This. The only reason we built the bomb, is basically we stopped caring what it cost to build one. We also didn’t focus on a single solution to each approach but did all of them in parallel.

The B-29 cost more than the entire Manhattan Project.

Not only did we do the Manhattan Project and the B-29, we also did an entirely different very heavy bomber that could deliver the nukes if the B-29 program failed.  The Consolidated B-32 Dominator.



If THAT didn't pan out, the contingency plan was use reverse-Lend Lease Lancasters.

All far beyond the means of Germany.

Way too much Third Reich penis envy going on.

The germans had no way of stopping destroyer during low light hours. When your plan to defend the flanks is depend on mine fields, you dont have a serious plan.

My wife joked that they were too busy building bases on Mars and the Moon.

It was a huge deal after the initial gains of Barbarossa.  I can't remember the exact time, but there was a point forward where Germany never fought with air superiority in the East.

What specific Allied artillery was better? Names and model numbers please. The Allies had nothing in large quantities to compete with the MP 43/44. Nothing. The M1 Garand? With its 8 shot clip? The US soldiers had to trick the Germans by dropping empty clips just to draw them out, as they couldn’t compete with their superior firepower. Are you well? Some of the US special ops groups and some officers had Thompsons and M3s. These were rare.

1911 vs Luger 9mm. Again... really?

Tanks... one on one... nothing beats the German Tiger. Nothing. Armor, artillery, the Tiger wins. The Allies had to rely on sheer numbers and maneuvering in behind them.





They were only being sunk when they surfaced to attack Allied ships. Have you ever sailed down the Hudson River? It’s huge. Not confined at all. That was the reason the Germans sank so many ships in the early years of the war. If they wanted to, they would have sailed right in to any US harbor undetected. Sonar was not what it is today. And I’m sure more than enough soldiers would have volunteered for that mission.

The Germans were trying to enrich Uranium... the USA due to the lead scientists took a different approach. The Germans had the theoretical outline for an Atomic bomb in 1939... they just couldn’t synthesize enough enriched Uranium. Also many of the Jewish physicists left Germany and the surrounding countries of Poland and Austria. If they did not flee... it would’ve been an coin toss who developed it first. Germany had vast natural resources and raw material after conquering France, Poland, and Austria.

Hitler couldn’t math.

He was a Progressive. Hated western values.

Patience was not one of his virtues. However, their military was the most advanced. The sheer numbers game on the side of the USSR and the ruthlessness of their tactics even stunned the Fuhrer. The concept of “scorched earth” and burning their own villages, farms, and supplies even took the German leadership by surprise. Stalin didn’t play. They also weren’t used to dealing with cold winter and long supply lines with their Blitzkrieg style of attacks.

Mainly it was due to the discovery of Plutonium at the University of California in 1940. We also had the smarter scientists.

The rest of the world was trying to do it with enriched Uranium... that just wouldn’t produce a big enough boom.

The Germans also were the first to discover nuclear fission. The discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility. Another first for Germany.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a Uranium device....

Wrong. It was a plutonium core. Y'all need to learn some history. Take the OShay guy above with you, and get some books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project


Plutonium
The second line of development pursued by the Manhattan Project used the fissile element plutonium. Although small amounts of plutonium exist in nature, the best way to obtain large quantities of the element is in a nuclear reactor, in which natural uranium is bombarded by neutrons. The uranium-238 is transmuted into uranium-239, which rapidly decays, first into neptunium-239 and then into plutonium-239.[170] Only a small amount of the uranium-238 will be transformed, so the plutonium must be chemically separated from the remaining uranium, from any initial impurities, and from fission products.[170]

By July 1944, Oppenheimer had concluded plutonium could not be used in a gun design, and opted for implosion. The accelerated effort on an implosion design, codenamed Fat Man, began in August 1944 when Oppenheimer implemented a sweeping reorganization of the Los Alamos laboratory to focus on implosion.[201] Two new groups were created at Los Alamos to develop the implosion weapon, X (for explosives) Division headed by explosives expert George Kistiakowsky and G (for gadget) Division under Robert Bacher.[202][203] The new design that von Neumann and T (for theoretical) Division, most notably Rudolf Peierls, had devised used explosive lenses to focus the explosion onto a spherical shape using a combination of both slow and fast high explosives.[204]

