Nazi Atomic weapons in 1943

a reply to: williamjpellas

Go google for clusius coefficient uranium. A Clusius tube is a specific way of thermally separating isotopes which does not work for Uranium at all. Other methods do, and some involve heat, but are not Clusius' device.

eta: like I said, a Clusius tube won't work for uranium, and straight thermal diffusion isn't in general really successful. Not that there aren't ways other than a Clusius tube that work but it is like mass spectroscopy in that it's slow and sloppy.

The successful methods often use heating of the UF6 as part of the overall magic, though.

Moreover, was the use of LiD to make tritium for fusion even known or conceived before 1945?

After all, the 1st true fusion device used liquid deuterium.


But the main argument against Nazi regime having actually developed & used any sort of nuclear weapon is that they would have broadcasted their triumph unashamedly, and nuked Russians at every opportunity.

a reply to: mbkennel

To be sure, Nazi Germany was constantly self-congratulatory, but remember that in this case, we are not talking about true game-changers in the strategic weapon sense, but rather about tactical or battlefield weapons---if they existed at all. Further, they would have been in small numbers absent some kind of U-233 or P-239 breeder reactor(s), and while the 1942 Heereswaffenamt Memo certainly spelled out what was apparently a perfectly viable route to the bomb, one that included a type of breeder reactor, there is still no hard proof---yet---that the Germans progressed past the testing stage (though that is certainly disturbing enough in and of itself!). In other words even if Hitler did have some kind of nuclear weapons capability in 1943, it was very limited, and he didn't have enough of them to gamble that he could nuke his opponents into oblivion without being destroyed himself. Under these conditions, it could be that the threatened anthrax and poison gas attacks by England and Russia, respectively, sobered even the Nazis into silence.


While I am not certain about whether the Japanese officer who made the report intercepted by MAGIC was correct(the report quoted by Farrell and which Simon Gunson used to start this thread), I AM certain that American codebreakers were reading the highest level secret Japanese communications, and that the Japanese---or at least some of them---believed that the Germans had, in fact, built and used nuclear weapons in some form against the Russians. To be sure, the Japanese may have been completely sincere in this belief, just sincerely wrong. Hopefully, further research will clarify this issue.


I am also all but certain that the German test detonations did occur and that they were probably nuclear weapons in some form or configuration. It seems likely that, if these bombs did go off, they were much smaller than the generally somewhat less sophisticated but much more powerful American devices. So once again, we are talking about battlefield nukes unless the Germans had been able to produce a significant stockpile of these bombs and were then able to launch them in waves at either 1) onrushing Allied armies, 2) London and other nearby Allied cities, or 3) both. Obviously none of those occurred. And even if the Germans did succeed, or sort-of succeed, in producing some kind of low level nuclear blast(s) during WWII, in and of itself that would not have been a practical weapon system. For that, you would need a means of delivering it reliably on target. The V-2 would be an obvious candidate in this regard, and so would the handful of German heavy bombers that were actually (and belatedly) produced. Even here, though, Allied command of the air was so thorough by the time the alleged German bombs were ready to go that Hitler would have been hard pressed to get them airborne in any numbers. Still....


Here the story about some kind of mutiny by several hundred Luftwaffe personnel just before war's end is interesting. Hermann Goering apparently told his Allied captors that he had helped to "save civilization" from some kind of catastrophe having to do with German secret weapons, but it seems that this statement---if he really did make it or one similar to it---was not taken seriously by the Allies. Or perhaps it was, but the secret to which Goering was referring was already known to the Allies and was already classified. The link above to the Grey Falcon website contains an article that mentions the Luftwaffe mutiny and subsequent execution of the mutineers, apparently to the last man. Does Hitler's end of the war order to arrest Goering find its explanation here?

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: williamjpellas

Go google for clusius coefficient uranium. A Clusius tube is a specific way of thermally separating isotopes which does not work for Uranium at all. Other methods do, and some involve heat, but are not Clusius' device.

eta: like I said, a Clusius tube won't work for uranium, and straight thermal diffusion isn't in general really successful. Not that there aren't ways other than a Clusius tube that work but it is like mass spectroscopy in that it's slow and sloppy.

