Axis Nuclear Weapons Development. Real and Imagined.

[elmayerle]

Regarding Japan:

There's a body of evidence, but not conclusive evidence, that suggests Japan may have been closer to an A-bomb that Germany was in 1945 (some claim they fired a test shot off what's now North Korea (supposedly the development site was in that territory) between the first and second A-bomb strikes on the Home Islands).  How about an operational G8N1 or G10N1 for a strike on the continental US?

I know there's at least one book out there about it, but the title and author excape me at the moment.

[elmayerle]

Regarding Japan:

There's a body of evidence, but not conclusive evidence, that suggests Japan may have been closer to an A-bomb that Germany was in 1945 (some claim they fired a test shot off what's now North Korea (supposedly the development site was in that territory) between the first and second A-bomb strikes on the Home Islands).  How about an operational G8N1 or G10N1 for a strike on the continental US?

I know there's at least one book out there about it, but the title and author excape me at the moment.

Which would've put Japan in the same boat as Germany--not having a bomber big enough to carry the weapon for deliver.  Did they have any plans or projects for a large strategic bomber?  I guess if you think about it, with the Japanese military mentality of the time, it would've made more sense to load it into some kind of modified Kaiten.  But how about an extremely stripped down, hot-rodded Betty with floats, broken down and loaded onto one of their submarines?  The Kaiten is admittedly much more plausible.  A nice little float into SF Bay or maybe Seattle, and a detonation at the surface would've done the job.  But the Betty idea is kinda interesting.

Noxious, take a look at the aircraft I mentioned, the G8N1 Rita was a four-engined heavy bomber in flight testing when Japan surrendered.  The G10N1 was a six-engined heavy, roughly equivalent to the B-36, that was on the drawing boards at the time of surrender.  

I will grant you, though, the idea of a modifed Kaiten carrying an A-bomb and launched from an I-400 class sub into SF Bay or Puget Sound does sound like a plausible approach, too.

[Madoc]

Noxious,

Well, there's range and then there's range.  Did Japan have aircraft of sufficient range to conduct an atomic bomb mission against the US in WWII?  Short answer: no.  Long answer: yes.

It depends on how you define range.

For us western folk, "range" means the maximum distance an aircraft can fly out and still be able to return to base.  And that there's the rub.  If you redefine "range" to simply mean the maximum distance an aircraft can fly then the Japanese certainly could've hoisted up a multiton bombload and made an attack against the US.

Mind you, these'd all be one way missions and their crews would all get "Divine Wind" status for their troubles.

I could see the Japanese using some of their ultra-long range flying boats for something like this.  Perhaps with mid-ocean refueling from one of their ultra-large subs.  Now wouldn't that have been fun!  A stripped down Emily meeting up with a  Sen Toku type (I-400, 401, 402 - take your pick) somewheres well off the coast (and out of the shipping lanes) of British Columbia.  With her tanks topped off by the sub, the Emily lumbers back out of the water and heads off to its meeting with destiny above Twin Peaks.

Yeah, that would've been fun indeed.

Hell, they wouldn't even have needed an exploding atomic bomb.  A few pounds of finely ground uranium dust would've have its own hellish effects.

Madoc

[noxioux]

Noxious, take a look at the aircraft I mentioned, the G8N1 Rita was a four-engined heavy bomber in flight testing when Japan surrendered.  The G10N1 was a six-engined heavy, roughly equivalent to the B-36, that was on the drawing boards at the time of surrender.

Ahh, so!  I had never seen that G10N1 before.  Very interesting.  It sorta looks like a six-engined B-29.  Found some interesting 3-views of it, too.

No takers on my T-4 idea, huh?

[Geoff_B]

Noxious, take a look at the aircraft I mentioned, the G8N1 Rita was a four-engined heavy bomber in flight testing when Japan surrendered. The G10N1 was a six-engined heavy, roughly equivalent to the B-36, that was on the drawing boards at the time of surrender.

I thought the Rita was based upon a DC-4 Airliner, which gave the Japanese a Four engined Tricycle undercarriaged long range aircraft. Unfortunately i don't believe it had a particularily good bomb capacity which hindered the carriage of larger heavier bombs.

The G-10 on the otherhand looked like it was meant to strike the US west coast over from over the pacific and to strike East to India.

Like the Lanc idea with Little Boy however  B).

G B)  

[NARSES2]

Don't know about the "based on a DC4" bit but the max bomb load of a Rita was 4,000kg (2 x 2,000) normal 1,000kg (4 x 250). Range with full bombload 2,452 miles, max range 4,639 miles.

