"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message news:uijg7f$2ckom$
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On 07/11/2023 00:02, a425couple wrote:
Mats Andersson
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M Sc. in Physics & Computer Science, Uppsala University (Graduated
1991)10h
Was Nazi Germany “on the cusp” of acquiring atomic weaponry?
No, not anywhere even remotely close.
After the war was over in Europe, German nuclear scientists were placed in house arrest in the south of England – all in the same house, where everything was bugged so that the British authorities could listen to
their conversations. When the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the scientists understood immediately what had happened.
The reality is the German nuclear weapons was doomed from the start
because the Nazis didnt understand the concept of cooperation. Before
the USA was even in the war the British passed on all they had to the
USA. The result was developments such as the cavity magnetron which
allowed compact airborne radar meant the western allies had superior
night fighters. The Luftwaffe got tied in with group think with heavy
bombers.
<<< Ultra, Huff-Duff, the Merlin, the 76mm tank cannon and the Bailey bridge were also valuable British contributions. >>>
There was an interesting parallel in that both the Luftwaffe and RAF
tried bombers with two very powerful engines which turned out to be
unreliable, He177 in Germany and the Manchester with the RAF.
<<< The American doubled engine effort didn't go far either.
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/allison-v-3420-23-v-3420-b10-double-v-engine/nasm_A19660386000
Due to flame travel rate the cylinders were considered to be at maximum practical size and only more of them could increase horsepower. German aero engine cylinder displacement was substantially larger than Allied engines
but they achieved only similar power. >>>
Avro and the RAF ditched the Rolly-Royce Vulture and started mass
producing the Lancaster, by the end of the war 7,377 had beein built, in Germany made just 1,169 which were chronically unreliable, highly
unreliable and the loss rate from engine failure was higher than the
combat losses.
The Germans split their nuclear program into 3 each of them competing
with the other rather than sharing with their own colleagues, the result
was in 1945 they hadnt even managed to achieve criticallity and had not
even started a bomb design. Heisenberg was working on the assumption
that between 1 and 10 TONS of plutonium or U-235 was neede3d to produce
a single bomb.
<<< My theory is that the scientists understood that Boron contamination
from the purification process would poison a graphite moderator, and gambled that uneducated Nazi officials wouldn't catch on that they were scheming to look busy without producing results. >>>
After the war the Americans found that while Japan had not managed to
achieve criticallity either they were at least heading in the right
direction.
-----------------------------------
Setting up two or more organizations that compete against each other to pick
a winner was standard Nazi practice, They had two armies, the Wehrmacht and
the Waffen SS, two military headquarters OKW and OKH, three security
agencies, the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Abwehr. The smarter ones divided the task and all survived. Before gaining power they had two
separate street gangs, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS).
The SA proved too strongly Communist to cooperate with the industrialists
who were vital to rearmament, and was liquidated in the Night of the Long Knives.
Before taking power and facing the inherent failures of Socialism the Nazis were true to their name of National (i.e. not Marxist) Socialists. Once in control they had to abandon ideology and do what worked, as Lenin had with
his New Economic Policy which Russia fumbled but China has succeeded with.
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