Posted on 03/14/2005 8:55:54 AM PST by NormsRevenge
The Japanese were a more dangerous enemy than people living today can even imagine. If they had caught our aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbour in 1941 we would all be speaking Japanese and German today.
The Germans had no U235. They needed a reactor (pile) and due to a slight error thought graphite would not work; they were going to use a heavy water reactor (Deuterium).
The Allies blew up the German's only source of D2O, a Norwegian plant, then sank a passenger ferry carrying the last bits of D2O to Germany.
They had no isotope separation plant and only one cyclotron for cross-section work.
The Japanese had no nuclear program except for one or two people, and no equipment for serious isotope work.
As I recall that program, there was not enough U-235 to build a gadget and worse still, the Germans had been telling the Japanese about Heisenberg's estimates of critical mass, which were grossly overestimated. The Japanese knew a device could be built, but did not have the final numbers (so to speak) to build one (nor, it seems, enough fuel for the core).
That's my recollection of that somewhat overwrought History Channel production. I stand ready to be corrected.
I agree. This is just another, the Germans are Uber-smart, article.
I hope you're being sarcastic.
It was heavy water that was on the sub, not 235. I think I remember now.
The History Channel claimed that they did. U.S. Naval personnel refused to off-load the U-235 from that captured Nazi submarine. They forced the Nazis to do the work themselves because the radiation levels scared them to death. HC showed films of the sub after it was captured. All these films, photos of Japanese planes, captured designs, and information was classified higher that Top Secret until recently. Go to the History Channel web site and do some digging.
Actually, Japan had their own version of the ME 262 except it was even worse.
And I read an interview with Dr Werner Von Braun about american attacks on Peenumunde during the war as well as other information. The Germans were thought to be far down the path to a nuclear bomb, but they turned out to be on the wrong path. Given a few more years, they may have been able to change direction and do it right, but they didn't have a few more years.
This book is baloney. But it may be "interesting" baloney. Yes, the Germans were "close," but close is a relative word.
Go to the air museum in Dayton Ohio, Wright-Patterson airbase.
Take a REAL CLOSE LOOK at the ME-1 and ME-2. They were light years ahead of their time.
What is overlooked by the nay-sayers is that our a-bomb techs had been their a-bomb techs till they either escaped or where exiled. I can't image that their peers who stayed behind suddenly got a case of amnesia or were turned dumb.
There may be more than a big kernal of truth here.
Whether they set off a device or not, I have to agree, if it had any type of radioactive material in it, it would be detectable till today. But, if they were simply testing a detonation explosive device, that's a different question.
This is sensationalist claptrap, based on obfuscation of the difference between a radiation "dirty bomb" (which any moron with a pile of radioactive junk and some high explosive can build) and a real honest-to-goodness nuclear warhead (which takes some fairly sophisticated physics and machining). The former can ruin your day if you're within a block or so when it goes off, but it is in no way comparable to the destructive capability of the latter.
"That's my recollection of that somewhat overwrought History Channel production."
That's putting it mildly! The what-ifs postulated on that particular show required several layers of what-ifs to even be somewhat plausible.
No. The Japanese would have surrendered to the US in 1947, instead of 1945. More American Baby Boomers would not be here, but that's about it. The Japanese did not want the US, they wanted a free rein in Asia. The Chinese and the Koreans might be speaking Japanese, but not Americans.
The writer postulates that the Germans were closer to the bomb than earlier believed, and I accept that.
Previously they were thought to be a thousand miles from the solution, now we can recognize they were 993 miles from the solution. Closer.
Equally unknown by most of the world is that the "fixin's "for a dirty bomb were shipped to Japan in a submarine. Japan had chosen San Francisco as the target, and it was only the decision by the U-boat captain to deliver the radioactive material to the US east coast, instead, that prevented the first use of a "dirty" bomb ever.
We did not get their technicians, we got their physicists. The engineers and techs on the US bomb program were virtually all home-grown.
All these guys are retired or dead now, but when I was in Engineering school back in the late '70's at UT, I took a course in nuclear reactor physics from a guy in the last stages of his career who worked as a junior physicist at Los Alamos on the Manhattan project. He had many fascinating stories.
What are the ME-1 and ME-2? Are you talking about the V-1 and V-2? Or maybe the Me-163 Komet and the Me-262 Schwalbe?
Japan would have created havoc on the West Coast.
Actually, they wouldn't--the IJN's reach just couldn't get all the way across the Pacific, and they could only reach Hawaii with a marginal force. An invasion of Hawaii was out of the question because of their sealift shortfall.
>>Previously they were thought to be a thousand miles from the solution, now we can recognize they were 993 miles from the solution. Closer.<<
8^>
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.