Luft'46 German Nuclear Weapons (WHIF)

[TsrJoe]

in keeping with the original aims of the site, would there be any chance of some scans of the drop shapes mentioned, would make for useful material for hypothetical 'shapes'

many thanks, cheers, joe

[luft46models]

Just a sidebar to this I read a newspaper report that the American uranium came form a country on the west coast of Africa - this was about 1 - 2 years back - was most surprised at this - can anyone confirm this - it does open up the whiff possibility of the ship carrying this being torpedoed and setting the Manhattan project back

William in Oz

[sagallacci]

Could that be confusion with the infamous "yellow cake" Iraq/African connection? While uranium is fairly common and reasonably extractable in North America now, don't know if that was known or a potential source back then, though the Congo was known for uranium in the day.

[tahsin]

Indeed it has to be Congo . I remember reading the Belgian managers of a mining company took extra care to ensure their output didn't end up in German hands .

[Barry Krell]

There are some accounts that the Uranium aboard that U-boat that surrendered ended up as part of the warheads dropped on Japan.  Apparently the customer did get what he ordered, but not quite!

[jcf]

The Germans captured 1,200 tons of uranium ore when they conquered Belgium in 1940, the last of it was secured in Stassfurt by the US Army in April 1945.

A B-29 raid on Tokyo the night of April 13, 1945 destroyed the Japanese project.

If anyone is interested in the real story of the A-bomb, I recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes, Touchstone 1986.


As to the 'shape' of a German bomb, it could be just about anything you want it to be. 

[dogsbody]

If I were doing a seriously whiffy German Bomb, I'd go with a simple gun type configuration. Though terribly inefficent, it is also the least technically challenging, though would need a lot of hard to come by U235. And I'd use a simple lollypop configuration, a more or less spherical or cylinder shaped containment/target end with a couple meter long gun tube end. John Coster-Mullen's book "Atomic Bombs" has great photos of early drop shapes along those lines. Even in a very simplefied form, it would still weight several thousand kilos, mainly in the containment end. Eliminating the massive containment would save a lot of weight, but risk an even less efficent event. I really doubt the Germans would get implosion, in no small part due to their likely desire to compartmentalize research and, despite some crazy stuff, where in many ways very conservative in their engineering thoughts.

As to some of the earlier comments, the shipment to Japan was simply urainium oxide, not proccessed Isotope.

While the Germans appeared to be way off the mark for getting the physics right and appearently made no real effort towards fissionables extraction, the Japanese had both a better notion about the physics and had lab level work on U235 extraction and Pu creation. But as it was still on the level of a grade student lab experiment, with a for spit budget, was nowhere near an actual weapons program.

I was going to use this as a starting point.

[sagallacci]

I could see someone trying something like that, but with the benefit of hindsight, and oodles of declassified data on US weapons, it is clear that that the thing wouldn't work at an atomic explosive and possibly only marginally as a radiological weapon. Further, Germany didn't have any resource for bulk enrichment, so the real life version would only have natural or near natural ratio uranium for fuel. However, as a whiff, its as good as anything.

[GTX]

Given the weight of typical first generation nuclear weapons (in excess of 4000kg) along with Germany's lack of suitable bombers, I've often thought that any hypothetical Nazi bomb would potentially be delivered in the form of a Mistel attack. 

Regards,

Greg

[Barry Krell]

All of the bomber paper projects were being designed to carry a 4,000kg+ weapon load.  Don't forget the He 177 captured at Prague with the big bomb bay either.

[sagallacci]

That bomb bay was not special, the "keel" usually seen inside was not a permenant structural element, and could be simply removed for oversize weapons or fuel tanks, or to simply reduce wieght. Some more credible refs say the machine was used for electronics R&D.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Since someone mentioned using the Fritz X ASM as the basis for a Luft'46 WHIF weapon I took some time to modify an existing 3D model of the Fritz X to create two shapes based on the components of that weapon which are provided for your viewing pleasure as attachments to this comment. 

I like the version with the straight airfoil shape fins as it is simple and effective looking fulfilling all of the form, fit, and function criteria for me. 

[kitnut617]

Hmm! those are beginning to look like a Genie missile Jeffry   

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Hmm! those are beginning to look like a Genie missile Jeffry   

Never even considered the Genie but now that you mention it, that does seem like a good source for a 1/72nd scale WHIF weapon.  Just need to create new fins for the shape and you would have it taken care of in a matter of minutes. 

[tahsin]

The Germans captured 1,200 tons of uranium ore when they conquered Belgium in 1940, the last of it was secured in Stassfurt by the US Army in April 1945.

A B-29 raid on Tokyo the night of April 13, 1945 destroyed the Japanese project.

When it comes fighting the real evil everybody contributes and if the contribution seems paltry then it is usual to make things up . For many years it was the Norwegians that stopped the Nazi bomb singlehanded with sinking a ferry . So what is wrong if some Belgian comes up to tell how they actually saved the world by keeping better quality material out of the hands of Nazis ? But then this is hardly authorative ; me being a person who believed in the existance of the 633 Sqn for years ...