WI: WWII ends before Manhattan Project complete

Say WWII ends on late 1944 or early 1945 with the surrender or capture of Germany and Japan. What happens to the Manhattan Project? Will the US continue working on a bomb, or will the project get cancelled? How about other nations' atomic research?
 
Probably the Manhattan Project gets cancelled and then hurriedly started back up once we realize the Soviets are working on/have tested a bomb. The public reaction here would be...interesting.
 
Or . . . work continues on it given the cold war between U.S. and Soviets. And first use is likely to be bigger and more awful and not in a war which is soon a dead issue.

Meaning, if we re-run the cold war we’re not at all guaranteed to get lucky the second time.
 
At some point in late 1944 or early 1945 it is pretty clear to the Manhattan Project that the atomic bomb will work. Certainly the U-235 bomb design, which was not tested as they were certain it would work (the one dropped on Hiroshima). The implosion design plutonium bomb was a more complex issue and was tested to enure it would work. Once it becomes clear this will work I doubt the whole idea will be dropped, although the pace will be slowed somewhat so while you may get a U-235 bomb in 1945, a plutonium one will come later. Given the state of Soviet espionage, what you very likely see is the interval between a US bomb and a Soviet one shrink substantially which will have all sorts of butterflies roaming around. With an atomic weapon never having been used on a city, only in tests, the aversion to their use "its only a bigger boom" is very likely to be much diminished so the odds of their being used in Korea or something similar goes way up.

Absent the US bomb design program and production facilities of OTL the large advantage the USA has over the USSR in the 50s is not there, meaning deterrence/NATO has to rely more on conventional forces against the WP. Also SAC and the Air Force does not get in to the "planes with bombs are the answer" mode at least not until much later. Huge butterflies...
 
As it was, the US's nuclear capability underwent pretty severe atrophy between 1945 and 1949/1950. We can expect that to be even worse IATL, which as pointed out necessitates a slower recovery and gives room for the Soviets to close the gap. I disagree with Sloreck though and expect the conventional balance of power to be little different though: the main motivation behind the reliance on atomic/nuclear weapons by Americans were political-economic rather then strictly military. Namely, American politicians did not believe American's would accept the peacetime economic hardship that maintaining the necessary overseas conventional forces in Europe to hold against a Soviet assault... nuclear forces were less expensive in this regard.
 
Of course they will finish, if it was up to the US government, but the scientists might protest. They were doing it to fight the war, knowing what kind of power it could bring to start a new war. I mean they had issues the bomb was used against Japan.
 
Some of the scientists may quit if the war ends before the bomb is completed. Some won't, and by 1944 or so it has become more of an engineering project than the provenance of theoretical physicists. IMHO the USA, and other NATO countries will have to spend more on conventional forces to deter the WP.
 
In some respects this improves the program. Absent a war emergency the construction of the Haniford breeder reactors is no longer fast tracked and the facility is completed without the need for a extended shutdown for rework.
 
One Pandora's box is opened it is kinda hard to close it back up. Just knowing the bomb was possible would pretty much guarantee post WW2 development and deployment by at least the USA and the USSR. If the war had ended 6-9 months early for whatever reasons the Silver Plate B29 heavy bomber also would not quite have been ready. USA Presidents FDR and HT PROBABLY would have authorized further development of the bomb? Unknown. The USA Congress? Unknown. At some point the secrecy veil of the Manhattan Project would have to somewhat lifted. The USSR probably would have continued their own development. Stalin would have needed a post WW2 lever.

The concern would be if nobody really knew what the bomb could do the INCREASED likelihood of it being used post WW2 lingers? Nations tend to do that. Interesting question.
 
The general consensus seems to be that having seen not just the physical damage done by the bomb but also the radiation injuries etc, the attitude that atomic weapons were "just a bigger bomb" would lead to them being used in a later conflict. The problem is by then more than one country will have them, they won't be a war terminating event, and a fair number are going to go off for sure.
 
In some respects this improves the program. Absent a war emergency the construction of the Haniford breeder reactors is no longer fast tracked and the facility is completed without the need for a extended shutdown for rework.
Could the government keep the Manhattan Project a secret during peacetime? The budget wasn't huge, but it's still large enough to stand out to any journalist or government officer who gets curious. And as the military budget shrinks, it's going to become more obvious that the numbers don't match.

Also, did Congress know? IIRC, Roosevelt even kept Truman in the dark. I imagine that if news broke, Congress might have trouble explaining to their districts why the military is pouring billions into making bigger bombs during peacetime
 
IMHO the USA, and other NATO countries will have to spend more on conventional forces to deter the WP.

No way your getting any sort of increased conventional forces budget prior to a 1950 Korean War (assuming there is a 1950 Korean War: that’ll depend on some of the details of this early-WW2 end), not with the demobilization fever, isolationist wing of the US still retaining influence, and the Europeans post-war economic woes.
 
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