Allies Get Nukes In '43, Yet Lose The War

[royabulgaf]

HOW WE GOT THE BOMB IN 1943 AND LOST WWII

Franklin Roosevelt actually listened to Einstein's warning in 1939.  The Manhattan project was started earlier, and with a few breaks, a cannon barrel type nuclear weapon was ready in mid 1943, code named the "Long Rifle".  Good for about 5kt, the weapon however was over 30 feet long and not really suitable for dropping.  The US Navy already had a project using semi-radio-controlled bombers.  The aircraft would take off under pilot control, and at cruising altitude the pilots would pass control off to a mother ship, and then bail out.  The program had some success, and a mission was planned to attack the heavily armored submarine pens at Brest.  A PB4Y Privateer was essentially rebuilt around the bomb. Lieutenant (jg) Joseph Kennedy was assigned to pilot the first mission.  As he reached the bailout point, he threw the switch to turn over control to the controller aircraft.  Something went wrong, and the plane disappeared in a blinding fireball that could be seen from London.
Luckily, two more bombs were ready.  To be safe, the bomb would not be armed until after takeoff by a technician.  RAF Bomber command was chosen to drop Little Boy.  Unfornately, the Lancaster was shot down over the North Sea and never seen again.  Another night mission was planned soon after.  The bomb was a total success, with about 12kt yield.  However, as was occasionally the case, the night bomber was about 20 miles off target.  
THis was not something the Germans could ignore.  Although nothing of strategic importance was hit, you can't simply ignore the night sky lit up like the sun.  The official German explanation was an ammo dump explosion, and a rumor was deliberately spread that this was actually a secret weapons test that went much better than expected.  However, the Germans knew exactly what happened.  Their lackadaisical nuclear program was not going well at all, and they had no hope of getting nuclear weapons of their own in the forseeable future.  However, something had to be done.  Joseph Goebbels gave his best speech ever, calling for Total War.  The V1, already in mass production, was modified to carry nerve gas.  
Gas attacks from the robot bombs were launched against all the industrial cities of England within range.  Although casualties were not that high, the discomfort of near constant wearing gas masks slowed industrial production and made life miserable.  Winston Churchill commented on viewing one of the wrecked "stinkbugs"  that the Germans accomplished with some sheet metal and stovepipe that we couldn't do with billions.
Churchill's problems were just starting.   The USAAF sealed off one of it's bases where the 509th bomb group was just settin up some new B-29s.   A high altitude Spitfire recce plane returned with a photo of some type of ramp or pit being built next to the runway.  A second recon mission was "accidentally" shot down by the airbase CAP.  He also pondered reports of new American bombers under development, a gigantic bat-winged bomber that could fly from the US to Germany and back, and a six-engined monster nearly as big as a destroyer.  He realized that Britain was turning from an ally to an unsinkable, but expendable, aircraft carrier.  He sent a message to all British commanders to suspend offensive operations until further notice, and directed the British Ambassador in Ireland to contact his German counterpart to open cease fire talks.

Kim Margosein

[Nick]

So what stops Churchill ordering 'Bomber' Harris from loading up the 30,000 tons of Chemical Weapons the RAF has in stock (production starting in 1938), ramping up the production lines and making a real mess of German cities?

Go with the German story of it being an 'ammo dump explosion' and the British public should agree with a tit-for-tat gas attack on the Germans as it looks like they did it first. Besides, atomic bombs are really just large conventional weapons, aren't they?

Don't forget the plans to poison the enemy's cattle herds to starve them out, Operation Vegetarian. This involved dropping feedcakes laden with anthrax onto the grazing grounds which would make the 2001 foot&mouth crisis look like a picnic.

These atomic wonder weapons might be awkward to work and the RAF bomb-aimers need to be more accurate but if the USAAF are preparing to drop more then they must be good, right?

Nick B)  

[BillSlim]

Would it be worthwhile pointing out that the Lancaster, or even the Lincoln can't actually carry an A-bomb, or am I being a nitpicker again?  
The first RAF aircraft theoretically capable of carrying a nuke was the Washington B.1 (B-29), though it wasn't equipped for it. IIRC the Canberra and the Valiant would be the first RAF bombers with an actual nuclear capability.

If I was chosing a platform to deliver nerve gas to the UK I wouldn't use the unreliable easily shot down V1, but the V2. Even then AA Command had come up with a way of shooting it down.
So we'd end up with a situation where Bomber Command and the 8th AF can deliver massive amounts of gas and anthrax on German targets but the Germans can only deliver relativley small amounts.

I doubt that the Americans would abandon us, or that Churchill would negotiate peace with the Germans, Britain had put everthing into winning, we had nothing to gain and lots to lose by negotiating a surrender. I also doubt we wouldn't know about US preperations either, we helped to build the bomb and General Marshal never kept anything from General Dill.