The design of lenses that detonated with the proper shape and velocity turned out to be slow, difficult and frustrating.[204] Various explosives were tested before settling on composition B as the fast explosive and baratol as the slow explosive.[205] The final design resembled a soccer ball, with 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal lenses, each weighing about 80 pounds (36 kg). Getting the detonation just right required fast, reliable and safe electrical detonators, of which there were two for each lens for reliability.[206] It was therefore decided to use exploding-bridgewire detonators, a new invention developed at Los Alamos by a group led by Luis Alvarez. A contract for their manufacture was given to Raytheon.[207]

To study the behavior of converging shock waves, Robert Serber devised the RaLa Experiment, which used the short-lived radioisotope lanthanum-140, a potent source of gamma radiation. The gamma ray source was placed in the center of a metal sphere surrounded by the explosive lenses, which in turn were inside in an ionization chamber. This allowed the taking of an X-ray movie of the implosion. The lenses were designed primarily using this series of tests.[208] In his history of the Los Alamos project, David Hawkins wrote: "RaLa became the most important single experiment affecting the final bomb design".[209]

Within the explosives was the 4.5-inch (110 mm) thick aluminum pusher, which provided a smooth transition from the relatively low density explosive to the next layer, the 3-inch (76 mm) thick tamper of natural uranium. Its main job was to hold the critical mass together as long as possible, but it would also reflect neutrons back into the core. Some part of it might fission as well. To prevent predetonation by an external neutron, the tamper was coated in a thin layer of boron.[206] A polonium-beryllium modulated neutron initiator, known as an "urchin" because its shape resembled a sea urchin,[210] was developed to start the chain reaction at precisely the right moment.[211] This work with the chemistry and metallurgy of radioactive polonium was directed by Charles Allen Thomas of the Monsanto Company and became known as the Dayton Project.[212] Testing required up to 500 curies per month of polonium, which Monsanto was able to deliver.[213] The whole assembly was encased in a duralumin bomb casing to protect it from bullets and flak.[206]

A shack surrounded by pine trees. There is snow on the ground. A man and a woman in white lab coats are pulling on a rope, which is attached to a small trolley on a wooden platform. On top of the trolley is a large cylindrical object.
Remote handling of a kilocurie source of radiolanthanum for a RaLa Experiment at Los Alamos
The ultimate task of the metallurgists was to determine how to cast plutonium into a sphere. The difficulties became apparent when attempts to measure the density of plutonium gave inconsistent results. At first contamination was believed to be the cause, but it was soon determined that there were multiple allotropes of plutonium.[214] The brittle a phase that exists at room temperature changes to the plastic ß phase at higher temperatures. Attention then shifted to the even more malleable d phase that normally exists in the 300 °C to 450 °C range. It was found that this was stable at room temperature when alloyed with aluminum, but aluminum emits neutrons when bombarded with alpha particles, which would exacerbate the pre-ignition problem. The metallurgists then hit upon a plutonium-gallium alloy, which stabilized the d phase and could be hot pressed into the desired spherical shape. As plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was coated with nickel.[215]

The work proved dangerous. By the end of the war, half the experienced chemists and metallurgists had to be removed from work with plutonium when unacceptably high levels of the element appeared in their urine.[216] A minor fire at Los Alamos in January 1945 led to a fear that a fire in the plutonium laboratory might contaminate the whole town, and Groves authorized the construction of a new facility for plutonium chemistry and metallurgy, which became known as the DP-site.[217] The hemispheres for the first plutonium pit (or core) were produced and delivered on 2 July 1945. Three more hemispheres followed on 23 July and were delivered three days later.[218]

M1 75MM pack howitzer
M2 105MM howitzer
M1 8" howitzer
M1A1 155MM "Long Tom"
M1 240MM howitzer
M1 4.2" mortar

Against which the Germans fielded a hodge-podge of German, French, Czech, Italian, and captured Russian guns, which maid stocking ammunition, firing tables, spare parts, and other equipment nothing short of a nightmare.



Never heard of the M1 and M2 carbines, huh?




Math much?  8 rounds in an en-block clip going into a semi-auto rifle beats 5 rounds on a stripper clip going into a 5 round bolt action rifle every time.  Every.  Time.

