent the Germans from building any more, as well as trying to increase the speed of the Manhattan project. The Soviets on the other hand...
 
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Again; Germany glows as the Manhattan project goes into overdrive and they start building runways for B-29s in England. QED.
 
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Ideally you'd use it against the Soviets. Set up a golden opportunity for a massive armored thrust by the Red Army and nuke it---probably via a prepositioned nuclear weapon. Be prepared to exploit the destruction of the armored spearhead. Golden opportunities are probably areas thinly defended by minor ally troops which would be classic breakthroughs for a pincer to encircle an army or two.
 
While the comments about the likelihood of the Germans actually developing an A-Bomb by war's end are correct, the comments about the delivery methods betray an astoundingly poor knowledge or understanding of European geography, the capabilities of both the German Luftwaffe in late 1944, the capabilities of the Allied air defences at the time and of course, real world events which occurred at the end of 1944 or the start of 1945.
 
While the comments about the likelihood of the Germans actually developing an A-Bomb by war's end are correct, the comments about the delivery methods betray an astoundingly poor knowledge or understanding of European geography, the capabilities of both the German Luftwaffe in late 1944, the capabilities of the Allied air defences at the time and of course, real world events which occurred at the end of 1944 or the start of 1945.

One doesn't neccessarily need a plane to drop the bomb. You could pull a leaf out of the world war series (they of course wouldn't have that to draw on, but the idea is still sound) and set up the bomb in an area/city that the enemy is about to overrun, then light it off as the enemy surrounds you.
 
One doesn't neccessarily need a plane to drop the bomb. You could pull a leaf out of the world war series (they of course wouldn't have that to draw on, but the idea is still sound) and set up the bomb in an area/city that the enemy is about to overrun, then light it off as the enemy surrounds you.

A possibility. You've been reading to much Turtledove, I suspect. It would be extremely difficult to keep such an act secret and then, of course you still have to deal with the dangers of fallout, downwind which would primarily blow eastwards in Western Europe, across Germany.
 

Lonewolf

Banned
Maybe

Hello,
what about the Arado AR-234?

Wikipedia quote: "...but in its few uses as a bomber it proved to be nearly impossible to intercept. It was the last Luftwaffe aircraft to fly over England during the war, in April 1945."
 
Hello,
what about the Arado AR-234?

Wikipedia quote: "...but in its few uses as a bomber it proved to be nearly impossible to intercept. It was the last Luftwaffe aircraft to fly over England during the war, in April 1945."

Could carry 1,800 kg when overloaded. Little Boy was 4,000kg, I can't see an early Germany bomb being carried by anything except a Gigant and then it would have to be rolled out the back.
 
Hello,
what about the Arado AR-234?

Wikipedia quote: "...but in its few uses as a bomber it proved to be nearly impossible to intercept. It was the last Luftwaffe aircraft to fly over England during the war, in April 1945."

The AR-234 was a reconaisance plane by design and had very limited bomb capacity (it had no bomb bay and could carry only an absolute maximum of 1,800 kg of bombs under the wings). The "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" bombs both weighed a lot more than that.

If we postulate a German Manhattan Project with ultimate priority a jet aircraft might have been developed especially to carry the bomb. Obviously, the question is where are the resources for all this coming from and what effect is that going to have on the course of the war.

In the end, the Germany Army Ordinance Office was correct in its assessment that Germany could not produce a nuclear weapon in time to influence the course of the war and the choice they made not to pursue one was correct. Even the combined efforts of the USA and the British Empire didn't manage to produce a bomb in time to effect the course of the European war.
 
The AR-234 was a reconaisance plane by design and had very limited bomb capacity (it had no bomb bay and could carry only an absolute maximum of 1,800 kg of bombs under the wings). The "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" bombs both weighed a lot more than that.

If we postulate a German Manhattan Project with ultimate priority a jet aircraft might have been developed especially to carry the bomb. Obviously, the question is where are the resources for all this coming from and what effect is that going to have on the course of the war.

In the end, the Germany Army Ordinance Office was correct in its assessment that Germany could not produce a nuclear weapon in time to influence the course of the war and the choice they made not to pursue one was correct. Even the combined efforts of the USA and the British Empire didn't manage to produce a bomb in time to effect the course of the European war.

Jet bomber =/= strategic bomber. The AR-234 WAS a jet bomber, and as you say it had between a third and a half of the capacity needed to carry a Fat Man/Little Boy. The Germans quite simply didn't have a tradition or brainpower to construct good strategic bombers in WW2 (and even the very best, the B-29, needed to be expanded to fit the bomb)-nor did it need them.
 
