WI the Nazis captured an atomic bomb?

Sort of in between. A Germany which has brought the USSR to its knees, but which is still in a (hot) war against the WAllies in 1945.
 

CalBear

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Hmm... probably gonna ruffle some feathers here... WI the Americans (us) came into possession of a plutonium bomb from the Germans at a place named Haigerloch located in Wurttemburg Germany in 1945.

And wi that plutonium bomb was used as the get-out-of-Germany-free-card by certain individuals such as Martin Bormann and a few select others?

AND... wi the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was in fact (and history)...Hitler's Bomb?

The device dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium bomb.

The reactors in the United States that were used to build the Hiroshima bomb could only produce uranium weapons...not plutonium weapons.

In order to built both, one would need two separate types of nuclear reactors. There were several reactors, Oak Ridge Tenn, and Hanford, Washington State.

I served with a guy who had been at the Hanford site in the 1940's & according to what he told me it was a place where uranium was made into fissile material.

Could he have been misinformed or b.s.'ing me? Sure, but he wasn't a boozer and he just knew too much.

Could he have been wrong, of course.

But history could be lying to us as well since, only the victors write history, the losers live with the loss.

Check out the town of Haigerloch in Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany on wikipedia or just google the name of the city (village by American standards).

Our gov't lies to us continuously and has for generations going as far back as one can think.

I know someone is going to say: "...well Joho, if Hitler had a bomb, why did he not use it?"

Several reasons:

1) Germany did not have control of the air.

2) Germany did not have a delivery system... no aircraft that could carry said weapon and no clear target. Who do you bomb with your one (1) bomb? London? Antwerp? Warsaw? Paris? A Soviet mechanized rifle division somewhere in eastern Poland?

No matter who could have been bombed would not bring the Allies to the conference table to discuss terms with the Nazis.

Also, perhaps der Fuhrer was kept in the dark about some things particularly after January of 1945.

Perhaps someone close to him kept that news of any potential wunderwaffe away from him in order to use that weapon not as a weapon but as a "key", a bargaining chip, to get himself and a few close confidants out of Germany and to be immune from any potential punishment(s) from the Allies.

Who could have been one of the potential man to use this hypothetical scenario that I have shared with you? The "Brown Eminence" himself...Martin Bormann.

I know many who read this will scream ASB and claim that I am full of excrement but...sit back and think about it before you attack me.

Consider this, your and my government (in Washington, D.C.) does lie to us...then and now.

Consider a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb. Our main reactors in Oak Ridge & Hanford back during the 1940's could only produce uranium not plutonium.

Where did the plutonium bomb come from then?

Re-read this from the top.

Cheers, Joho :).
Well, your friend either misspoke or he is pulling your leg.

The reason the U.S. went with the dual path U235/Pu239 development track was that the processing of U238 > U235 was so bloody difficult, while production of Pu 239 was much easier, but the Uranium bomb was a sure bet while the Plutonium implosion device was a crapshoot (also why they actually expended a Pu239 physics package as a test, no one was really sure the damned thing would work). The Plutonium bomb was VASTLY more difficult to create (it required, among other things, a breakthrough in chemical explosive engineering in ADDITION to the physics breakthroughs) but it also had the potential to be far more powerful (Little Boy had an actual yield of 11-13kT, Fat Man was 20-22kT actual yield), producible in a near assembly line faction, and was seen as a better weapon system.

I would recommend that you review some data on the processes that are used to enrich uranium to weapons grade. No nuclear reactor is needed, or is, in actual fact, utilized (unless one is used as the source of electrical power for the selected enrichment process, all of which use massive amounts of electricity).

You are not full of anything except bad information from a friend.

