WI: The US Nukes the USSR

Actually the US had the components for seventeen fission bombs at the beginning of 1948; forty three were built and six retired during that year. The available stockpile at the time of the Airlift was approximately thirty five weapons, mostly MK3MOD0 designs.

Ah, yes. I was thinking of the start of 1947. In any case, even 50 bombs are far short of requirements, to say nothing of the planes, crews, infrastructure, or intelligence to do what they wanted to.

If the US had felt the requirement the production rate could have been significantly higher.

No, no it couldn’t have. As the video I posted pointed out, reactor problems obviated significant increases in production until 1949.

A war fought in 1948 would have started with Soviet advances across Europe but these would have been rapidly slowed by the tactical and operational use of nuclear weapons on force concentrations, rail junctions, stockpiles and production centres. Once more long range bombers (B-50 and B-36) were available Societ factory complexes, transport infrastructure and cities would have been attacked until the country fell apart.

You obviously didn’t watch the video I posted. SAC simply didn’t have the bomb assembly teams, atomic-capable bombers, bomber air crews, or forward infrastructure to pull that off. They only had 12 atomic certified air crews in 1948, which gives us a hard maximum limit on the number of bombs SAC cam deliver at once, and when those same crews were asked to try and do a mock bomb run in Dayton, Ohio they failed to even find the target despite zero enemy resistance and short flight paths.

So no, the Red Army isn’t going to be slowed by any tactical or operational strikes, something that wasn’t even planned for in the 1948 warplans. The likely result of an immediate atomic bombing campaign is liable to be the destruction of the limited American atomic bomber force...
 
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You obviously didn’t watch the video I posted. SAC simply didn’t have the bomb assembly teams, bombers, bomber air crews, or forward infrastructure to pull that off.
Plus people tend to seriously overestimate the effectiveness of early nuclear weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were outliers in terms of vulnerability to the direct effects of these devices due to the peculiarities of pre-War Japanese construction. Destroying railroads is much harder than it seems given their very low cross-surface and their materials, requiring very close impacts. As for force concentrations? I feel obliged to remind people that a Centurion tank was placed 500 yards from a nuke, survived and was still workable (though its crew would not have survived the shockwave). Unlike in movies and games, forces tend to not be that concentrated IRL and dropping early nuclear devices tactically would be a waste unless you are trying to break a specific point to attack.
 
What if following the Berlin Blockade incident, the US uses all of their nukes to obliterate western Russia?

So we're assuming after the incident has come to a close in early 1949? The USSR is, to put it bluntly, fucked in such a circumstance. The war would end within six months to a year with minimal American casualties.
 
So we're assuming after the incident has come to a close in early 1949? The USSR is, to put it bluntly, fucked in such a circumstance. The war would end within six months to a year with minimal American casualties.

I should have worded myself better. Whilst the blockade was going on, what if war broke out.
 
So we're assuming after the incident has come to a close in early 1949? The USSR is, to put it bluntly, fucked in such a circumstance. The war would end within six months to a year with minimal American casualties.
A short and victorious war. Suuuuuure. Please ignore what everyone else said about nuclear availability in devices and vectors, or the actual effectiveness of said weapons, or the internal reactions in the US at such a batshit insane order. The myth of the world being at the mercy of a US nuclear monopoly then seems as prevalent as the myth of Soviet human waves...
 
A short and victorious war. Suuuuuure. Please ignore what everyone else said about nuclear availability in devices and vectors, or the actual effectiveness of said weapons, or the internal reactions in the US at such a batshit insane order. The myth of the world being at the mercy of a US nuclear monopoly then seems as prevalent as the myth of Soviet human waves...

For one, those Soviet waves are actually non-existent. Leaving that aside, even if they did exist, they will rapidly become a non-issue without logistics. To get what I mean, considering the following:

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This is a map of the railways within Poland during the 1940s, and it is through this German and Russian armies passed through and sustained themselves. As you can see, the destruction of Warsaw, Krakow and Lwow would effectively collapse rail transport (and thus the ability to sustain forces) west of the Soviet frontier. This is important, as by early 1949 the U.S. had more than sufficient nuclear weapons to do so and was forward deploying bombers into England. As the year progresses, their advantage will only grow as the U.S. stockpile IOTL peace conditions reached into the hundreds while new weapons, such as the B-36 and B-47, began to arrive. Presuming the destruction of Soviet logistics (and thus the Red Army) and limited atomic attacks (Leningrad and Baku, for example) aren't sufficient to bring the Soviets to heel within a few months, by the end of 1949 or early 1950 sufficient attacks on the interior will begin and then it's just a matter of time.

Even assuming the USAF doesn't take the war to the Soviet homeland, it's doubtful the Soviet economy could even sustain such a conflict. According to Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race: The Truman Administration and the U.S. Arms Build-Up by Raymond P. Ojserkis:

"There was evidence indicating that the Soviet economy was weak. Even the Soviet government's published statistics, which were thought to be generally exaggerated, revealed an economy far behind the west. Soviet diplomatic actions in the immediate post-war period, whether in the form of attempts to gain more favorable conditions for Lend-Lease payments, Soviet lobbying for a large German reparations payment, Soviet demands to gain Austrian oil, or the transportation of basic infrastructure from conquered eastern Europe to the Soviet Union all indicated economic deficiencies. General Walter Bedell Smith, a future head of the Central Intelligence Agency, estimated that it would be another 10 to 15 years before the Soviets had recovered from the last war. The CIA's Office of Research and Estimates (ORE) tried to appraise the Soviet Union in terms of war potential, looking at the industrial strength, technology, and possible bottlenecks to increased production. The ORE concluded that Soviet economic weaknesses gravely limited the ability of Moscow to fight a prolonged war with the North Atlantic Treaty nations."

"In particular, American analysts felt that the Soviet petroleum industry would find it difficult to produce enough high octane fuel, the Soviet machine tool industry did not produce enough spare parts, there was insufficient rolling stock to handle war time needs in the USSR, and the Soviets had perennial shortages of certain non-ferrous metals and certain types of finished steel. Complicating these problems, and, to an extent, causing them, were the Soviet deficiencies in properly trained technological personnel and managers."
 
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Consider the US plan, Operation Dropshot, formulated in the late forties. It outlined a methodology to collapse the USSR by breaking its communication and command infrastructure. The idea was that it may or may not involve atomic/nuclear weapons.
 
Didn’t the Soviets at the time have aircraft with the speed and altitude requirements necessary to potentially intercept US nuclear bombers?
 
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