The Germans can't win WW2 once the Americans are in. All they can do is delay the inevitable. If they do make the UK untenable all the Americans will do is to push forward development of the the B-36 and start mass production of fission devices. Then one day a few years down the line a massive fleet of B-36s will appear over Germany and her cities will cease to exist.
WW2 is over in a few hours and the Germans have lost.

A 'The Big One' scenario, or a variation of it, is the most likely result of Germany doing better at the begining of WW2, or if they prolong the war for any reason.

Sorry to shoot down your scenario.

[Maverick]

BS.,

What possible defence could/did the Allies have for V-2, short of blowing up their launchers (which were mobile, BTW)?  Ballistic weapons simply are unstoppable, unless you have Patriot or something similar.  You could hardly shoot 'em down, or failing that, barrage balloons???  I know, move the target city on giant robot legs...?

I wonder what the reason was for the Lanc and Lincoln being unable to carry a nuke (atomic of course).  They had large bomb-bays, could carry the feck out of anything up until the B-29 came on scene.

As for the Yanks being happy to divulge any and all secrets, one wonders if that was the case, why the Brits had to develop their own hydrogen bomb and ballistic system?

I think Royalbulgaf's scenario is quite plausible and after all it's "What If" anyway.  One could suggest that the American government were concerned about the preponderance of Communists within the UK, plenty enuf reason to seal off your base and off anybody getting too close.

And to go to the nth degree, if Hitler had been a little less sceptical of 'Jewish Science' (ie Atomic Physics) you could have had a German bomb able to be produced quite early in the piece with the end result being like Post War Germany (ie Stuck in the middle of two idiotic power-blocs willing to blast your own country into atoms, but not actually get their own stuff played with??)

Mav

[monkeyhanger]

The Lancaster certainly had the weight carrying capacity to carry nuclear weapons but not the speed to escape the blast. One of the early ideas about nuking a city was to smuggle the parts into the target area using agents and then detonate by use of a timing device.

[BillSlim]

What possible defence could/did the Allies have for V-2, short of blowing up their launchers (which were mobile, BTW)? Ballistic weapons simply are unstoppable, unless you have Patriot or something similar. You could hardly shoot 'em down, or failing that, barrage balloons??? I know, move the target city on giant robot legs...?

General Pile, GOC AA Command believed he had come up with a way of shooting the V2 down with the big 5.25" A.A guns. The A.4 could be tracked on radar and to simplify the plan it involved dividing the sky up into squares and firing timed shells into the square the missile would pass through. The V2 would have to pass through a wall of shell fragments.
Pile was just about to test the system when the war ended, to his extreme disappointment, which says a great deal for the effectiveness of the V.2 bombardment.
Historian Roy Irons has described it in detail in the book 'Hitler's Terror Weapons', it is also mentioned in the English Heritage book on AA Command.
The main difficulty mentioned by Irons was working out which missiles had been destroyed by heavy artillery, and which had simply broken up. There was also the possibility that the shell fragments would pose more of a danger than the missile itself.

A ballistic missile is not as difficult a target to hit as you might think. Yes it is fast, but it takes no evasive action.
Now I'm not enough of an expert to know for sure if Pile's idea would have worked, but if the Germans had started shooting gas filled rockets at us I'm sure it would have been tried.

As for the Yanks being happy to divulge any and all secrets, one wonders if that was the case, why the Brits had to develop their own hydrogen bomb and ballistic system?

That happened when Truman became President. FDR was very happy to co-operate; the Manhattan project included British, Canadian and French nuclear scientists. There was also an agreement on nuclear co-operation and use of the bomb, which the Truman administration conveniently lost. If FDR is still around then the Yanks will ask their Allies first before using the bomb.
Our A-bombs were developed using a great deal of the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project, though we didn't know everything.
Senator McMahon, of act fame, did later say that had he known of the Allied co-operation he would never have sponsored the act. Anyway Ike restarted the co-operation when he became President. Our hydrogen bomb was acually developed after co-operation restarted, if memory serves.

One could suggest that the American government were concerned about the preponderance of Communists within the UK, plenty enuf reason to seal off your base and off anybody getting too close.

I seem to remember that FDR quite liked the Communists and Stalin at this time. The Truman administration was somewhat different as was the Eisenhower, but this is supposed to be 1943, all of that is in the future.

As to the Lanc and Lincoln I think the bomb bay may have been the wrong shape. I seem to recall that 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' were quite wide. Also if I'm right the B-29 only had a marginal capability to carry them.

But this is not my 'Whiff' so who am I to poke holes in it? You could drive a bus through the 'Whiffs' I've come up with.    

