German Nuclear Bomb

Source please?

Plan
The Amerikabomber project plan was completed on April 27, 1942, and submitted to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring on May 12, 1942. The 33-page plan was discovered in Potsdam by Olaf Groehler, a German historian. Ten copies of the plan were made, with six going to different Luftwaffe offices and four held in reserve. The plan specifically mentions using the Azores as a transit airfield to reach the United States. If utilized, the Heinkel He 277,[4] Junkers Ju 390, and the Messerschmitt Me 264 could reach American targets with a 3 tonne, 5 tonne, and 6.5 tonne payload respectively.[2] Although it is apparent that the plan itself deals only with an attack on American soil, it is possible the Nazis saw other interrelated strategic purposes for the Amerikabomber project. According to military historian James P. Duffy, Hitler "saw in the Azores the ... possibility for carrying out aerial attacks from a land base against the United States ... [which in turn would] force it to build up a large antiaircraft defense."[2] The anticipated result would have been to force the United States to use more of its antiaircraft capabilities—guns and fighter planes—for its own defense rather than for that of Great Britain, thereby allowing the Luftwaffe to attack the latter country with less resistance.[citation needed]

Partly as a liaison with the Wehrmacht Heer, in May 1942 Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch requested the opinion of Generalmajor Eccard Freiherr von Gablenz on the new proposal,[5] with regard to the aircraft available to fill the needs of an Amerikabomber, which had then included the Me 264, Fw 300 and the Ju 290. von Gablenz gave his opinion on the Me 264, as it was in the second half of 1942, before von Gablenz's own commitments in the Battle of Stalingrad occurred: the Me 264 could not be usefully equipped for a true trans-Atlantic bomber mission from Europe, but it would be useful for a number of very long-range maritime patrol duties in co-operation with the Kriegsmarine's U-boats off the US East Coast.

Amerikabomber - Wikipedia

U-boats with V1´s seemed to me more available.

Bloody foreigners.

 

Really, the Azores? Really? And just how were the super-dooper-supermen planning on establishing a presence in the Azores sufficient for the mission?

One might suppose that the German Foreign Ministry was unaware of the oldest mutual defense treaty between two European powers, Great Britain and Portugal, the
Windsor Treaty of Eternal Alliance dating back to around 1373 and, oddly, still in force today. Any, however feeble, attempt to seize the islands by the Germans would have given Great Britain the excuse and opportunity to begin their own seizure.

Uh huh, right, sure, easy. And despite of the facts the Germans did not have a navy that could do it, nor the sealift capability to move the wherewithal, you know, equipment, supplies, servicing personnel, defense troops, what-not, and the RN and USN might have something to say about it. Are some just expecting these behemoths to just appear overhead, land and the pilot leans out the window and says "fill it up with high test, check the oil and wipe the windows, please." Nonsense. All that would presume that the RAF, which already starting using the airfields in the Azores in October 1943 (see above treaty reference, diplomacy won out), followed shortly there after by the Americans, would be so accommodating. Note that the Allies did have the capability to move whatever they needed or wanted to such places, unlike the supermen.

The noted ". . . military historian James P. Duffy" seems to make the classic error of not considering either the RAF presence or baring that, as I suspect he never checked, the simple logistics problems for his pipe dream. It would also seem the esteemed military historian never heard the words "aircraft carrier". And completely superfluous to the his apparent minor problem of establishing a base in the Azores (this another of those military genius "snap of the fingers to make it so" fantasies) those who would profess the outstanding potential for such projects have never looked at the proliferation of radar stations and air defense squadrons on the east coast of the US (obviously, some in the USAAF and, yes, the USN, had some regard for enemy capabilities, however outlandish). Great circle from the Azores to the New York City vicinity is about 2245 miles, one way, Mostly over ocean, but as the route approaches land it crosses directly over one of the highest concentration of air defense installations. And, please, don't anyone suggest it could be done at night as the USN had some five or six night fighter squadrons right along the pathway. While, true, these were squadrons in working up training, but what were they training to do? Night interceptions, of course, over the ocean, over land, it was what they did. Just a very realistic training evening. It is terrible when the reality of all the things that could go wrong can and do heavily intrude. Don't be fooled by Wiki breathless excitement of it all nonsense.

 

You silly goose, we all know a tesseract is only use for brewing beer.

 

Sorry, but this entire post is wrong almost entirely across the board.

Germany did not halt work on nuclear weapons in 1942. The idea that they abandoned their attempt to develop atomics at that point in the war proceeds largely from what Albert Speer wrote in Inside The Third Reich. This was some years before he contradicted himself, in his own words, in another book, Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed to Build an SS Industrial Empire. It does not appear that you have read it. In this tome, which was his last, Speer recounts how he "was forced to defend" himself due to aspersions that were being cast upon him by other Nazis who castigated him for his seeming lack of support for the development of atomic bombs for the Third Reich. In response, he wrote a letter to Walther Gerlach---the "Reich Plenipotentiary For Physics"---in late 1944 in which he described his enthusiastic approval of ongoing efforts to weaponize nuclear fission.