The successful methods often use heating of the UF6 as part of the overall magic, though.

Okay, so you are making a very specific and nuanced point. Namely, thermal diffusion can be used to separate / enrich uranium but it is "slow and sloppy", and also that while a Clusius tube is a kind of T-D isotope separation technology, a true Clusius tube does NOT work in uranium separation / enrichment. Do I have that right? Sorry to keep asking, but I want to be as certain as I can be that I am properly understanding these issues, particularly if I write another article about all this.

originally posted by: williamjpellas

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: williamjpellas

Go google for clusius coefficient uranium. A Clusius tube is a specific way of thermally separating isotopes which does not work for Uranium at all. Other methods do, and some involve heat, but are not Clusius' device.

eta: like I said, a Clusius tube won't work for uranium, and straight thermal diffusion isn't in general really successful. Not that there aren't ways other than a Clusius tube that work but it is like mass spectroscopy in that it's slow and sloppy.

The successful methods often use heating of the UF6 as part of the overall magic, though.

Okay, so you are making a very specific and nuanced point. Namely, thermal diffusion can be used to separate / enrich uranium but it is "slow and sloppy", and also that while a Clusius tube is a kind of T-D isotope separation technology, a true Clusius tube does NOT work in uranium separation / enrichment. Do I have that right? Sorry to keep asking, but I want to be as certain as I can be that I am properly understanding these issues, particularly if I write another article about all this.

Bingo. If I ever got any time off, I'd try to source some stuff for you on separation approaches. I am, sadly, not available for the next four weeks, there's a big push to get something off the ground by December here.

They had a very nice (and probably superior) method for separating Uranium isotopes that was not used. In the time intervening, the French came up with a pretty straightforward process that's very elegant. Either could be done in the small, so to speak. Luckily, most countries/large groups don't know much about either.

eta:
I don't know if this link will work...

but if it does, skip to page 32 where the second paragraph starts off "But the Clusius-Dickel separation tube quickly lost its appeal".

etaa:
However, like I'm pretty sure I stated upthread, heating columns of UF6 as part of other separation techniques is somewhat similar to what Clusius was doing. It's just that it's more an adjunct than a technique. For instance, some centrifuge designs rely on thermal countercurrents to enhance the separation.

Since this thread continues to float 4 years on I would add that I was told that America was the first to use the atomic bomb and test it. If the Germans were the first to use atomic bombs in battle then why they are not credited in the text books could only be explained as the usual "victor bends the facts".

originally posted by: Asynchrony
If the Germans were the first to use atomic bombs in battle then why they are not credited in the text books

Well, as they were not the first.... the German atomic bomb did not actually exist....

originally posted by: hellobruce

originally posted by: Asynchrony
If the Germans were the first to use atomic bombs in battle then why they are not credited in the text books

Well, as they were not the first.... the German atomic bomb did not actually exist....

Yeah its a great idea except for the fact they never built one! You need only look at the resources the Germans put into research vs the Americans and later the Russians....

What is described is the new bomb that uses nuclear technology, that's what sy-gunsen writes on the thread start.


a reply to: Hanslune

Although it was the entire 19th Infantry Regiment of the Russians which was thus attacked, only a few bombs (each round up to 5 kilograms) sufficed to utterly wipe them out to the last man.

originally posted by: Asynchrony
What is described is the new bomb that uses nuclear technology, that's what sy-gunsen writes on the thread start.

You missed the 21 pages of thread where you find out that design doesn't work. It's bogus.

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: hellobruce

originally posted by: Asynchrony
If the Germans were the first to use atomic bombs in battle then why they are not credited in the text books

Well, as they were not the first.... the German atomic bomb did not actually exist....

Yeah its a great idea except for the fact they never built one! You need only look at the resources the Germans put into research vs the Americans and later the Russians....

To " The Americans " you can add The British & Canadians.
It wasn't just a U.S. bomb don't you know/

+1 from a former nuclear weapons technician.
Boosted nuclear weapons also use tritium to increase the yield. In a sense, the yield can be dialed up or down with the addition of tritium.
But then, there is a big worldwide tritium shortage now.

I think the German government was several years off in their research. Hitler was too busy V-2 bombing England and having some of his other science projects waste time and resources.
a reply to: mad scientist

originally posted by: Ludivocus
+1 from a former nuclear weapons technician.
Boosted nuclear weapons also use tritium to increase the yield. In a sense, the yield can be dialed up or down with the addition of tritium.
But then, there is a big worldwide tritium shortage now.

I think the German government was several years off in their research. Hitler was too busy V-2 bombing England and having some of his other science projects waste time and resources.
a reply to: mad scientist

Denying the validity of Einstein's work didn't help much either. There is still 0% proof that the Nazis had nukes.

I am open to the possibility that the Germans possessed nuclear weapons during WWII - but why wouldn't they have used them against the United States? They could have wiped out our ground forces shortly after Normandy.

originally posted by: peskyhumans
I am open to the possibility that the Germans possessed nuclear weapons during WWII - but why wouldn't they have used them against the United States? They could have wiped out our ground forces shortly after Normandy.

You'll never get a coherent answer to this rather good question from those who claim that the Nazis had nukes. There is still 0% proof that they had these weapons - they rejected the science behind it, they failed to understand the resources needed to build them and above all they lacked the tools to do so. But they still claim that the Nazis used such weapons based on... well, not a hell of a lot. I'm sticking with the view of Dr RV Jones, who was heavily involved in the scientific side of the war and who was one of those people who monitored the V-weapons. He said that there was no significant threat from the German atomic programme. And he was there.

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg

originally posted by: peskyhumans
I am open to the possibility that the Germans possessed nuclear weapons during WWII - but why wouldn't they have used them against the United States? They could have wiped out our ground forces shortly after Normandy.

You'll never get a coherent answer to this rather good question from those who claim that the Nazis had nukes. There is still 0% proof that they had these weapons - they rejected the science behind it,

Not really (Heisenberg and von Weiszacker knew what was up), but their politics made things very difficult.

they failed to understand the resources needed to build them and above all they lacked the tools to do so.

Indeed. To be specific, the "resources needed to build them" were people. In particular, Jews and relations of Jews. Like, for instance, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi, the actual inventors of the fission chain reaction and its technology, and the thousands of others driven out to UK and USA by Nazi's vile bigotry.

This design you have shown should work. You don't have to have criticality to have a measure of fission. Any amount of fission produces energy. High temperature and pressure from this RPG like device should cause fusions in lithium deuteride producing some neutrons and some fission in the fissionable material. This would be a subcritical explosion, but it would by definition be a nuclear explosion, since the majority of the blast is supplied by the fission process. It would be a very dirty bomb. This would be half way between a dirty bomb and a traditional nuclear bomb.

a reply to: CAPT PROTON
Oh please reveal. The waepons coming next I believe will be either antimatter or mini blackholes.

originally posted by: Adaluncatif
High temperature and pressure from this RPG like device should cause fusions in lithium deuteride producing some neutrons and some fission in the fissionable material.

Perhaps you can show us the numbers for fusing lithium and deuterium directly, and how a few kg of chemical explosives meets that criteria.

Two hints here - 2d + li6 only occurs in a star, and it's aneutronic.

a reply to: sy.gunson

Just because you can't accept the facts, doesn't entitle you to piss all over it and dismiss it as made up.

Sorry, Sy, but MadScientist is right. Nuclear physics was in its infancy in those days and the Germans nuclear projects (one of which was run by Werner Heisenberg) never worked out how to obtain a sufficient concentration of fissile material to make a bomb. They were completely on the wrong track, and their efforts were also sabotatged by many brave German scientists who didn't want to see Hitler get his hands on an atom bomb.

How Close Ware The Germans To Getting A Nuclear Bomb?