[jcf]

"Little Boy"
Length: 3 m (10 ft)
Diameter: 71 cm (28 in)
Weight: 4000 kg (8,900 lb)

'Fat Man'
Length:3.25 m(10 ft 8 in)
Diameter: 1.52 m (5 ft)
Weight:4,630 kg (10,200 lb)

and for comparison a couple of 'special weapons' carried by the Lancaster (and B-29):

'Grand Slam'
Length: 7.70 m (26 ft 6 in)
Diameter: 1.17 m (3 ft, 10 in)
Weight: 9.98 t (22,000 lb)

'Tallboy'
Length:   6.35 m (21 ft)
Diameter: 950 mm (38 in)
Weight:   5,443 kg (12,000 lb)

Cheers, Jon

[NARSES2]

There was also the possibility that the shell fragments would pose more of a danger than the missile itself.

This was a real danger in 1940/1941 especially in London and the suburbs - you can see the evidence by a lot of the "scarring" on buildings in central London particularly. Just look at a lot of the buildings in Whitehall. Never seen casulty figs though ?

My Dad remembered trying to get home from the pictures during a raid whilst on leave and being more frightened of the red hot shell fragments then the bombs  

Thanks for this info on Gen Pile Bil - I was totally unaware of it

Chris

[Maverick]

General Pile, GOC AA Command believed he had come up with a way of shooting the V2 down with the big 5.25" A.A guns. The A.4 could be tracked on radar and to simplify the plan it involved dividing the sky up into squares and firing timed shells into the square the missile would pass through. The V2 would have to pass through a wall of shell fragments.
Pile was just about to test the system when the war ended, to his extreme disappointment, which says a great deal for the effectiveness of the V.2 bombardment.
Historian Roy Irons has described it in detail in the book 'Hitler's Terror Weapons', it is also mentioned in the English Heritage book on AA Command.
The main difficulty mentioned by Irons was working out which missiles had been destroyed by heavy artillery, and which had simply broken up. There was also the possibility that the shell fragments would pose more of a danger than the missile itself.

A ballistic missile is not as difficult a target to hit as you might think. Yes it is fast, but it takes no evasive action.
Now I'm not enough of an expert to know for sure if Pile's idea would have worked, but if the Germans had started shooting gas filled rockets at us I'm sure it would have been tried.

As for the Yanks being happy to divulge any and all secrets, one wonders if that was the case, why the Brits had to develop their own hydrogen bomb and ballistic system?

That happened when Truman became President. FDR was very happy to co-operate; the Manhattan project included British, Canadian and French nuclear scientists. There was also an agreement on nuclear co-operation and use of the bomb, which the Truman administration conveniently lost. If FDR is still around then the Yanks will ask their Allies first before using the bomb.
Our A-bombs were developed using a great deal of the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project, though we didn't know everything.
Senator McMahon, of act fame, did later say that had he known of the Allied co-operation he would never have sponsored the act. Anyway Ike restarted the co-operation when he became President. Our hydrogen bomb was acually developed after co-operation restarted, if memory serves.

One could suggest that the American government were concerned about the preponderance of Communists within the UK, plenty enuf reason to seal off your base and off anybody getting too close.

I seem to remember that FDR quite liked the Communists and Stalin at this time. The Truman administration was somewhat different as was the Eisenhower, but this is supposed to be 1943, all of that is in the future.

As to the Lanc and Lincoln I think the bomb bay may have been the wrong shape. I seem to recall that 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' were quite wide. Also if I'm right the B-29 only had a marginal capability to carry them.

But this is not my 'Whiff' so who am I to poke holes in it? You could drive a bus through the 'Whiffs' I've come up with.  

Purely out of curiosity, I found the following comment regarding the A-4 Missile and anti-missile defences against it

"The only defence against the V-2 campaign was to destroy the launch infrastructure—expensive in terms of bomber resources and casualties—or to cause the Germans to "aim" at the wrong place through disinformation"

I really think that sums it up.  Given that Gen. Pile was head of AA, I'm sure it would be in his best interest to say he 'could' shoot them down, as for fusing large calibre AA guns to randomly explode over the target area on the off-chance they might actually get a hit... well, I guess the A-4 wouldn't need to be launched, just have the AA guns raining shrapnel over a given target area.

Makes you wonder what the guy was thinking and what he was doing after the war?

[BillSlim]

I really think that sums it up. Given that Gen. Pile was head of AA, I'm sure it would be in his best interest to say he 'could' shoot them down, as for fusing large calibre AA guns to randomly explode over the target area on the off-chance they might actually get a hit... well, I guess the A-4 wouldn't need to be launched, just have the AA guns raining shrapnel over a given target area.

