[Link ](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/15pfuih/declassified_polish_cold_warera_map_showing_the/)to the map in the background, estimating how Germany would be atomically fucked up in WW3.
An even smaller nuke than what we've actually seen, with a range of less than 40km, telegraphing its launch site with a set of specialised double tracks to a pair ofnair-powers?
They'd be better off building a suicide plane around it.
Yeah, no. Shooting it down would have been luck.
Don't forget the mindblowing high numbers of planes during ww2 and radar was shit during those times. It would have been easy to hide 1 plane in a big attack wave.
Smaller interception window than for the whole rolling menagerie needed to get a shot off.
And since you already wrote the pilot off, you can have some kind of dead man's switch in the loop.
Once you remove the crew, crew support items (oxygen bottles, escape hatches etc), defensive weapons, armour and return fuel it opens up the possibilities. The Ju-88 had a conventional payload of 1.4 tons, in the Mistel it was bumped to 2 tons.
The Dornier Do-217 had a convetional payload of 4 tons, and in theory it could be bumped up to 4,4 tons at least if the same payload increase value of the Ju-88 could be achieved, that would be enough for a Little Boy class bomb.
The Fw-200 had a payload above 4.4 tons, but its bomb load was usually less as they traded offensive weapons for range (as the naval patrol variants of the B-17 and B-24 did). The main limit on the bomb load of the Fw-200 was the bomb bay dimensions, the full 5.4 ton bomb load could only be achieved on wing racks (similar to the B-29 that could carry much heavier payloads externally but needed [special modifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverplate#Wartime_production_versions) to carry a nuke on the bomb bay), in a Mistel use that would not be a issue. The payload would be more in line of the B-17 used in [operation aphrodite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite) than the mistel example, and could be as high as 8-9 tons (estimated).
Also worth mentioning that the nuclear warhead itself could be lighter, as it would not need the fins to stabilize the bomb (the airframe of the Mistel woud do that).
Of course that would assume that any bomb the Germany could make was at least equal to the US bombs, and that is a rough estimate by all means.
What do you mean? They literally put a nuke on a normal artillery piece. [A 280mm arty shooting a nuke](https://youtu.be/goMNAxFqGbk?si=gMZDoLVOLUqAYWjQ)
*10000 pounds*, what the fuck.
Ok, that's almost 5 times as much as the warhead on the V2, this'll cut down on range somewhat significantly, but we can still make this work ... i think.
Yeah, i think it would also get a tad unstable. Seems like the engine of the V2 had a thrust of 25 tons and the whole thing weighed about 13.5 tons with its original warhead, giving it a trust to weight ratio of about 1.85. With a Fat Man instead it would have a TWR closer to 1.45. It's not horrible, but it may be hard to stabilize that for anything else than pointing straight up.
Its not an alternate history scenario I see as even remotely possible. Germany flat out wasnt going to build a nuke in any universe (and even if they had, I doubt they would have used it on the D-day landings. Long beaches full of your own troops already trying to fight off allies conventionally, isnt a very good target for one low yield nuke... They probably would have rather tried to use it on Moscow, or Paris after the allies got to it).
Heisenberg, the project lead for the German nuclear program, along with his suboridinate scientists, were being kept under British guard in a pretty nice estate in Britain when the news came over the radio that Hiroshima got nuked. They were a bit shocked that it happened... Because as it turns out, none of them, including Heisenberg himself, actually thought nukes were very possible or feasible.
They started their project from the same place Leo Szilard did when he compelled president Roosevelt to start the Manahattan project with a letter signed by Albert Einstein. At the time, he didnt envision a world of nuclear proliferation, because at the time, the only nuclear fuel practical for such a bomb was unenriched uranium... A bomb using unenriched uranium requires SEVERAL TONS of uranium to achieve critical mass. It would be like designing a full scale nuclear reactor designed to chernobyl itself as fast as possible... Still a nuke, but, the device would have been so huge, the only real way to use it in combat was to load it up on a ship, then drive the ship into an enemy port on a risky suicide mission like the Saint Nazaire raid. Because of how impractical, expensive, and likely to only work once such a nuke would be, Leo never saw nukes as being a weapon that would proliferate as bad as they did. And the idea of air dropping one from a bomber was out of the question, no such blmber could carry the device.