So you send 40 bombers with a fighter escort.and hope the one with the nuke gets through.

Not sure when they stopped hitting London, but having a nuke makes the loses potentially worth it.

The last bombing campaign aimed at London was the "baby blitz" (Operation Steinbock) which lasted from January to May 1944 when it was called off due to crippling losses (almost 10% a month). Also by this time the standard of training of bomber crews was so poor that most failed to even find London. By the end of the year the Luftwaffe's ability to reach London had dropped to essentially zero, in any case IIRC the Luftwaffe had nothing in its inventory that could carry a Little Boy anyway.
 
As I understand it, while the Germans OTL were also on the wrong technical track, the real barrier to their having an A-bomb by 1944 would have been logistical. They had access to uranium in whatever quantities they'd have needed, but the US Manhattan Project was a huge investment of resources. At one point, so I've read, they were authorized to take all the silver out of Fort Knox to fashion it into wires for cyclotrons. (I think they actually didn't do this as it proved unnecessary, but it shows how all-out serious the government was about pursuing any means necessary to achieve the goal, and the sort of economic scale they considered).

The USA had access, during the war, to most of the resources of the world. We had an economy that, with full employment, was the largest in the world. Even so it took most of the war to work our way to Trinity, at the end we'd fashioned just three bombs--the Trinity test shot, Fat Man, Little Boy. That was it. A few years later during the debate about whether or not to perform the Bikini tests, one reason Leslie Groves was against them was that three bombs were a significant--it was classified, even from President Truman, just how significant--fraction of the total American stockpile. And that was postwar, when the USA was no longer making an all-out war effort on every front, but the bombs were one of the few top priorities left and they were fully funded.

In order to make those three bombs, the Project had facilities and people mobilized all over the country, at major universities, at at least three major sites (Oak Ridge, Hanford, and of course Alamogordo). The New Mexico site was where the science and design engineering took place, but the Tennessee and Washington sites were where the materials were processed.

It was processing ordinary uranium into sufficiently concentrated U-235 or plutonium that was the killer. No amount of ASB foresight could make this task much easier; it could save effort in developing alternate lines of approach but in the end even with a perfect right guess as to the most cost-effective approach, the process of taking raw uranium ore and converting it into weapons-grade materials was a slow, expensive one.

For Germans to match that effort, they'd have had to devote that same scale of resources, and develop processing sites that were secure and that would remain secure in the face of Allied bombing and seizure of territory. OTL, the major German secret projects usually had to relocate at least once, sometimes more often than that, as Allies either bombed their sites or as the Russian armies advanced on them. It was bad enough having to relocate von Braun and company from Peenemunde to their redoubt in the Alpine foothills, but there is just no way they could simply move the whole elaborate massive setup necessary to concentrate weapons-grade fissionable materials. The only way they could keep them going would be if they presciently foresaw their own near-defeat and set the facilities up in locations both totally undisclosed and invisible to Allied high-altitude scouting, fortified against bombing should the Allies somehow learn of them anyway, and located in the central Reich where they'd be the last regions overrun by Russians or Anglo-Americans. Such foresight would be deemed defeatist of course, and the efforts to hide and fortify the sites would greatly add to the already astronomical costs.

But even if the German technical community were not disrupted by Nazi ideology, they'd need these rather ASB breaks--of intuitive focus on the most cost-effective approaches, of "defeatist" ultra-pessimistic insistence on maximum fortification and secrecy of the extraction sites--to stand a chance, even if their science were superior to Allied rather than retarded. And the cost would be draining on all other extreme technical ventures and indeed on routine logistics, a drain that goes on for years before it can even offer the promise of a payoff. Which when it comes amounts to a literal handful of bombs.

Then and only then do they face the question of how to deliver them.

V-weapons of course include the V-1 as well as V-2. It's not possible and not necessary to try to launch a 4 ton bomb on a rocket, true. An ordinary V-1 pilotless airplane can't lift one either, but I'd think that as the bomb design took shape and the materials were accumulating up toward critical mass, it wouldn't be so difficult to design a scaled-up V-1 type drone airplane that could do the job. Especially if the goal is merely to strike at a Soviet frontal concentration, then the drone bomb-plane would be flying mostly over German-controlled airspace.

If they want to take out Leningrad or Moscow instead, that would be pretty tough to do, I agree.

