What if the government covered up the real way FDR died?

Otto told me I could start a thread on this when I was ready - well, the book goes out for formatting tomorrow! It should be live on Amazon via Kindle and Print on Demand sometime next weekend if everything goes smoothly. This may not be the right place for this either - would a moderator please move it if not? LRusso216 - thanks for reading the uncorrected proof and giving me your input!

Here is the cover:

 

Thanks for moving this. I don't know why I couldn't find the fiction forum. DOH!

 

What's the connection to a B2?

 

Looks more like the German Ho229, a jet flying wing which never got beyond testing but which presumably plays some part in the story.

 

Indeed...the same could be asked...but its the right time now...thanks Carronade : )

 

Well he's hardly going to tell you, you have to buy the book!

But at a guess - the Ho229 has something to do with the "real" way FDR met his end...

 

And I appreciate your feedback Louis. It means a lot that you took the time to read it. It is an Ho229, and the drawing is courtesy of A.L. Bentley - he did the tech drawings in "Horten HO229 - Spirit of Thuringia". I highly recommend you guys check out his site at: www.albentley-drawings.com He does amazing work.

I have read two different test dates on the Horten, one in December, the other in January. The Germans rarely made mistakes like that, so it got me thinking. Also, there is a famous UFO pic (which really started the UFO craze in the '40s) :

Please note how similiar it is to a Horten. It was reported as having a strange "skipping, or oscillating" motion, which is a condition tailless aircraft (flying wings) have. The B2 overcomes this with sophisticated computers, but I found a pic while doing my research of a complete Horten that was supposedly taken in Indiana in early 1946, and it got me thinking. If our government had snagged several Hortens out from under the noses of the Russians, they would have sanitized the records as well, and the entire program would have been hush hush. Could it have been a Horten that crashed at Roswell in '47?

The point is, this is a work of fiction, and not for everyone, but I spent years researching details in order to make it believable. They say the best lie has an element of truth to it. Well, we had a decent operational jet at that time also - the P-80 Shooting Star. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that both aircraft play important roles in the book. It was a lot of fun to write. It should be on Amazon about a week from now. Thanks for listening guys. I just wish I'd found this forum while I was doing research. Well - maybe you guys can answer some questions on the next one. (About 2/3rds done with it too.)

 

Yes i have pictures of US army looking over a captured Horten (looked complete)...And you will find pictures of it on various UFO sites also...Interesting connections you are making (i know, in the name of interest not fact) - I doubt the Rosswell crash was a Horten double...disc like was the overall description, the Americans were experimenting with MANY different airframes and types of propulsion back then. They even spread the UFO rumours themselves to throw people off the prototypes! The program would have been known about by the Russians (Horten brothers were famous)...Perhaps for me, more interesting was the "saucer" being worked on at the same time by the Germans...discovered that spinning mercury at high speeds produces an "anti-gravity" effect...Now theres a story! : )

 

You're talking about the "Bell" right? I have a crazy book with some very interesting stuff on that in it. Also, there is a fascinating transcript (there is an actual picture of the real document in the book) of a German pilot being interrogated after the war, and he mentions witnessing a test of what sounds suspicously like an atomic weapon in Silesia...in October 1944! It's pretty compelling.

Another little known fact - the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of different designs. We only tested one design. Where did the other bomb come from? The Germans invented theoretical physics and had 5 separate atomic programs. I had a separate storyline delving into this which I cut from this book and which is now going to be another book.

I also have a video where a Major (I can't recall his name, but Leslie Groves was his boss) who was sent to look for more Uranium 235, says that they finally recovered 12 gold-lined cylinders full of Uranium 235 from U-234, a u-boat which surrendered off the East coast at the end of the war. He states that uranium was used in one of the atomic weapons we dropped on Japan. I think that just as now, there was a lot of top secret stuff going on that would have been bad for morale or would've compromised security in some way had the truth gotten out. Anyway, it's makes good fodder for novelists! :eyebrows:

 

Indeed! Was just talking to Poppy about that sub a little while ago...there was 235 stamped on the boxes and the German crew laughed thinking the simple Japanese had mislabled the crates with 235 instead of 234! I dont think it is/was possible to trace a particular load of 235...The official take is that it is "highly likely" that the captured 235 was used in the bombs, becasue the US was scrounging the world looking for more at the same time...this find would have been a bonanza.
We should talk...i have many what if WW2 story ideas mate : )

 

Your just "mess'in" with us right?