To the OP:

The chances of a weapon being recovered is below poor. The early uranium weapons were armed once the aircraft was airborne because a crash on take off was seen as being more than sufficient to detonate the weapon, although the early plutonium bombs were already armed, but had early version of an electrical safety in place, these were removed once the aircraft was at altitude. The early weapons lacked the interlocks that prevented a weapon from detonating accidentally (even those were a bit dodgy, in one Broken Arrow incident a recovered weapon was found that had suffered failure by five of the six safety interlocks) and were detonated by a mechanical pressure sensor, if the weapon reached 1,700 feet in an armed state it detonated. The bombay of a B-29 was NOT pressurized so even if the aircraft was shot down before the doors were open on the bomb run the weapon would have detonated 1,700 feet over the ground (this was not, AFAIK, an intentional "salvage detonation" design).

Early nukes were, to put it mildly, twitchy. The crews weren't just brave because the flew into enemy airspace.
 
You know, reading the title, I was envisioning a secret Nazi commando operation to board the Enola Gay (or Bokscar) in mid-flight over the Pacific. Imagine my disappointment, when I read the actual question. :p
 
Uranium is made into a fissile material by bombarding it with neutrons. This turns non fissile U-238 into fissile Pu-239. The guy from Hanford was right, you just misunderstood waht he was saying.
 
Wouldn't that alert the black helicopters?:p
Sh, we don't need to TELL them that.

Wasn´t the main reason that the USA managed to produce an atomic bomb in 1945 that they captured German reseachers? I was under the impression that the Germans had come longer in the attempt to produce an atomic bomb than the Americans.

You would be mistaken. The German program was AWFUL. Heisenberg screwed up the math and thought it would take more uranium than was on the Earth to make a bomb, and that's pretty fortunate...for the Nazis. Because that team was also under the impression that the reaction would be self-limiting, and that a hunk of graphite (I think it was graphite anyway) would be able to keep anything under control. They were rather wrong on this point. Meaning the project probably would have killed them, their staff, and whatever party upper crust came to watch.
 
and that a hunk of graphite (I think it was graphite anyway) would be able to keep anything under control

Cadmium.
And by June 1942, the US had made tons more pure Uranium metal than the Nazis made during the entire War

Their reactor design was a Chernobyl as soon as it went critical
 
Cadmium.
And by June 1942, the US had made tons more pure Uranium metal than the Nazis made during the entire War

Their reactor design was a Chernobyl as soon as it went critical
Probably that then. I'm not a physicist, but we had one explain that whole bit a few months (years?) ago, and I can't remember who it was.
 
You would be mistaken. The German program was AWFUL. Heisenberg screwed up the math and thought it would take more uranium than was on the Earth to make a bomb, and that's pretty fortunate...for the Nazis. Because that team was also under the impression that the reaction would be self-limiting, and that a hunk of graphite (I think it was graphite anyway) would be able to keep anything under control. They were rather wrong on this point. Meaning the project probably would have killed them, their staff, and whatever party upper crust came to watch.
The Farm Hall transcripts are interesting here - the German atomic scientists were locked up at a farm outside Cambridge when the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and were utterly astonished when they learned of it, followed by frantically thinking up excuses for why they had been so utterly unable to string together the basics of a nuclear weapons programme (their preferred excuse was that it was an act of resistance against Hitler).
Unfortunately for them, the entire conversation was bugged...
 

Delta Force

Banned
Hmm... probably gonna ruffle some feathers here... WI the Americans (us) came into possession of a plutonium bomb from the Germans at a place named Haigerloch located in Wurttemburg Germany in 1945.

And wi that plutonium bomb was used as the get-out-of-Germany-free-card by certain individuals such as Martin Bormann and a few select others?

AND... wi the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was in fact (and history)...Hitler's Bomb?

The device dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium bomb.

The reactors in the United States that were used to build the Hiroshima bomb could only produce uranium weapons...not plutonium weapons.

In order to built both, one would need two separate types of nuclear reactors. There were several reactors, Oak Ridge Tenn, and Hanford, Washington State.

