Nuclear Weapons help

[King_Arthur]

I'm currently writing a TL where WW2 is between Fascist USA, Italy, Japan and a Militaristic Authoritarian Germany and the UK + Empire/Dominions, France + Empire, the USSR, Mexico and assorted others like Brazil and China.

In this non-Nazi world, how feasible is it for Germany to detonate the first atom bomb as they have many promising figures working for them. Without the German brain drain, could the anti-Jewish US develop it in the same timeframe they did OTL, bearing in mind that they are fighting a five front war with distant allies. Also, how far along was the Japanese program?

 

[King_Arthur]

Anyone?

 

[Odinson]

The United States could pull it off, though maybe a year or two behind OTL.

The UK almost had one in the 40s but the Americans took most of the research I do recall

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

I'm currently writing a TL where WW2 is between Fascist USA, Italy, Japan and a Militaristic Authoritarian Germany and the UK + Empire/Dominions, France + Empire, the USSR, Mexico and assorted others like Brazil and China.

In this non-Nazi world, how feasible is it for Germany to detonate the first atom bomb as they have many promising figures working for them. Without the German brain drain, could the anti-Jewish US develop it in the same timeframe they did OTL, bearing in mind that they are fighting a five front war with distant allies. Also, how far along was the Japanese program?

Germany was in OTL far behind the allies. They were even on a wrong path.

The scientists then contemplated how the American bomb was made and why Germany did not produce one. The transcripts seem to indicate that the physicists, in particular Heisenberg, had either overestimated the amount of enriched uranium that an atomic bomb would require or consciously overstated it, and that the German project was at best in a very early, theoretical stage of thinking about how atomic bombs would work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Epsilon

 

[King_Arthur]

Were there any other supplies of Uranium known back then apart from Congo and Australia? Also, Germany may do better with Jewish scientists while the US could do worse.

 

[Dalriadan Archangel 21]

It depends on the POD.

If the US is anti-Jew from the 20s onwards at the latest then there is next to no chance of them getting the bomb.

 

[nbcman]

Were there any other supplies of Uranium known back then apart from Congo and Australia? Also, Germany may do better with Jewish scientists while the US could do worse.

Rather than quoting it, Wikipedia has a list of locations where ores containing uranium were mined. Quite a few of those locations were in central Europe.

 

[marathag]

The Japanese were ahead of the Germans in theory, but had even less infrastructure to work with.

 

[McPherson]

The Japanese were ahead of the Germans in theory, but had even less infrastructure to work with.

Correct. Their access to heavy water was also superior, but the access to uranium and their electronics and chemical industries were more on a par with Italy than Germany's.

Something about American bigotry. It is present and it is blatant, but there was nothing wrong about it in the American scientific community. The question is can either Germany or America create an international assemblage of talent that could brainstorm their way to nuclear fission in a controlled chain reaction, the precursor to developing an explosive device? The reactor has to come first. My answer is based on RTL trends. The Germans were kind of lost in the engineering wonderland and not paying too much attention to their theoreticians. The Americans in the 1930s were in the opposite strait jacket. All they had was theory. Given the European and American trends and the kind of environment that could vomit up a beast like Franz von Papen, who in an ATL might have had a good chance at becoming Chancellor to a Kaiser as looney as Wilhelm II, I think it would be a dead heat as to which nation harvests that international talent. A lot depends on who gets Bohr and Fermi. Both of them wind up in Roosevelt America and Berlin is in a LOT of trouble. Might add that if even they stay in Europe and Oliphant, Oppenheimer (stays) and Teller wind up in the US, the Germans are still screwed. The Germans do not have the USN explosives experts or Leslie Groves.

The Americans have the easier path to a device. My opinion YMMV.

 

[marathag]

Correct. Their access to heavy water was also superior, but the access to uranium and their electronics and chemical industries were more on a par with Italy

In some ways, Japan was ahead in electronics Theories than Germany, and even UK, given what Japan Radi Company had done with Magnetrons before the War. But as in other areas, effort was bifurcated between Army and Navy factions

 

[McPherson]

In some ways, Japan was ahead in electronics Theories than Germany, and even UK, given what Japan Radi Company had done with Magnetrons before the War. But as in other areas, effort was bifurcated between Army and Navy factions

I meant production base. Germany could routinely produce thousands of magnets, switches and tubes components. Japan could only produce these items in the hundreds.

And to be honest, I think the chemical industry bottleneck would be the bigger factor, more than electronics. The Japanese were very much hampered in that industry.

 

[ReconGuy02]

Zero. US would detonate bomb in 1946, ans as result you'll see world, similar to this.
Made by RVBOMally

 

[Crowbar Six]

There are deposits of Pitchblend in Germany and Czechoslovakia but I don't know how large or rich the deposits were.

 

[SandroPertini98]

If Einstein doesn't go in US, no Roosevelt Letter and no US Nuclear Program or a later one.
Germany had many problems but Einstein and Fermi could solve them in time.
Soviet Union launched its nuclear program under Kyurchatov's pressure in 1942 but, without spying West programs, it couldn't work before early 1950s.
According to the same Japanaese nuclear research group, Japan Empire didn't think to be able to build nuclear weapons before early 1950s.