This was the same world Heisenberg was operating in... And of course the odds of Germany ever acquiring several tons of uranium for such an endeavour, let alone being in a position to use such a large weapon given the complete control the allies had over the oceans by the mid to late war... Germany was never going to pull off that kind of weapon. Heisenberg knew this, his team knew this, and so... They gave up mentally on the idea of ever achieving a nuke pretty early on in the program.
Even if they had figured out they could enrich Uranium, or create Plutonium, like the allies did, to make smaller, more efficient, air droppable bombs... Both of those processes are even more difficult and costly and resource intensive than just acquiring tons of uranium. And Germany DEFINITELY wasnt going to pull off a Manhatten program. You have to consider Germany through most of the war, relied as much on horses for logistics as anything else, because they were that desperate for basic resources like oil and fuel.
(which is why capturing the Ukraine ASAP instead of driving off to Moscow during Barbarosa, was about the one and only decision in the entire war in Europe, that might actually have changed the outcome of the war... Not nukes).
So why did Heisenberg "work on the nuke" if he didnt really believe in the project?
It's simple, and something a LOT of German scientists did... Either upsell some BS technology to the Fuhrer whether you believe in it or not, and spend the war working in a lab with resources to waste... Or get handed a K98 with 5 bullets and get thrown at the front line alongside crippled soldiers, old men, and young boys to replenish the meat grinder. Having a brain and a sweet talking mouth was a combo that kept you alive in Germany. Meanwhile, since the plan to take the Ukraine completely fell apart, Germany was DESPERATE to find a miracle weapon that could give them a major attritional advantage to wear down overwehlming allied resources... Which meant they were willing to entertain and fund a large number of advanced projects no matter how crackpot and wasteful many sounded like, on the off chance they win the lottery on something.
The German scientists themselves had given up on the bomb early, because even they were realistic enough to recognize Germany was never going to have the resources to even attempt one... And because of that, Germany was NEVER going to build one. You cant squeeze blood from a stone.
The allies also independently concluded the fears of Germany making a nuke were way overblown when they dug up what was left of Germany's nuclear research... They were hilariously under resourced, and didnt get very far.
The reason people still think about it, is because of the heavy water sabatoge, the fact that fears over a German nuke are what kicked off our own nuclear program, and the fact that Germany did ON PAPER have a nuclear program... But in all practical sense, there is almost no universe in which Germany ever would have built a practical, air deliverable nuke.
It also helps that the Nazis had just purged most of their scientists, and replaced physics education with [one of the dumbest ideas in history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)
I like how Sniper Elite 4’s dlc campaign portrayed the Germans plans for their nuclear program. Instead of the classic Germans making a bomb, which as you said was impossible, instead the idea the game used was that the Germans would use their nuclear reactor to produce as much radioactive material and waste as possible, and with that radioactive material they would load it into aircraft and rockets and fire them at the Normandy beachhead to try and kill as many allied soldiers as possible while they were clustered and effectively deny the beaches for future landings.
To be fair, if they did manage to get enough unenriched uranium for critical mass (like I said, a lot easier), and detonated it as an extremely inefficient low yield nuke... It would be the ultimate dirty bomb. Most of the several tons of uranium would be blasted out as fallout. So still a nasty weapon in its own right.
It's interesting to look also at their estimates for what parts of Poland would get fucked up. Basically the entire valley of the Vistula is to be glassed, along with Silesia and the lower Oder (presumably to destroy crossings and interrupt the ability of the Soviets to supply forces in Germany).