I served with a guy who had been at the Hanford site in the 1940's & according to what he told me it was a place where uranium was made into fissile material.

Could he have been misinformed or b.s.'ing me? Sure, but he wasn't a boozer and he just knew too much.

Could he have been wrong, of course.

But history could be lying to us as well since, only the victors write history, the losers live with the loss.

Check out the town of Haigerloch in Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany on wikipedia or just google the name of the city (village by American standards).

Our gov't lies to us continuously and has for generations going as far back as one can think.

I know someone is going to say: "...well Joho, if Hitler had a bomb, why did he not use it?"

Several reasons:

1) Germany did not have control of the air.

2) Germany did not have a delivery system... no aircraft that could carry said weapon and no clear target. Who do you bomb with your one (1) bomb? London? Antwerp? Warsaw? Paris? A Soviet mechanized rifle division somewhere in eastern Poland?

No matter who could have been bombed would not bring the Allies to the conference table to discuss terms with the Nazis.

Also, perhaps der Fuhrer was kept in the dark about some things particularly after January of 1945.

Perhaps someone close to him kept that news of any potential wunderwaffe away from him in order to use that weapon not as a weapon but as a "key", a bargaining chip, to get himself and a few close confidants out of Germany and to be immune from any potential punishment(s) from the Allies.

Who could have been one of the potential man to use this hypothetical scenario that I have shared with you? The "Brown Eminence" himself...Martin Bormann.

I know many who read this will scream ASB and claim that I am full of excrement but...sit back and think about it before you attack me.

Consider this, your and my government (in Washington, D.C.) does lie to us...then and now.

Consider a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb. Our main reactors in Oak Ridge & Hanford back during the 1940's could only produce uranium not plutonium.

Where did the plutonium bomb come from then?

Re-read this from the top.

Cheers, Joho :).

The nuclear reactors used during the Manhattan Project were power reactors that took uranium fuel (specifically the isotope known as uranium-235) and made it undergo a nuclear fission reaction, causing atoms to break apart into neutrons and fission products (lighter neutron rich atoms), and prompt gamma rays. Some neutrons hit uranium-238 isotopes and are actually captured, causing the uranium-238 to become unstable uranium-239, which then undergoes nuclear decay to become neptunium-239, which undergoes further decay to become plutonium-239. The uranium-239 to neptunium-239 decay takes a few minutes, while the neptunium-239 to plutonium-239 decay takes a few days.

The plutonium is extracted from the fuel using nuclear reprocessing. This must occur fairly soon after the plutonium is created, because otherwise it will undergo fission just like the uranium-235. Plutonium actually contributes about a third of the total power produced in uranium fueled reactors, and some reactors even use plutonium extracted from reprocessing of civilian/military nuclear reactor fuel or the recycling of nuclear weapons (which received their plutonium from military reactors) in mixed oxide (MOX) fuel that comes with some plutonium already in the elements.

Reactors used for the plutonium production (as opposed to power production) cycle often feature online refueling or otherwise undergo frequent shutdowns to have fuel offloaded and replaced with new elements.

There are some reactors that go the other way around and are designed to produce uranium-233 (an isotope of uranium somewhat between uranium-235 and plutonium-239 in characteristics) using plutonium starter loads and supplementary loads of uranium-238 or thorium-232, but they aren't very common.
 
You know, reading the title, I was envisioning a secret Nazi commando operation to board the Enola Gay (or Bokscar) in mid-flight over the Pacific. Imagine my disappointment, when I read the actual question. :p
You've reminded me of a novel (Moorcock?) which had an airship attempting to deliver an atomic bomb to Hiroshima, IIRR there was a skirmish on board.
 