But I don't think the Reich was up to having even one bomb ready by 1944, even if they didn't drive out a lot of their best people first. It's just not realistic that they should avoid all the dead ends, wasted effort, etc that the Americans had to make as part of the trial-and-error process of learning what would and would not work. There was no cheap and easy way to get weapons-grade fissionables available even with the most brilliant strokes of luck. The A-bomb was a typical product of American advantages in the war, which were mainly based on the sheer mass of economic resources available to the Allied side.
 
Jet bomber =/= strategic bomber. The AR-234 WAS a jet bomber, and as you say it had between a third and a half of the capacity needed to carry a Fat Man/Little Boy. The Germans quite simply didn't have a tradition or brainpower to construct good strategic bombers in WW2 (and even the very best, the B-29, needed to be expanded to fit the bomb)-nor did it need them.

From the wikipedia article: "In the autumn of 1940, the RLM offered a tender for a jet-powered high-speed reconnaissance aircraft with a range of 2,156 km (1,340 mi). Arado was the only company to respond, offering their E.370 project, led by Professor Walter Blume."

Plus, you don't need a strategic bomber to bomb targets in Europe. The HE177 had a maximum bomb load of 6,000 kg, more than the weight of either Fat Man or Little Boy. Are you seriously suggesting that if, somehow, there had been an ultimate priority requirement the German aviation industry couldn't have managed to build a single aircraft capable of lifting a 4,000 kg bomb?

And really, the Germans didn't have the brains to design a bomber? Are you serious? I can accept an argument that they didn't have the requirement or the resources maybe, but the brains?

As I understand it, while the Germans OTL were also on the wrong technical track, the real barrier to their having an A-bomb by 1944 would have been logistical. They had access to uranium in whatever quantities they'd have needed, but the US Manhattan Project was a huge investment of resources. At one point, so I've read, they were authorized to take all the silver out of Fort Knox to fashion it into wires for cyclotrons. (I think they actually didn't do this as it proved unnecessary, but it shows how all-out serious the government was about pursuing any means necessary to achieve the goal, and the sort of economic scale they considered).

The USA had access, during the war, to most of the resources of the world. We had an economy that, with full employment, was the largest in the world. Even so it took most of the war to work our way to Trinity, at the end we'd fashioned just three bombs--the Trinity test shot, Fat Man, Little Boy. That was it. A few years later during the debate about whether or not to perform the Bikini tests, one reason Leslie Groves was against them was that three bombs were a significant--it was classified, even from President Truman, just how significant--fraction of the total American stockpile. And that was postwar, when the USA was no longer making an all-out war effort on every front, but the bombs were one of the few top priorities left and they were fully funded.

In order to make those three bombs, the Project had facilities and people mobilized all over the country, at major universities, at at least three major sites (Oak Ridge, Hanford, and of course Alamogordo). The New Mexico site was where the science and design engineering took place, but the Tennessee and Washington sites were where the materials were processed.

It was processing ordinary uranium into sufficiently concentrated U-235 or plutonium that was the killer. No amount of ASB foresight could make this task much easier; it could save effort in developing alternate lines of approach but in the end even with a perfect right guess as to the most cost-effective approach, the process of taking raw uranium ore and converting it into weapons-grade materials was a slow, expensive one.

For Germans to match that effort, they'd have had to devote that same scale of resources, and develop processing sites that were secure and that would remain secure in the face of Allied bombing and seizure of territory. OTL, the major German secret projects usually had to relocate at least once, sometimes more often than that, as Allies either bombed their sites or as the Russian armies advanced on them. It was bad enough having to relocate von Braun and company from Peenemunde to their redoubt in the Alpine foothills, but there is just no way they could simply move the whole elaborate massive setup necessary to concentrate weapons-grade fissionable materials. The only way they could keep them going would be if they presciently foresaw their own near-defeat and set the facilities up in locations both totally undisclosed and invisible to Allied high-altitude scouting, fortified against bombing should the Allies somehow learn of them anyway, and located in the central Reich where they'd be the last regions overrun by Russians or Anglo-Americans. Such foresight would be deemed defeatist of course, and the efforts to hide and fortify the sites would greatly add to the already astronomical costs.

But even if the German technical community were not disrupted by Nazi ideology, they'd need these rather ASB breaks--of intuitive focus on the most cost-effective approaches, of "defeatist" ultra-pessimistic insistence on maximum fortification and secrecy of the extraction sites--to stand a chance, even if their science were superior to Allied rather than retarded. And the cost would be draining on all other extreme technical ventures and indeed on routine logistics, a drain that goes on for years before it can even offer the promise of a payoff. Which when it comes amounts to a literal handful of bombs.

Then and only then do they face the question of how to deliver them.