Contrary to Rhodes and particularly Powers, the real German nuclear weapons program existed almost entirely outside of Speer's personal fiefdom at the Reich Armaments Ministry. It was largely organized and funded by the SS, which worked closely with Manfred von Ardenne's private superlab in Berlin - Lichterfelde, and with a similar facility operated by the Reichspost and its ardent Nazi Director, Wilhelm Ohnesorge. Ohnesorge was himself an inventor - physicist of some note. The German Army Weapons Bureau (heereswaffenamt), the Navy Weapons Bureau and the Luftwaffe were also prominent. Neither Werner Heisenberg nor Otto Hahn were particularly important.

There are a number of sources which describe wartime German "piles" or reactors, though it does not appear that these became operational on an industrial scale until very late in the war. Here is one of the primary sources in this regard.

From Manhattan Project foreign intelligence:

Philip Morrison and Karl Cohen. 31 July 1944. Appraisal of Enemy Bomb Production. [NARA RG 77, Entry UD-22A, Box 168, Folder 203.11—Tech. Countermeasures + RW—1943–1944]

APPRAISAL OF ENEMY BOMB PRODUCTION

Summary

“Recent evidence essentially confirms our earlier general statements on enemy bomb production.

The reports now at hand lead us to conclude:

1. A German “Y” project has been underway since early 1943.
2. A D2O pile is in operation, but we do not believe that this is on production level.
3. It is implied that a separation method is operating at a production level, for it is surely improbable that the enemy will organize a utilization group without something to use. We include a time schedule, and a technical discuss of the probable means employed.

Enemy production of devices can be as high as:

1. 1 device every 3 months—on the assumption that 30 kg of material are required per device.
2. 1 device every month—on the assumption that 10 kg of material are required per device.

In either case the first completed device could be in enemy hands now.”

The authors of this report were Manhattan Project scientists Philip Morrison and Karl Cohen. Morison in particular appears to have been a prominent technical intelligence analyst or agent in addition to his very important work on the Fat Man plutonium bomb. The reference to a German “Y” project means an effort to build an electromagnetic uranium separation factory, almost certainly as part of von Ardenne's sector in the overall nuclear program. “Y-12” was the designation the Americans gave to their own version in the Manhattan Project, at Oak Ridge, TN. A “D2O pile” means a nuclear reactor moderated by deuterium. This particular report states that the German pile was apparently a proof of concept structure or pilot plant and not a full scale production reactor, but nevertheless operational. Contrast this with the conventional history that has come down to us in the present day from Goudsmit, Pash, Groves, and others which states that WWII German science was nowhere close to either a functional reactor or any kind of atomic bomb or nuclear weapon, and also that the destruction of the Vemork plant in Norway meant the end of German work with deuterium. There were in fact at least nineteen (19) additional sites at which WWII Germany was either known or suspected to be producing heavy water besides the Norsk Hydro site. Two of these were themselves sizable hydroelectric facilities that were also located in Norway. To my knowledge neither was attacked even once by any Allied military force or sabotage team.

Regarding the Haigerloch reactor, recent analysis indicates that it was fully capable of sustained operation if it had been fueled with a sufficient amount of uranium. So there was nothing wrong with the design. The heerewaffenamt built a series of "piles" at or near the German Army proving ground at Gottow (south of Berlin) during the war under the supervision of the eminent physicist Kurt Diebner. One of these may have been the "D2O pile" mentioned by Morison and Cohen, though it could just as easily have been located somewhere else entirely. Diebner's group constructed (I think it was--) four "piles" as part of a methodical process of testing successively larger and more sophisticated proof of concept experimental reactors, with the last one reaching sustained criticality in late 1944 - early 1945. There was at least one known accident associated with this uranmaschine and one or more fatalities.

 

Okay, I'll bite. "Yep" what?

 

What we're seeing above is just more of the same old conspiracy drivel from the usual suspects.

What is presented takes intelligence estimates and speculation and turns it into factual evidence where there is none. Of course, intelligence officers are going to present the worst-case scenarios along with more factual and reasoned estimates. What we see here is cherry picking that selects only the worst-case scenario (or best case for the conspiracy theory) and presents that.

As for the German program, they were trying but were nowhere close to success. Their program was really miniscule. The "reactors" they developed were for specific parts of research into the fission process and really nowhere near being capable of sustained and controlled criticality. The Germans had skipped using graphite because they couldn't figure out a way to remove impurities in it like boron (a neutron poison), something the US had managed by mid 1941. Their entire heavy water production program was a tiny fraction of what the US was producing at the same time. The amount of captured uranium of whatever sort was likewise a tiny fraction of US production.

As with so many other wunderwaffen programs, the German nuclear one tried but simply lacked the necessary industrial capacity, manpower, and focus to produce an operational product. It was hardly alone in that respect.