If Hitler had the nukes

o simply say "Would Germany have used this weapon?" is lacking imagination if you will not consider the question "How would Germany have used this weapon?". Apparently I am not alone in this view, since Ebar also brought the subject up.


hahahahah there you go. I really like you Sionur1978. Your last statment put a simle on my face. I am looking foward to future questions with you. I was just kidding with the imagination. The death star? wow! Now tell me do you feel any better. Was the Death Star Russian? HaHAHHA

 

Yes Tunic, and of course I meant that to be taken seriously... :roll:

Possibly enough for a one-way trip though, if you stripped out everything unnecessary and replaced it with fuel it might be possible to make the Eastern coast. Use RATO for take-off to save a bit more fuel... possible... to be honest I don't have the expertise to work out the figures.

It would have to be a specially converted aircraft though, I think a "stock" aircraft would be unlikely to be able to carry such a heavy bomb far enough even for a one-way trip.

 

It certainly would need to be specially converted! I know you're an aircraft fan Mr Toastinator so you will know (and keep an eye on the tank game - there WILL be an aircraft design problem coming), but a lot of people don't: Bomb loads in general are for small(-ish) packages. The Me had a bomb load of 3000 kg, Fat Man and Little Boy weighed roughly 4500kg. A 50% increase isn't too bad :lol: , but the fact that the bomb bay would have to be completely redesigned to take a single load of that weight, possibly removing some structural members, is the real killer.
PS Pilot Officer Prune in his TIEphoon would have defended the Death Star very adequately in my opinion.

 

It should be possible for the poster of a question to direct the answers given; this makes the question more specific and hence makes the answers more relevant to whoever asked the question.

Tunic: show some respect for those who are trying to answer your question to the best of their abilities.

 

Fair comment, but directing the answers is not the same as having a hissy-fit over the answers being given, especially when they contain points that are entirely relevant to the questions being asked, because they do not strictly conform to what you wanted to read.

 

Oli, you are right of course. Without seeing a cut-away diagram or something similar it's difficult to say how much structural modification would be required, or whether it would even be possible.

I would imagine a modifications might take the form of the Mosquito's bulged "Cookie" bomb-bay so that minimum alterations to the structural members need be made, but of course the additional drag of that might have too much of an effect on long range performance.

Additionally looking at the Me264 it wouldn't appear that there are many heavy weapons systems such as turrets to remove to make the additional weight savings.

I can't help wondering if it could be towed part of the way, such as the Messerschmitt Gigants used to get airbourne, but that in itself has problems. It's obviously risky, and of course a fully loaded Amerika bomber weighs more than a fully loaded Gigant, realistically in this case you'd have to figure on something upwards of another 10,000kg, possibly in excess of 15,000kg, so towing might not be a practical option. (Well I wouldn't fancy it if I were the crew!)

Looking through the Luft46 article, they already figure on a RATO take-of, so again not much weight savings there, unless you add additional RATO units to aid the climb to altitude.

Airfields to deploy from are going to be limited, and the aircraft is going to need to travel in excess of an extra 500 miles than it was designed for going by a realistic deployment date of Late-1944. I think you have to assume at the most optimistic an airbase in western Germany somewhere, and it'll have to have a good, long concrete runway to support the weight of the fully loaded Me264.

All assuming you'd go for a transatlantic attack of course.

As for deliberately sacrificing the crew, Hitler famously disapproved of the piloted V-1 because he found the idea distasteful and that wasn't even supposed to be a suicide weapon! I think you'd need to factor in an extra couple of hundred miles to allow the crew to ditch and hopefully be rescued by U-boat. Unfortunately all this will be eating into the range and margin for error that you just wouldn't have.

Given something like an Me264, Moscow would be reachable, and you might even have enough fuel to get the plane or crew to a friendly or Neutral.

Anyway, Herman Skywalker would easily out-fight your TIEphoons!

 

I don't think i had a hissy fit. Next time I will make the question more central to the ansers I want to hear.

 

Um, question.

What is to stop the Germans using suitably painted captured B-17s or B-24s to deliver the weapon? This could potentially rule out all enemy interception (Western Allies won't deliberately shoot down their own stuff, and they climb too high for the Russians).