Which is the "other" bomb? The one we tested, or the first one we dropped?

 

Fiction can be fun, but the fairly well-known facts are that the Manhattan Project developed two types of atomic bombs. The Trinity test used an implosion-type plutonium bomb, and the same type was dropped on Nagasaki. The Hiroshima bomb (Little Boy) was a gun-type weapon using uranium. There was sufficient confidence in that mechanism that a test was not considered necessary. There was also a limited supply of uranium, and it is speculated that the uranium oxide taken off U-234 in May may have found its way to the Oak Ridge diffusion (refining) plant and into the American inventory.

 

Well looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Aggregate_U-235_production it states:

Then when you consider that U-234 wasn't captured until Mid May of 45 it's possible that some of the German Uranium made it into the bomb the time line is pretty tight. She apparently docked on 19 May for instance and it would have taken at least a day or two and possibly more to inventory what she was carrying. Then the Manhatten Project people have to find out about the Uranium and it has to get shipped to a processing plant and processed (doubt anyone kept track of where it came from at that point either). Not sure it makes much difference in any case.

 

Maybe the reason there was so much confidence that it would work is because the Germans had already tested it? See, fiction IS fun! I would love to know the absolute skinny about this, one way or another, but damn if it doesn't make for a swell story. Update: I sent the book off for formatting this morning. I am hoping to have it on Amazon sometime this weekend. Since two main characters are wounded warriors, I am going to contribute $1 of every sale to veteran's support organizations. I feel that it's just the right thing to do.

 

Except the Germans had clearly not tested it. Unless of course you consider "Twisting the Dragons tail" to be testing. In which case it had been well tested in the US as well.

 

There was an official, with a team tasked with hunting down Uranium...from memory the story goes word reached him and he was at the dock within hours...the amount was said to be not enough for a bomb, but would have made a significant contributor for one...

 

I suspect that it would have been a significant contributer to the second Uranium bomb which of course was never assembled. The souce above does state that they used all the highly refined Uranium they had plus some that was refined to a lesser level. However the critical mass was quite a bit under the 50lbs used. I should say it's not beyond reason that it was used just that the time lines are pretty tight. You are looking at less than a month and a half. Looking around a bit the Uranium was already enriched to some level. I wonder if it might have been the 50% enriched material mentioned? If so then it might already have been enriched to that level. Since there was 550 Kg enough to make about 20 Uranium bombs if it was at 85% it pretty clearly wasn't enriched that much.

Looking at the source more carefully it's not clear that it was enriched Uranium. Indeed it's officially stated that it was Uranium oxide. 550Kg of Uranium Oxide would yield around 1 Kg of highly enriched Uranium. Indeed http://books.google.com/books?id=RNaXAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=german+uranium+u-234+enrichment&source=bl&ots=Jxmh3eG1aU&sig=aqtaPqpLR0_7g4Rd6rQz_GQOfxc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DJM-VM3KCI_GgwTLtYKQBQ&ved=0CDsQ6AEwCDgU#v=onepage&q=german%20uranium%20u-234%20enrichment&f=false
States that it was not enriched material.

 

In the interview I saw with him, he actually went to the dock and took possession of the uranium personally. He said they suspected the Germans had more of it, and he was flying all over Europe to find enough of it because our enrichment program in Tenn. wasn't making it fast enough. Regardless of truth, there's enough speculation and wild coincidences to spin some pretty good yarns. I don't write non-fiction, it's fiction. I do, however, read a lot of non-fiction. I do have an active imagination however. I want people to be entertained, but not say "What a load of BS." So far my readers say it's very believable. I mean, did you enjoy Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail?