[BlueLancer]

Do you remember the thread some months back which had the premise that, at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese were only months away from perfecting an atomic bomb? One of the main arguments against the idea that the Japanese could have used it against the US mainland was the delivery system.

It would be quite interesting if they were using a suicide submarine as a delivery system for a crude nuclear device in San Francisco Bay.

All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point.

[weikel]

The Japanese weren't anywhere close the Germans would have gotten one before us if A) Hitler had not driven all the Jewish scientist away B) there wasn't all the "Jewish Physics BS" C) and A might not have mattered if Heisenberg had not miscalculated the critical mass. Japan did not have the resources for the expensive seperation of U-235 from U-238.

[Redbob]

"All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point."

True, but in none of them would we have lost the war.
There was a courage and determination in America at that time that seems rather lacking now, and far from demoralizing us, a nuclear attack on San Francisco would most likely have spelled the end of the Japanese race.

I don't think we would have stopped at dropping only two of the big bombs on them.
I don't think we would have stopped until we ran out of uranium.

[archy]

It would be quite interesting if they were using a suicide submarine as a delivery system for a crude nuclear device in San Francisco Bay.

The nuclear weapon aspect would certainly explain the secrecy lid clamped on the sub's presence. And the Germans had a design for an A-bomb that didn't require a great deal of refined plutonium, just the more common U-235/U-238.

Hmmm, wasn't there a German U-boat shipment of German uranium *yellowcake* intercepted en route to Japan....?

[archy]

All sorts of alternate history stories could be written from this point.

One in which they manage to eliminate President Truman, as well as Soviet foreign Minister Molotov, and forestall the creation of the United Nations, might be worthy of a particularly hot *Divine Wind* sub-borne Kamikaze attack:

Springtime target in San Francisco