 

[anotherlurker]

There are deposits of Pitchblend in Germany and Czechoslovakia but I don't know how large or rich the deposits were.

A large part of the Soviet arsenal comes from Eastern Germany - the logistical asccess to it was far superior to anything in Canada, Congo or Kazakhstan back in the day.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/19/news/a-legacy-of-ashes-the-uranium-mines-of-eastern-germany.html

They built the project big, in the prevailing spirit of Soviet gigantism. With little technical finesse, tens of thousands of workers were assembled, often digging with picks and shovels. From 1946 to the present, officials say, the mines delivered more than 200,000 metric tons of yellow cake, or uranium oxide, to Soviet military and civilian nuclear programs, extracted at great cost from pitchblende, a brownish-black ore that is the principal mineral source of uranium.
...
Ores from the Erzgebirge were never rich, Mr. Rudolph explained, yielding about nine pounds of uranium for every ton of ore mined, or about four-tenths of 1 percent, compared with 12 percent for some rich Canadian and Australian ores.

200.000 tons --> 200.000.000 kilograms --> 0,4% --> 800.000 kilograms of Uranium --> 0,72 % HEU --> 5760 KG of HEU
An early bomb needs anywhere from 15 to 30 kg of HEU.

 

[McPherson]

If Einstein doesn't go in US, no Roosevelt Letter and no US Nuclear Program or a later one.
Germany had many problems but Einstein and Fermi could solve them in time.
Soviet Union launched its nuclear program under Kyurchatov's pressure in 1942 but, without spying West programs, it couldn't work before early 1950s.
According to the same Japanaese nuclear research group, Japan Empire didn't think to be able to build nuclear weapons before early 1950s.

1. Fermi is more important than Einstein as he is a practical engineer as well as a theoretician. Churchill already had a bomb program. (See 2.)
2. The British had Tube Alloys and Oliphant.
3. The Germans did not have US Army trained Leslie Groves. Industrial management is an art form. Perhaps Speer could have stabbed at it, but I doubt he had the BRAINS to understand from mine to plutonium milling machine tools. Groves came from the ACE and it was routine for him.
4. The Germans did not have Parsons or RCA. Making FATMAN work was a miracle of precision mathematics, electrical engineering and applied explosives knowledge, another art form. (See 6.)
6. The Russians did have Kyarchurtov's gang, but 90% of everything his people have to solve is already American researched and is stolen for him. All he has to do is follow a program already mapped out and solve FATMAN, which IS the very considerable and formidable achievement. However to get to the Kernel and acquire the fissionable material; it is not like his team had to do anything original. As for essential original bomb design work (X-ray lensing was a Russian breakthrough.) That comes later with Sakharov and the H-bomb. The Americans get theirs through Teller's team but the Russians I believe get to it first, though test it second.

Japan's program never left the small scale phase. They had the theoreticians and GOOD engineers. Had they a settled Manchukuo, they might have had a device within a decade assuming a start date of 1939. No earlier.

 

[King_Arthur]

I'm assuming a Uranium device for Germany as it is a lot easier to make than a Plutonium. Also, Tube Alloys won't go as far because Britain is in a lot more trouble than otl. Don't forget that Japan, Germany and the US are on the same side here.

 

[McPherson]

I'm assuming a Uranium device for Germany as it is a lot easier to make than a Plutonium. Also, Tube Alloys won't go as far because Britain is in a lot more trouble than otl. Don't forget that Japan, Germany and the US are on the same side here.

Nuclear weapons are such a game changer in international power metrics, that I expect that if one starts a program and one is an imperialist power and succeeds, sharing is not high on the list of such a nation's foreign policy objectives. The US and Britain is the RTL example.

 

[marathag]

If Einstein doesn't go in US, no Roosevelt Letter and no US Nuclear Program or a later one.
Germany had many problems but Einstein and Fermi could solve them in time.
Soviet Union launched its nuclear program under Kyurchatov's pressure in 1942 but, without spying West programs, it couldn't work before early 1950s.
According to the same Japanaese nuclear research group, Japan Empire didn't think to be able to build nuclear weapons before early 1950s.

Einstein and more importantly Fermi would solve the some theory issues, but not infrastructure.

Then you have the implosion group, you need the Hungarian 'Martians' too. You need von Neumann, von Karman, Szilard and Teller if you want a Plutonium Bomb, the easier path than Going with HEU
Its hard, ok? If it was so easy, the UK would have had a Bomb in 1947.

 

[marathag]

I'm assuming a Uranium device for Germany as it is a lot easier to make than a Plutonium. .

The device is, but the infrastructure to get HEU is far more expensive with 1940s tech.

Calutrons are hellishly expensive, and you still need all that Nickel, and invent Teflon to hold up to the fluorine compounds needed to make UF6, then enormous amounts of electricity to get gaseous diffusion going.