One was tested in the US after the war.

Chris

[elmayerle]

Noxious, take a look at the aircraft I mentioned, the G8N1 Rita was a four-engined heavy bomber in flight testing when Japan surrendered. The G10N1 was a six-engined heavy, roughly equivalent to the B-36, that was on the drawing boards at the time of surrender.

I thought the Rita was based upon a DC-4 Airliner, which gave the Japanese a Four engined Tricycle undercarriaged long range aircraft. Unfortunately i don't believe it had a particularily good bomb capacity which hindered the carriage of larger heavier bombs.

The G-10 on the otherhand looked like it was meant to strike the US west coast over from over the pacific and to strike East to India.

Like the Lanc idea with Little Boy however  B).

G B)

"Liz", the G5N1, was derived from the DC-4E and everything they learned from that "monstrosity" went into making the G8N1 a much, much better aircraft.  As I recall, it was somewhere between a B-17 and a B-29 in capabilities, but with a pressurized fuselage.

[TsrJoe]

Just found a few other (not sure if these are what if???) references to firstly...

Germany detonating a nuclear weapon in 1944 on a test tower at a range on the Polish border ?? (Luftwaffe over America, Manfried Griehl)

and...

Japan detonating a test device offshore near Korea? on a tower barge just prior to the surrender in 1945 ??

opens a whole new area of possibilities...

cheers, Joe  

[elmayerle]

Japan detonating a test device offshore near Korea? on a tower barge just prior to the surrender in 1945 ??

THere's a book out on Japan's atomic bomb program (I don't remember the title just offhand) that claims the program was run out of an industrial complex near the Chosin reservoir and that there are rumors, but now known confirmation, that they fired a test shot the same day we hit Nagasaki.  I won't say I'm totally persuaded either way, but it makes for some interesting, and chilling, possibilities.

[sagallacci]

Regarding wartime German and Japanese atomics- While the Japanese actually had a somewhat better handle of the material needs of a nuke (they were doing U235 extraction and Pu experiments) neither country had the resource nor actually committed any real amount to realistically get even a lab experiment version of a device put together.
That being said, a really desperate device, especially a gun type, would not need to be terribly big or heavy. The Little Boy was massively over-engineered and it could have weighed half as much. That would make something like it deliverable to a wider range of aircraft types.

The SR-71s were actually contracted and built as B-12/B-71 strike bombers with provision of four SRAMs in the fuselage chines, and when mission and political issues prevented weapons allocations, they were reconfigured as reccon machines. More weapons or a rotary launcher were later design studies, but would have needed substaintial redesigns.

Considering the wild and crazy stuff being considered at various times for delivery systems, you need not have to resort to making anything up to get some really wack stuff going.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

The attached images show the box art work as well as the contents of the original Unicraft 1/72nd scale German Nuclear Weapons kit in the first and second images.  The third and fourth images show the contents of the 1/48th scale and 1/72nd scale kits from Antares which on first glance look very much like the original Unicraft kit at least the 1/72nd scale version.  Images provided for the purpose of discussion and not promotion of the product. 

I have both of the Antares kits in protective custody.  The 1/72nd scale kit provides what appear to be photo-etch brass fins that are very thin in construction and easily bent if you are not careful.  The 1/48th scale kit on the other hand provides a single piece of plastic card stock that is imprinted with the outlines of the fins that you are expected to cut to shape and attach to the bomb casings.   

[GTX]

Is there any info on the difference between the various weapons?

Regards,

Greg

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Is there any info on the difference between the various weapons?

Greg,

You can try this discussion on Secret Projects titled German WWII Atomic Bombs but I must caution you that many opinions are being expressed without regard to what is factual and what is fictional. 

[kitnut617]

Question I would like answered is where did Igor get the shapes from? Are they from actual drawings ?

[HealzDevo]

I think everyone is overlooking the shockvalue such an attack even
with conventional weapons may have against the US.  The Doolittle
Raid brought the war with the US to the homelands in a way that it
hadn't previously which the B-17s and B-29s continued.  The very fact
that the Japanese make the attack could have been the whole point.  It
would shift the mental advantage back to the Japanese. 

Americans felt very secure and confident between the Atlantic and this is why initally
there was a lack of support for getting involved in "European Affairs".
Indeed Pearl Harbour by the Japanese may have been the thing that did tip the balance
from limited support by the US to full support in helping Europe.