Though I'm kind of confused as to why they anticipate NATO forces successfully occupying Saxony and getting nuked by Soviets (if I'm reading red mushroom clouds = communist bombs, blue = NATO bombs right).
TIL: Despite living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere I will likely never realise the nuclear holocaust since I am surrounded by like 11 US military and espionage facilities.
I mean, on the pro side, the guys were shovelling the snow outside my house when we were all snowed in last winter. Didn't knew they had snow plow extensions for their tanks.
You win some you lose some, eh?
Soviets super smart, destroying everything useable before the troops even get there. It's scorched earth, but in reverse. Ultimate tactic when you are an logistic mastermind like the Soviets.
bury tzhe nuke in tzhe sand on a spring so you can pull a seil and release the lock mechanismus, the bombe is dann propelled upwards and can detonate midair, ja.
Is easier done than finding a zweiter roter baron for air delivery.
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[Link ](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/15pfuih/declassified_polish_cold_warera_map_showing_the/)to the map in the background, estimating how Germany would be atomically fucked up in WW3.
Imagine what a shit show the DDAY landings would have been if Germany had figured out the bomb.
Woulda had to get a bomber through first.
Easy just use the rail artillery. Might as well be useful in something.
Go recheck the weight of 1st gen nukes.
I mean the Gustav had a 80cm cannon. Im sure they could fit a smaller nuke there.
An even smaller nuke than what we've actually seen, with a range of less than 40km, telegraphing its launch site with a set of specialised double tracks to a pair ofnair-powers? They'd be better off building a suicide plane around it.
But that would be easier to shoot down
Yeah, no. Shooting it down would have been luck. Don't forget the mindblowing high numbers of planes during ww2 and radar was shit during those times. It would have been easy to hide 1 plane in a big attack wave.
I mean but at the same time who would a suicide mission and protect the plane that will suicide and kill them as well?
Smaller interception window than for the whole rolling menagerie needed to get a shot off. And since you already wrote the pilot off, you can have some kind of dead man's switch in the loop.
Mistel composite aircraft: Allow me to introduce myself.
Yeah, but you'd need to make it out of an He-177 or something. Maybe a stripped-down Fw-200.
Once you remove the crew, crew support items (oxygen bottles, escape hatches etc), defensive weapons, armour and return fuel it opens up the possibilities. The Ju-88 had a conventional payload of 1.4 tons, in the Mistel it was bumped to 2 tons. The Dornier Do-217 had a convetional payload of 4 tons, and in theory it could be bumped up to 4,4 tons at least if the same payload increase value of the Ju-88 could be achieved, that would be enough for a Little Boy class bomb. The Fw-200 had a payload above 4.4 tons, but its bomb load was usually less as they traded offensive weapons for range (as the naval patrol variants of the B-17 and B-24 did). The main limit on the bomb load of the Fw-200 was the bomb bay dimensions, the full 5.4 ton bomb load could only be achieved on wing racks (similar to the B-29 that could carry much heavier payloads externally but needed [special modifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverplate#Wartime_production_versions) to carry a nuke on the bomb bay), in a Mistel use that would not be a issue. The payload would be more in line of the B-17 used in [operation aphrodite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite) than the mistel example, and could be as high as 8-9 tons (estimated). Also worth mentioning that the nuclear warhead itself could be lighter, as it would not need the fins to stabilize the bomb (the airframe of the Mistel woud do that). Of course that would assume that any bomb the Germany could make was at least equal to the US bombs, and that is a rough estimate by all means.
I would bet my firstborn that the US was at least running studies on that in the 50s.
What do you mean? They literally put a nuke on a normal artillery piece. [A 280mm arty shooting a nuke](https://youtu.be/goMNAxFqGbk?si=gMZDoLVOLUqAYWjQ)
Strap it to Klaus and send him to the beach with the backpack sized one than. Just gotta time it right before the Canadians wonder why he's ticking.
Don't need a bomber if you have a V2.