Not mention the debunked and fake idea of throwing down empty clips.  Battlefields are rather noisy places with all kinds of sounds.



"Over 1.5 million military Thompson submachine guns were produced during World War II" - doesn't seem so rare to me ...

" A total of 622,163 M3/M3A1 submachine guns of all types were assembled by the end of World War II." - again, not rare.

Plus you forget there was also the Browning Automatic Rifle in the mix as well.

Is the title of the thread that hard to read?  Sure, by 1943 Allied artillery was awesome.  In 1940, when Sealion was possible, not so much.  Heck, in 1940, US divisions were still mostly equipped ( when they had cannons at all) with 75mm WW1 pieces.  The UK had a mix of WW1 refurbish 18/25lbrs and obsolete howitzers, as almost all of their new 25lbrs were left in France.  They were also short on AT and light AA guns.

You might want to read your own link...
U235 used in Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima.

First of all, it would be the destroyers and subs that would be the real killers, and the issue is that, operating in the channel, barges would be slow enough to get caught at night or poor weather.  Sure, the RN would lose a lot of ships, but the question is would they drown enough landsers to stop the invasion before the last White Ensign went under.

Yes, really.  Especially when firing full metal jacket ammo.

Plus theres a bazillion people building varients of the 1911 still today.  Tell me, who if any is cranking out lugers and P-38s?

Not to mention the handgun-poor Germans were reduced to issuing whatever gat they coudl get their hands on, to include - captured 1911s and a slightly modified 1811 called the 1914 being built in Norway.  Also 25ACP pistols, Radoms - whatever they could get.


Until it over-heats.  Or runs out of gas. Or shreds the final drives, Or shells the transmission.  Or has to ford a river.  Or cross a bridge.  Or bumps into a Pershing. Then literally ANYTHING ELSE beats a Tiger.


Being a shit design, it was easy to get numbers on it, as it was so often out of service.

Thank you. I was about to quote that guy and point out the complete and utter failure of his post.

Bismark
vs.
Hood

1911 vs 9mm Luger had absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the war.

Really?  Might want to ask the citizens of Hiroshima about that theory.  They got 16 kilotons worth of fissioning enriched uranium.





Yet the first sustained nuclear reaction took place at the University of Chicago.  Another first for the U.S.

Read the article. Don’t skim it, read it. Plutonium is made from Uranium. They are not the same. The Atomic bombs used Plutonium.

All that stuff you quoted?  Its about the second bomb - the one dropped on Nagasaki.  

Maybe you should read some more.

The title of the thread has nothing to do with the specific assertion to which I was responding.

You read it.  "Little Boy", the device dropped on Hiroshima, was a gun-type design using two main fissionable elements composed of U-235.



"Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but it derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, whereas Thin Man was based on fission of plutonium-239. Fission was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder of enriched uranium (the "bullet") onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the "target") by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. It contained 64 kg (141 lb) of enriched uranium, although less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

You keep dancing around the questions. What tank in the Allied arsenal, one on one, head to head, defeats the German Tiger?

The early 1911 was not anything like it is today. The German 9mm Luger was infinitely more advanced at its inception in 1904 than anything the US or Allies had.

Your list of of artillery is nice, but that was the only small advantage compared to the German 88mm AT, Tiger tanks, MG42, u-boats, small arms, and Air Force.

The Sherman does, because it went from Cherbourg all the way to the German Frontier in 2 months. Routing German divisions all along the way. Arracourt showed that it could meet the cats in battle and come out the winner. Tanks are part of a combined arms affair, you cant look at the as a single piece of equipment.

The 88 was an AAA piece pressed into AT. The Pak 75 was the preferred AT gun of the germans.  GIs referred to any german heavy gun fire as 88s


What Air Force? The German air force was met and destroyed in depth by the Allied Air Forces over the Fatherland.

Think about this, the allies built approximately as many liberty ships as the Germans did V2 rockets. Which marvel did more to advance the aims of its users? The Allies technology and doctrine wasnt sexy, but they focused on war winners. The Nazis had to press designs into service that werent mature. The 40+ ton tank couldnt be made with a reliable drive train, the Allies tested and discarded designs, the germans put them into the field. The British and Americans had jet prototypes in full swing, but didnt need to push them into service.

Your link is wrong. Read the one I posted before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

Fat Man:

You realize there were 2 distinct designs of bombs? One used uranium in a gun configuration and the other plutonium in an implosion device.