I reckon that Moscow would be target number 1 - the heart of bolshevism.
America would also be a hot target, but they would have a tricky time getting it there.

 

A) The stock B-24 doesn't have enough of a bomb-load to carry the bomb, and the B-17 has quite dismal range when that heavily loaded.

B) There is a very real risk if taking this route that the carrier aircraft may be shot down by mistake by Luftwaffe fighters, even if at night.

C) Not too sure about this one, but during the BoB the RAF used an IFF system called Pip-squeak, I don't know if it was used by other air-forces such as the USAAF, but if so it would mean that radar stations could quite readily ID the aircraft as a not-friendly.

 

On the subject of IFF I've read an account of a British Night Fighter. What he said is the IFF could be taken as proof that a contact was friendly but lack of IFF signal could not be taken as proof that it was hostile. On account of the fact that like everything else IFF systems could break down. Even radar equiped planes had to get close enough to eyeball a contact before they could engage.

If your going to go down the using an enemy aircraft route the best bet is use at night and ground the LW anywhere along it's route.

 

The Germans certainly had a flyable Sterling... but I doubt that that could handle the bombload.
Could any stock ETO bomber carry a nuke (obviously using Little Boy / Fat Man as comparisons)?

Could a modifed version do so? (ie: by having anything not essential removed)

 

How about the Lanc? Assuming roughly the same dimentions as the US bombs. Your probably taking about one of the later models. The bomb bay will be long but is it deep enough?

 

Of the stock ETO 4 engine planes:

B-17: Doubtful due to small bomb-bay, plus dismal range with such a heavy bombload.

B-24: Possible, would make it overweight by about 1,200lbs though and reduce range.

Stirling: Could handle the weight, but poor range and poor ceiling would probably make this a no-goer, not to mention the size/shape of the bomb-bay which would need modifying big time.

Halifax & Lancaster: Either could handle the weight and probably bomb size with minimal or no modification, with the slight edge going to Halifax on range and ceiling.

Overall, you have two serious contenders, the Halifax and the Lancaster, if I had the option I would chose the Halifax as the range gives you slightly more choice of targets and the ceiling a slightly better chance of the aircraft surviving the detonation.

But: It's still going to be a one way trip most to try and get such a bomb-load as far as somewhere like Moscow.

 

Checking the figures on Warbirdsresourcegroup.org, I'd estimate you could possibly get 1,500 miles out of a late war Halifax with a 10,000lb nuke on board. You should be able to extend this by stripping out the turrets, fairing over the dorsal position and fitting an auxiliary fuel tank in its place and possibly using RATO.

Maybe being optimistic with a good tailwind you might get as much as 2,000 miles out of such a modified Halifax.

Is 2,000 miles enough for a one way trip from East Germany to Moscow?

 

Hmmm, so the aerial options are either to go for a more 'tactical' target, or not bother.

I do like the 'lay it by submarine' approach.


Though Hitler would doubtless instist on it being delivered by a super-duper rocket developed from the V2, thus meaning that, in theory, they can hit any target anywhere, even on Mars, but in practice that the finished nuke is captured intact by the Allied as the rocket's r&d is never finished.

btw - as Hitler apparently went a touch nutty towards the end and wanted to destroy everything (talk about being a bad loser!) would he have used nukes within Germany? Perhaps neutralising the Soviet victory parade in Berlin? (yes, I know that this was post-war)

 

That is one hell of an understatement!

 

Or the massive parade in moscow? The problem is how thouth.

 

I reckon that blowing Berlin to pieces as the Red Army symbolically march through would look very pleasing to Hitler's Wagnerian fantasy-mind. Plus this would be easy - simply hide the device somewhere central (Brandenburg Gate area?) and wait for the mid-point of the parade, when a volunteer pushes the fuse in.

Getting the nuke to Moscow would be a pipe-dream. Which probably means that Hitler would go for it... :roll:

 

So do people think he would have used them?

I wonder why he never used gas? Even at the end he was never desperate enough to use gas which everyone had feared in 1940

FNG

 

i believe it was because he was gassed during the first war