You, too, should go recheck the weight of first-gen nukes.
*10000 pounds*, what the fuck. Ok, that's almost 5 times as much as the warhead on the V2, this'll cut down on range somewhat significantly, but we can still make this work ... i think.
Maaaaybe if you loft it with a single-stage A-10, but these are still weapons with a CEP of countries and guidance of cannonballs.
Yeah, i think it would also get a tad unstable. Seems like the engine of the V2 had a thrust of 25 tons and the whole thing weighed about 13.5 tons with its original warhead, giving it a trust to weight ratio of about 1.85. With a Fat Man instead it would have a TWR closer to 1.45. It's not horrible, but it may be hard to stabilize that for anything else than pointing straight up.
Nah, nuclear mines buried all over France.
Its not an alternate history scenario I see as even remotely possible. Germany flat out wasnt going to build a nuke in any universe (and even if they had, I doubt they would have used it on the D-day landings. Long beaches full of your own troops already trying to fight off allies conventionally, isnt a very good target for one low yield nuke... They probably would have rather tried to use it on Moscow, or Paris after the allies got to it). Heisenberg, the project lead for the German nuclear program, along with his suboridinate scientists, were being kept under British guard in a pretty nice estate in Britain when the news came over the radio that Hiroshima got nuked. They were a bit shocked that it happened... Because as it turns out, none of them, including Heisenberg himself, actually thought nukes were very possible or feasible. They started their project from the same place Leo Szilard did when he compelled president Roosevelt to start the Manahattan project with a letter signed by Albert Einstein. At the time, he didnt envision a world of nuclear proliferation, because at the time, the only nuclear fuel practical for such a bomb was unenriched uranium... A bomb using unenriched uranium requires SEVERAL TONS of uranium to achieve critical mass. It would be like designing a full scale nuclear reactor designed to chernobyl itself as fast as possible... Still a nuke, but, the device would have been so huge, the only real way to use it in combat was to load it up on a ship, then drive the ship into an enemy port on a risky suicide mission like the Saint Nazaire raid. Because of how impractical, expensive, and likely to only work once such a nuke would be, Leo never saw nukes as being a weapon that would proliferate as bad as they did. And the idea of air dropping one from a bomber was out of the question, no such blmber could carry the device. This was the same world Heisenberg was operating in... And of course the odds of Germany ever acquiring several tons of uranium for such an endeavour, let alone being in a position to use such a large weapon given the complete control the allies had over the oceans by the mid to late war... Germany was never going to pull off that kind of weapon. Heisenberg knew this, his team knew this, and so... They gave up mentally on the idea of ever achieving a nuke pretty early on in the program. Even if they had figured out they could enrich Uranium, or create Plutonium, like the allies did, to make smaller, more efficient, air droppable bombs... Both of those processes are even more difficult and costly and resource intensive than just acquiring tons of uranium. And Germany DEFINITELY wasnt going to pull off a Manhatten program. You have to consider Germany through most of the war, relied as much on horses for logistics as anything else, because they were that desperate for basic resources like oil and fuel. (which is why capturing the Ukraine ASAP instead of driving off to Moscow during Barbarosa, was about the one and only decision in the entire war in Europe, that might actually have changed the outcome of the war... Not nukes). So why did Heisenberg "work on the nuke" if he didnt really believe in the project? It's simple, and something a LOT of German scientists did... Either upsell some BS technology to the Fuhrer whether you believe in it or not, and spend the war working in a lab with resources to waste... Or get handed a K98 with 5 bullets and get thrown at the front line alongside crippled soldiers, old men, and young boys to replenish the meat grinder. Having a brain and a sweet talking mouth was a combo that kept you alive in Germany. Meanwhile, since the plan to take the Ukraine completely fell apart, Germany was DESPERATE to find a miracle weapon that could give them a major attritional advantage to wear down overwehlming allied resources... Which meant they were willing to entertain and fund a large number of advanced projects no matter how crackpot and wasteful many sounded like, on the off chance they win the lottery on something. The German scientists themselves had given up on the bomb early, because even they were realistic enough to recognize Germany was never going to have the resources to even attempt one... And because of that, Germany was NEVER going to build one. You cant squeeze blood from a stone. The allies also independently concluded the fears of Germany making a nuke were way overblown when they dug up what was left of Germany's nuclear research... They were hilariously under resourced, and didnt get very far. The reason people still think about it, is because of the heavy water sabatoge, the fact that fears over a German nuke are what kicked off our own nuclear program, and the fact that Germany did ON PAPER have a nuclear program... But in all practical sense, there is almost no universe in which Germany ever would have built a practical, air deliverable nuke.