I don't think from what I've read that there would be anything random about it, for example the 5.25" guns would have been remotley controled, all the crews woud have had to do was to load and fire them. Fuses can be set fairly accuratley for height, and theoretically if the shell had a VT fuse it could take down an A.4 if it got close enough, but IMVHO that was unlikely to happen and a VT fuse circa 1945 is unlikely to function fast enough to do the job.
If one knows from radar data that the missile will pass through box 'B3' then you would fire your guns at that box.

Pile was fascinated by the possibility of shooting the rocket down and definatley wanted to give it a shot. As an AA gunner I guess he saw everything as a potential target.
The best way of finding out if he could shoot the A.4 down was to give his idea a shot. If it worked, then great, if it didn't, or there was too much danger from shell fragments, then it would be abandoned. Unfortunately, from Pile's perspective, the Germans stopped shooting A.4s at us, so he never got the chance.

IIRC Pile retired just before the end of the war, and I don't know what he was doing after it, given his age probably enjoying retirement. However we all know that the Duncan Sandys crowd won, and made sure that everybody knew that missiles are invulnerable to interception, which they certainly are not. It was certainly in our national security's interest to make people think that 'Blue Streak' and later 'Polaris' and 'Trident' can't be shot down.
I think telling the public post-war that the A.4 could not be shot down, but only destroyed at point of launch was part of that. However it is also likely that Pile's idea was not widely known among his army collegues, never mind the other services, or the War Cabinet. AA Command also never got much publicity, and was never very glamerous, so I'd not be surprised if an idea from its GOC was widley circulated.
To give an example of how AA Command was left in the shade which do you think shot down most V.1s, Fighter Command, or AA Command?

In my purely inexpert opinion I think that the big guns would have had a fairly marginal capability to shoot down the A.4, and there is always the cost benefit analysis of danger of fragments Vs danger of missile. If, however the missile is carrying a chemical warhead, then that will change the equation, and desperate people will try almost anything.

I can't get the difinitive answer to this question, but I will raise it with a contact of mine who is an expert on ABM defences.

Regards.

[Maverick]

Triple A killed V-1 wholesale that's for sure, sort of lent themselves to being shot down I guess.  The thought of the V-2 being hit over a target area... yikes!  1000lbs of Explosive, 16.5ish Meters of Airframe, Tanks, Engine...   Makes this little camper glad he didn't get his chance.

I remember seeing some footage from Desert Storm about SCUD hits and misses, nasty plus.

Keep us up-to-date.  I'm really keen to find out the final answer on the V-2 idea, VTs or not.  Definitely a whif if I've ever heard one from a campaign/back story point of view.

I'm actually in the process of working out some sums regarding V-2 ops from Subs for a 1946 scenario.  Might tie in very nicely

Mav

[BillSlim]

Exactly, guess who got the credit in the papers and on the radio, though?  

I'd assume (and hope) that the plan was to destroy the missiles over the North Sea, or relativley less populated Kent, or East Anglia.

Interestingly a SCUD is basically an improved V.2. The Soviets don't seem to have done much other than improve the basic German design.

I admitt it does seem very counter-intuative that a big AA gun might be able to shoot down a rocket. However from all I've read of Sir Frederick Pile, he was a smart cookie. He was always looking for ways to include more technology into his command, and maximise his overstretched manpower.
Against a lot of opposition he introduced ATS girls into gun batteries and searchlight batteries. They worked very well, but the poor old all female searchlight batteries had nothing more than pickaxe handles to defend themselves with; the male and mixed units had Lewis guns on AA mounts and rifles for ground defence; though apparently a pickaxe handle wealding ATS girl was scary enough on a number of ocasions to scare off some rather amorous males trying their chances.  

I'll email my contact tonight, but he may take a while to get back to me, being a pretty busy bloke, and as I'm going on holiday on Friday it may take me a while to post an update.

On the who u-boat launched A.4, there were plans to have u-boats tow an A.4 in a container across the Atlantic, then flood the contained to get it upright for launch. There were also plans, IIRC to equip u-boats with V.1s.
Not sure I'd want to be that close to all that highly combustable fuel for the time it would take to cross the Atlantic. Heck, I can hardly imagine what even one depth charge anywhere near the boat would do.    

[Maverick]

Yeah, i've heard about the V-2 barge jigger, sounds like towing along a flying drop tank to me.. (oh wait, the Jerries thought of that one too!)  Gotta make u wonder sometimes about their thought processes.

[BillSlim]

And people wonder why the Germans lost    

[Maverick]

They had some brilliant ideas to be sure, swept wings, ballistic rockets, flying bombs, air to air missiles (most of which were happily pirated by the Allies, including Japanese biological warfare tech!).  It's when the designers were allowed to 'what if' that things went awry i think.