Germany had a nuke!

Sounds a bit unlikely to me but I mention it for the interest of other members.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4348497.stm

 

Hmm... Very interesting !

 

Sounds unlikely. But it should be easy to confirm/refute by testing the radiation level at the alleged test zone.

 

They did, and they found radioactive isotopes.

Still it should be taken with a grain of salt until further evidence can be presented. But I don't think it is unlikely though, I mean there's alot of stuff we still don't know about.

KBO

 

I generally trust Der Spiegel as a source and it is quoted in this article debunking the theory because of shaky evidence (especially eyewitnesses). Personally I don't think the Germans had one, but I don't have any evidence about that either; however, there are many popular legends about what the Germans did or did not do in the last months of the war and these tend not to be true at all.

 

What exactly is the "recipe" for a fission bomb (or the bombs used in WW2)? Do you `need "heavy water" for it?

 

Hmm.. I don't know, I'd say its pretty much 50/50. The fact that they found Radioactive isotopes at the eledged site, kinda hits the spot

I do hope someone will dig deeper into this though.

Best regards, KBO.

 

I think they do, I saw a TV documentary which described the "mysterious" sinking of a ship that carried vital heavy water destined for Germany. It pretty much spelled the end of the Germany atomic program. It was the handy work of some underground resistance, Dutch or Swiss? I forgot.

 

The Telemark raid, probably.

 

A book based on speculation and eye witnesses - I wonder if it can get any more uncertain than that?

Christian

 

The recipe is to bring a "critical" amount of fissonable material, plutonium or uranium, together very rapidly. Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb) used a five inch gun barrel to bring the two fissionable sections togther. Fat Boy used a much more sophiticated spherical implosion technique using machined explosive charges to bring the fissionable material together.
The difficult part of making a WWII fisson bomb was creating the plutonium or extracting the right uranium isotopes, none of which exist natuarally in usable quantities (if at all). The key to this was a functioning nuclear reactor, which is where the heavy water comes in. The Norwegian resistance and British repeatedly attacked the sources of heavy water, the primary one being in Norway.
When the British spirited pioneer Danish physicist Neils Bohr from Copenhagen, he attempted to bring the total heavy water available to him in a beer bottle. Attempted, because when he arrived in Britain he realized he had brough with him a bottle of beer.

The Germans never had even a small experimental nuclear reactor running. They were far from having an atomic bomb.

 

Besides that, 'heavy water' wasn't very useful for the purpose of making a nuclear bomb, so the Germans were ehading up a dead end.

Christian

 

Right. the heavy water was useful in moderating the reactor, not actually in making the bomb material.

 

Maby this was made for cooling a reactor 'Already' made ! (Or not )

Anyway we couldnt know.

KBO

 

Well, we could - a nuclear reactor doesn't just disappear. It wouldn't be possible for it to blow up like a nuclear bomb, and to actually destroy it would still leave some trace. Consider that the Allies knew pretty well where the German power plants were and that the overview of almost all German minor installations are known - that no trace of a nuclear reactor or no records of any such plans, should have survived is highly unlikely (and I'd say impossible).

Christian

 

Unless it's all a huge conspiracy...

 

Conspiracy nuts..er..enthusiasts..consider a lack of evidence as prima facie evidence that a conspiracy theory must be true..and the lack of evidence demonstrates how effective the conspiracy has been in suppressing it...and so on..and round and round goes the circular anti-logic.

Life is too short.
Never debate with mystics, collectivists or conspiracy enthusiasts..all of which often reside in the same "mind".

 

I think they were capable to make an a bomb and the evidence is good but I doubt they had one

 

I don't really think so, but we'll never know. One article I've read claims the Germans spent as much on the V-1, V-2 (and Me-262) as the US did on the Bomb.

 

I doubt they were even close - who would have done the work for them after they'd let (or forced) all the nuclear scientists leave.
I think this is another piece along the lines of all those pretty books coming out of German Secret Projects - particularly aircraft.
Look at the recent series of three (Fighter/ Bombers/ Ground Attack) - gloriously pretty pictures (which don't match the technical descriptions!!!) of might-have-beens, and then read Tony Buttler's book on similar period British.
But his book gives specifications and says WHY they didn't make it into production or service. The German one gives the impression that most of them could have been in action with a bit of funding, Buttler makes you realise the difference between "paper planes" and service aircraft.
Oli
(Who as a schoolboy designed the world's BEST fighter aircraft, but BAe was too shortsighted to build them)
PS you don't need a critical mass - apparently Fat Man used sub-critical but the initiator gun gave higher than critical densities AFAIK, but contrary to popular rumour in Hull (UK) I was never a nuclear weapons technician!