Ah, the vaunted Tiger Tank.
So awesome the Germans made only 1,354

Know what 1,354 Tiger tanks get you? Nothing. You lose the war.
The Tiger was plagued with typical German issues, shortages of key materials and the lack of skilled labor meant constant breakdowns.

"At the very beginning, during loading at Fellingbostel, we had a tank out of action owing to trouble in the transmission. The next two issues of transmission trouble occurred on the first day in Russia. The only tank left in operating condition was sent out on security patrol. There is no point in writing about further technical difficulties and shortcomings, as you are probably familiar with all of them." - Officer with Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502, dated 7 October 42
(Excerpt from Thomas L Jentz's Panzertruppen vol1 pg 245)

I really can't imagine being so blockheaded as to argue that uranium nuclear weapons don't exist...

I mean, if he was one of my students I'd give him a C- for the effort.

I'm still fascinated by the U-boats and the Hudson River.  Obviously they weren't going to do so before the US entered the war. But to enter during the period being discussed, roughly summer of 1940, that would have pulled the US into the war a year earlier than Pearl Harbor.  U-boat attacks against shipping off the US didn't begin until Jan. 1942.

While entering the harbor areas might have been possible, when it comes to the river north of NYC, the river is too shallow for the most part for a sub to operate submerged, for the relatively few hours it might have before needing to snorkel and/or periscope for nav, purposes.  Ignoring such things as air and sea patrols, indicator loops, netting and minefields.

Ya, that's an implosion plutonium device. Fat Man. Dropped on Nagasaki.
Hiroshima got a gun type uranium device. Little Boy

Guderian:
"5. Arrival of the Tiger-Abteilung of the I.SS-PANZER-KORPS was first expected at noon on 10 June. It was delayed because of the enemy command of the air. Every attempt to march during the day turned out to be useless. Attempts to move during the day resulted in numerous burned-out vehicles on the road."

I can’t tell if you watched too many hours of Hitler channel, or not enough.  

In any case, you're all wrong.  Try reading books.

Except the bit about U-boats up the Hudson river.    That would have been doable.  If, if, if.  

Yes so advanced that no one issues a toggle lock handgun today.

Christ.  I can’t remember the last time anyone worked this hard to be that wrong.   Usually, the people in these threads are interested in history, and conversant in it.

They stupidly opened the Eastern Front.

He didn't want a war with the english.

Congratulations. You've lost all credibility.

It was the German generals on the Eastern Front that were responsible for their soldiers being ill equipped for the winter of 41- 42. Their philosophy was that they'd be successful in their drive into Moscow and that the soldiers would then occupy the city and exploit it's resources to sustain them through the winter months.
Scorched earth and massive civilian and military casualties doesn't mean anything to a man who'd purposefully starve 5 million people to implement his agricultural collectivisation plans or purge all government positions of anyone he'd consider a potential enemy to then murder them while also throwing hundreds of thousands of people into the gulag for slave labor. Big picture guy.

Lebensraum was always the plan. He didn't think the French or Brits would go to war over Poland.

I'll play.  For the purposes of your question, we will assume that the Tiger doesn't break, doesn't have to cross a bridge or water obstacle, has fuel, and is fitted with armor that isn't prone to brittle failure due to a lack of alloying elements such as chromium, nickel, and manganese.

The Allied tanks that can defeat a tiger are:

M26 Pershing
IS-1
IS-2
KV-85



The Lugar was a warmed over Borchardt that was too expensive, too unreliable, and shot too small of a cartridge.  Even the Germans replaced it. The Lugar competed against what would become the 1911 for the U.S. military contract - and lost.  To a descendant of the Colt Model 1905 - which go on to be... the 1911.





Which was matched by the M1/M2/M3 90mm when firing HVAP.




Believe as you wish.

Fat Man was not dropped on Hiroshima.  Little Boy was.  Please stop being wrong.

Hell, it's the second time in the thread. Another guy did the same about a German written source,  claiming it was written by "Oxford" just because they published the English translation.

He wanted a peace that would return the old Prussian/UK relationship. It was a typical Hitler pipe dream.

Once the Germans peeped British Army C-Rations, they gave up and thought invading Russia was worth the risk...

Attached File