The Farm Hall transcripts are interesting here - the German atomic scientists were locked up at a farm outside Cambridge when the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and were utterly astonished when they learned of it, followed by frantically thinking up excuses for why they had been so utterly unable to string together the basics of a nuclear weapons programme (their preferred excuse was that it was an act of resistance against Hitler).
Unfortunately for them, the entire conversation was bugged...
HEISENBERG: I don't believe a word of the whole thing. They must have spent the whole of their ₤500,000,000 in separating isotopes; and then it's possible.
WEIZSÄCKER: If it's easy and the Allies know it’s easy, then they know that we will soon find out how to do it if we go on working.
HAHN: I didn't think it would be possible for another twenty years.
WEIZSÄCKER: I don't think it has anything to do with uranium.
......
WEIZSÄCKER: I would say that, at the rate we were going, we would not have succeeded during this war.
HAHN: Yes.
WEIZSÄCKER: It is very cold comfort to think that one is personally in a position to do what other people would be able to do one day.
......
WEIZSÄCKER: How many people were working on V 1 and V 2?
DIEBNER: Thousands worked on that.
HEISENBERG: We wouldn't have had the moral courage to recommend to the Government in the spring of 1942 that they should employ 120,000 men just for building the thing up.
WEIZSÄCKER: I believe the reason we didn't do it was because all the physicists didn't want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war we would have succeeded.
......
HEISENBERG: The point is that the whole structure of the relationship between the scientist and the state in Germany was such that although we were not 100% anxious to do it, on the other hand we were so little trusted by the state that even if we had wanted to do it, it would not have been easy to get it through.
DIEBNER: Because the official people were only interested in immediate results. They didn't want to work on a long-term policy as America did.
WEIZSÄCKER: Even if we had got everything that we wanted, it is by no means certain whether we would have got as far as the Americans and the English have now. It is not a question that we were very nearly as far as they were but it is a fact that we were all convinced that the thing could not be completed during this war.
HEISENBERG: Well that's not quite right. I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making a uranium engine but I never thought that we would make a bomb and at the bottom of my heart I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb. I must admit that.
......
WEIZSÄCKER: If we had started this business soon enough we could have got somewhere. If they were able to complete it in the summer of 1945, we might have had the luck to complete it in the winter 1944/45.
WIRTZ: The result would have been that we would have obliterated LONDON but would still not have conquered the world, and then they would have dropped them on us.
WEIZSÄCKER: I don't think we ought to make excuses now because we did not succeed, but we must admit that we didn't want to succeed. If we had put the same energy into it as the Americans and had wanted it as they did, it is quite certain that we would not have succeeded as they would have smashed up the factories.
DIEBNER: Of course they were watching us all the time.
WEIZSÄCKER: One can say it might have been a much greater tragedy for the world if Germany had had the uranium bomb. Just imagine, if we had destroyed LONDON with uranium bombs it would not have ended the war, and when the war did end, it is still doubtful whether it would have been a good thing.
 
Thing is this one is actually reasoned a bit and not completely crazy. in short i dont think this one is bannable.
The thing is, its really not. Like all conspiracy theories it relies on hearsay and speculation.

It even includes the phrase "history could be lying".
 
Sh, we don't need to TELL them that.



You would be mistaken. The German program was AWFUL. Heisenberg screwed up the math and thought it would take more uranium than was on the Earth to make a bomb, and that's pretty fortunate...for the Nazis. Because that team was also under the impression that the reaction would be self-limiting, and that a hunk of graphite (I think it was graphite anyway) would be able to keep anything under control. They were rather wrong on this point. Meaning the project probably would have killed them, their staff, and whatever party upper crust came to watch.
That's actually a rather interesting POD on its own if you can get around all of the (many) other problems with the Nazi nuclear program. It's more-or-less ASB, but I think you could get a pretty good TL out of it.
 
That's actually a rather interesting POD on its own if you can get around all of the (many) other problems with the Nazi nuclear program. It's more-or-less ASB, but I think you could get a pretty good TL out of it.

Well, you can plop a Chernobyl sized exclusion area in SW Germany around Haigerloch, as the world gets to find out what 'China Syndrome' means 30 years early
 
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