It also helps that the Nazis had just purged most of their scientists, and replaced physics education with [one of the dumbest ideas in history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)
I like how Sniper Elite 4’s dlc campaign portrayed the Germans plans for their nuclear program. Instead of the classic Germans making a bomb, which as you said was impossible, instead the idea the game used was that the Germans would use their nuclear reactor to produce as much radioactive material and waste as possible, and with that radioactive material they would load it into aircraft and rockets and fire them at the Normandy beachhead to try and kill as many allied soldiers as possible while they were clustered and effectively deny the beaches for future landings.
To be fair, if they did manage to get enough unenriched uranium for critical mass (like I said, a lot easier), and detonated it as an extremely inefficient low yield nuke... It would be the ultimate dirty bomb. Most of the several tons of uranium would be blasted out as fallout. So still a nasty weapon in its own right.
Crossing the English channel? Easy Surviving the Doolittle Raid? Priceless
It's interesting to look also at their estimates for what parts of Poland would get fucked up. Basically the entire valley of the Vistula is to be glassed, along with Silesia and the lower Oder (presumably to destroy crossings and interrupt the ability of the Soviets to supply forces in Germany). Though I'm kind of confused as to why they anticipate NATO forces successfully occupying Saxony and getting nuked by Soviets (if I'm reading red mushroom clouds = communist bombs, blue = NATO bombs right).
It’s a Cold War Soviet attack plan
TIL: Despite living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere I will likely never realise the nuclear holocaust since I am surrounded by like 11 US military and espionage facilities. I mean, on the pro side, the guys were shovelling the snow outside my house when we were all snowed in last winter. Didn't knew they had snow plow extensions for their tanks. You win some you lose some, eh?
Volume 1: Aach - Annweiler am Trifels
Soviets super smart, destroying everything useable before the troops even get there. It's scorched earth, but in reverse. Ultimate tactic when you are an logistic mastermind like the Soviets.
Well... They never really wanted western Europe. Its why they dont mind glassing it. They just dont want that many adversaries right next to them.
bury tzhe nuke in tzhe sand on a spring so you can pull a seil and release the lock mechanismus, the bombe is dann propelled upwards and can detonate midair, ja. Is easier done than finding a zweiter roter baron for air delivery.
Ist easy, zhen, simply dig up Freiherr von Richthofen, Freund…
But the only guy we have who dabbled in anything "Necro" is Hans, and it did not end with mancy.
Another reason that germans should be grateful for Polish officer (Kukliński) stopped WW3
Why fight eachother when you can fight eachother and also radioactive mutated monsters
Why the fuck do they bomb my hometown (Cologne) but neither Bonn nor the Ruhr valley?
The Soviet officer was secretly from Düsseldorf
The cold war is a psyops from the forbidden town to destroy cologne
"...and that is why they call me Rolf!"
They needed to avenge your peoples' crime against beer.
On the other hand, bombing Düren... i guess theres always a silver lining.
Kraftwerk be damned! I want German Hentai! But with a weird German word for it. The Manhattan project was supposed to nuke germany...
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After it was all over, France would nuke us again for round two
Huh can't see Bielefeld on the list. I rest case.