V-weapons of course include the V-1 as well as V-2. It's not possible and not necessary to try to launch a 4 ton bomb on a rocket, true. An ordinary V-1 pilotless airplane can't lift one either, but I'd think that as the bomb design took shape and the materials were accumulating up toward critical mass, it wouldn't be so difficult to design a scaled-up V-1 type drone airplane that could do the job. Especially if the goal is merely to strike at a Soviet frontal concentration, then the drone bomb-plane would be flying mostly over German-controlled airspace.

If they want to take out Leningrad or Moscow instead, that would be pretty tough to do, I agree.

But I don't think the Reich was up to having even one bomb ready by 1944, even if they didn't drive out a lot of their best people first. It's just not realistic that they should avoid all the dead ends, wasted effort, etc that the Americans had to make as part of the trial-and-error process of learning what would and would not work. There was no cheap and easy way to get weapons-grade fissionables available even with the most brilliant strokes of luck. The A-bomb was a typical product of American advantages in the war, which were mainly based on the sheer mass of economic resources available to the Allied side.

Good summary. Although, as I've been trying to point out, in 1942 when the Germans effectively stopped trying, they were not far behind the allies and not working on the wrong lines (which is not to say that they would have been able to match the Manhattan project even if they'd tried).

The idea that the Nazi nuclear weapons project was downplayed/sabotaged by 'go slow' scientists trying to avoid a Nazi Bomb is a post-war fabrication by the scientists involved, who were trying to make themselves look good with the victors. The documents produced at the time do not support their story.

You are IMO quite right though, the issue for the Germans was logistical. They simply did not have the resources to build a bomb in a time-frame that would affect the war, and they recognised that.
 
The last bombing campaign aimed at London was the "baby blitz" (Operation Steinbock) which lasted from January to May 1944 when it was called off due to crippling losses (almost 10% a month). Also by this time the standard of training of bomber crews was so poor that most failed to even find London. By the end of the year the Luftwaffe's ability to reach London had dropped to essentially zero, in any case IIRC the Luftwaffe had nothing in its inventory that could carry a Little Boy anyway.

As has been mentioned, Ar234 Blitz recconniassance aircraft were still overlying London as late as April 1945. While STEINBOCK was a strategic failure, with 290+ bombers lost, which has been noted to approximately 10% attrition per month, it proved that the Luftwaffe did have the means to send bombers to the UK. What should also be remembered was BODENPLATTE - the final Luftwaffe offensive on 1 January 1945. Again, a strategic failure but still, considering the supposed how bad the Luftwaffe's stocks were, they fielded several hundred aircraft. "Tip-and-run" raiders were still attacking the UK until early 1945.

All this would suggest that a single nuclear strike would be possible, ignoring for the moment the difficulties in producing a bomb. There were aircraft which were capable of carrying a device the size of a Little Man. He 177 has been noted. There were also Ju 290, Me 234 and He 274 and He 277 bombers. Only the He 177 and the Ju 290 were available in quantity. If truly desperate they could have utilised the Bv 222 flying boat. Even the Fw 200 was capable of lifting 4,000 bomb loads. Admittedly the A-bomb would have had to be carried inside the fuselage on a one-way mission in those last two aircraft.
 
As has been mentioned, Ar234 Blitz recconniassance aircraft were still overlying London as late as April 1945. While STEINBOCK was a strategic failure, with 290+ bombers lost, which has been noted to approximately 10% attrition per month, it proved that the Luftwaffe did have the means to send bombers to the UK. What should also be remembered was BODENPLATTE - the final Luftwaffe offensive on 1 January 1945. Again, a strategic failure but still, considering the supposed how bad the Luftwaffe's stocks were, they fielded several hundred aircraft. "Tip-and-run" raiders were still attacking the UK until early 1945.

All this would suggest that a single nuclear strike would be possible, ignoring for the moment the difficulties in producing a bomb. There were aircraft which were capable of carrying a device the size of a Little Man. He 177 has been noted. There were also Ju 290, Me 234 and He 274 and He 277 bombers. Only the He 177 and the Ju 290 were available in quantity. If truly desperate they could have utilised the Bv 222 flying boat. Even the Fw 200 was capable of lifting 4,000 bomb loads. Admittedly the A-bomb would have had to be carried inside the fuselage on a one-way mission in those last two aircraft.

As another alternative, the Germans also had a few captured Allied heavy bombers in flyable condition.

There's a (IMO not very good) novel called A Thousand Suns, by Alex Scarrow, that uses a handwaved Nazi bomb and a captured B17 as the basis of its plot.
 
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