Hitler had a nuke?

[Ramrod]

A German historian has claimed in a new book presented on Monday that Nazi scientists successfully tested a tactical nuclear weapon in the last months of World War II.

It has been common knowledge for decades that the Nazis carried out atomic experiments, but it has been widely believed they were far from developing an atomic bomb

link
Interesting stuff..........

[Paul K]

Think we should be grateful that it obviously wasn't a fully working and fully tested weapon otherwise things could have gone very differently

[Flubflow]

Yes, very different. We would never have had to suffer British Leyland cars

Originally Posted by BBC

The weapons were never used because they were not yet ready for mass production. There were also problems with delivery and detonation systems.

Thank F for that!!!

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Tuftus

Thank F for that!!!

Do you actually need to mass produce nukes if no one else in the world has them?
I mean, the american's didn't wait until they could mass produce them before dropping them.

Very good point, what I meant though I guess was thank f he did not get the chance to use them or I guess I probably would not be here typing this!!!

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Tuftus

Very good point, what I meant though I guess was thank f he did not get the chance to use them or I guess I probably would not be here typing this!!!

Nope, you might be typing it in Deutsch, Hans

more than likely, Gerhardt.

(Javol!)

[BBKing]

Jawohl?

Rubbish, I think, the Germans were a long way off making any kind of nuclear weapon - they had the theory worked out, but towards the end of the war the scientists in charge were more interested in surrendering to the US/UK forces (as opposed to the Soviets) than helping Hitler out - they'd realised by then that what they were working on wouldn't do Germany any good at all.

Karlsch claims the bomb was detonated on March 3rd, 1945
Germany surrendered on May 8th, 1945
The first US atomic test was on July 16th, 1945

So the Germans managed to beat the USA despite heavy bombing, the disintegration of their command structure and the removal of their only heavy water supplies (by an extremely brave Norwegian commando raid) and having a fraction of the resources. Yeah, right. Building an A-Bomb even now is something that takes years and lots of $$$, let alone building one with no blueprints to go on while being bombed and with dwindling resources.

The man has a book out. Nuff said.

Spiegel article (English)

[Flubflow]

The Germans were so far away from being capable of building/testing a device that they decided it would be better to load their precious uranium plus two experts on a submarine and go to Japan with it (U-234 I think). Germany surrendered before the submarine even got to Japan (and we knew about too it thanks to breaking their codes). It's difficult to be precise but based on what we already know of early US efforts, Germany was probably at least 2 more years from testing a potential nuclear weapon package nevermind constructing the actual bomb.

I also remember reading an article about Werner Heisenberg, who I believe was quite high up in the German research into nuclear weapons research.

Basically they exploded the myth that he (Heisenburg) had accidentally miscalculated the ammount of uranium necessary in a bomb to allow Critical Mass to be achieved. Post war it was alleged that he (Heisenberg) had done this on purpose, so as to stop Hilter and Nazi Germany getting the bomb.

[BBKing]

Although Heisenberg's error* was so obvious that he ran a great risk that someone would point it out and he would be exposed as deceiving the country He was speaking to leading Nazis at the time.

Just been re-reading the relevant section in 'Most Secret War' - by the time Kralsch says they were exploding bombs in Thuringen and Ruegen the scientists and their equipment had been driven out of Hamburg and Berlin by the bombing, and wound up in Hechingen, near Stuttgart, at the opposite end of the country, where they eventually surrendered to the US Army at the end of April. Another anomaly that shouts 'BS' to me.

* assuming it's the one about the need for rate of neutron escape to be small compared with the rate of neutron creation for critical mass - Heisenberg calculated something like 40 tons of U235 for a bomb, which was ludicrous.

Originally Posted by BBKing

* assuming it's the one about the need for rate of neutron escape to be small compared with the rate of neutron creation for critical mass - Heisenberg calculated something like 40 tons of U235 for a bomb, which was ludicrous.

From what I remember Heisenber calculated that Germany need a sphere of refined U235 about 4 feet in diameter, where as the Americans calculated to to be 6 inchs or so in diameter. How much this comes to in mass I have no idea.

All in all it made for interesting reading, even though I stoped studying Physics at GCSE level 16 years ago.

[BBKing]

That was about it, EoB, uranium is *very* dense, so even a four-foot ball would be pretty heavy. The figure I have for Heisenberg's original calculation is a ball 160cm in diameter weighing 40 tons. Apparently the German nuclear physicists captured and interned in the UK after the war were amazed that the US managed to find enough uranium for a bomb.

The mistake was saying that the rate of escape has to be small in comparison to the rate of production - it just has to be a wee bit less, so the first fission releases slightly more neutrons internally than escape, resulting in more fissions resulting in BOOM. The difference doesn't have to be that large, and neither does the bomb (the mass comes down to kilograms of U235).

Originally Posted by BBKing

That was about it, EoB, uranium is *very* dense, so even a four-foot ball would be pretty heavy. The figure I have for Heisenberg's original calculation is a ball 160cm in diameter weighing 40 tons. Apparently the German nuclear physicists captured and interned in the UK after the war were amazed that the US managed to find enough uranium for a bomb.

The mistake was saying that the rate of escape has to be small in comparison to the rate of production - it just has to be a wee bit less, so the first fission releases slightly more neutrons internally than escape, resulting in more fissions resulting in BOOM. The difference doesn't have to be that large, and neither does the bomb (the mass comes down to kilograms of U235).

Kool, thanks for the ''simple persons explenation'' BBKing.

Have a greenie.