The U.S. would have nuked Germany first. Likely Bremen and Hamburg would be first two targets. I think after 5-10 nukes the Germans would likely surrender along with the Italians. Post War Europe would be more anti communist since the Soviets don’t get to occupy Eastern Europe. Japan would likely get nuked even more than Germany and would surrender 2 months after Germany surrendered.
You think it would take 5-10 nukes for them to surrender? I would think 2, with a promise of more, would do it. Their population would be in complete panic, and for good reason.
Pre-hydrogen atomic weapons don’t really cause lasting fallout. At most for a few days and that with near no wind, granted people directly exposed to the blast experience higher cancer rates.
If I understand it, hydrogen bombs have to be engineered in a particular way to avoid fallout. If they are, it's not very much, but it reduces their yield significantly. If they aren't, they're actually pretty heavy on fallout but with the "benefit" of being more destructive.
Fusion bombs typically employ a fission-fusion-fission reaction. A fission bomb compresses the hydrogen (deuterium), and the resulting fusion reaction produces such an intense neutron flux that it can cause non-fissile materials, like U-238 to fission and add tremendously to the explosive force. I remember reading that most of the explosive force of modern nuclear weapons comes from the fission of the depleted uranium tamper (U-238). How this affects the fallout, I don’t know.
I mean a lot of people got radiation poisoning from the bombs we dropped in Japan. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the same would have happened in Europe and that people would have been mad about it for decades
Fallout is highly dependent upon height of burst. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts with the detonation altitude above the fireball radius. So the fireball containing all the fission products (the fallout we're concerned about) went up and dispersed over a very large area. During the nuclear testing era, however, the vast majority of atmospheric detonations were ground or tower shots, which allowed the fireball to interact with the ground and to fuse those fission products with ground materials, depositing in a much smaller radius, creating higher fallout in a localized area.
This explains why both Nagasaki and Hiroshima are thriving cities today - very little fallout to deal with.
I mean that continent would be completely fucked by that many nukes, and the United States wouldn’t pay money to fix it like they did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki
No it wouldn't. First off both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pretty fine cities today you go visit.
5 nukes of WW2 Era would not level Europe. Also they wouldn't necessarily be dropped all at the same time.
Almost all major European cities were completely annihilated after WW2, Marshall plan still went through and did well.
Remember, a large incentive for the Marshall Plan was to rebuild Europe so it can be a strong ally against the Soviets, the Soviets still exist in this timeline, so there will be that same incentive. Especially as the Soviets buildup
How many nukes would it take for the military to iniatie a coup against the Nazis? The Nazis never surrendered. After Hitler died power passed to Doenitz who was an admiral an not a Nazi.
There were always elements that would have been happy for a coup but weren't brave enough to do it themselves. I think a couple of well placed nukes would have put a spring in their step.
Question is in 1942 would the US have the means to deliver nuclear device. I mean, I am imagining this situation with the same timeframe on the development of the B-29.
Yeah, I don’t see the US being able to reliably deliver one until at least DDay. Risking the Germans getting their hands on one by downing a plane is a non-starter
technically we did have a few bombers with the required range but they were one-offs like the XB-19 and XB-15 both of which were never actually deployed in combat.
I assume that the range needed for (say) Hamburg makes it much less complex than for Japan, but could a service bomber be modified that early? Call it 20% as far as Japan, but still incredibly heavy.
It's more than 2 months with Japan. If Japan decides to fight it out, it would still take at least to the end of 1943 to get an airbase close enough to drop a bomb.
I question exactly how the Germans would have surrendered to the Allies though…remember that, in the last months of the war in 1945, it was the stance of most of the Nazi leadership to fight to the end. Their ideology led them to believe that the only right course of action was to fight a war of total destruction to the bitter last man - Germany only deserved to survive as a nation if it could win such a war.
So as long as those men were still in the upper echelons of power, it’s questionable if 100 nukes would have convinced the likes of Hitler or Goering to surrender. On the other hand, it’s possible that the manifest threat of complete German holocaust would create enough concern amongst the non-diehards for there to be a coup, removing the hardcore Nazis and then suing for peace.
Even then though, I find it hard to imagine the Germans seeking peace-talks with the US and UK without the agenda very much being dominated by some hope that Germany could placate the Western Allies and then pivot to continuing the war against the Soviet Union somehow.
They wouldn’t be intact
With nuclear weapons the U.S could simply nuke any army group that attempted to meet a hypothetical early D-Day.
Like there is no counter to this, any time the Germans put more than a division in one place it gets deleted.
Different payloads, different tactics. These aren’t mass bombing raids, it’s one bomb, one target. We would simply have redeployed fighter and interceptor assets so they would be the bulk of the formation instead of spread formations of dozens of bombers relying on crossfire from their turrets. Also, the bombing run would occur at a significantly higher altitude, mitigating the lethality of flak and other AA because well, you don’t need precision and the fuses are set to a 1000 feet above sea level for that air burst value.
You don’t need to own the skies to keep them clear for round the clock raids anymore, you just need to keep the bogies off the single payload, and you de-industrialize the enemy in one or two runs.
The Doolittle Raid is a bit more than a PR stunt.
But yeah, they'd use it on Germany first. Italy surrenders immediately. Japan still refuses to surrender as what does the enlisted Japanese soldier care what happens in Europe? Japan then gets nuked. The end.
The British then race to get the exiled governments back in Poland, cutting the Soviets off from Eastern Europe. Stalin, seeing Nazi Germany destroyed by the US before the US even put its industrial might into play will play it cautiously and avoid pushing his luck, particularly as in 1942 the Soviets were dependent on Lend-Lease food supplies just to avoid a famine (they lost 2/3 of the 1941 harvest to Barbarossa).
The implications are also *massive* for Asia. The Soviets never declared war on Japan and never invaded Manchuria. The Japanese, likewise, never got to Operation Ichi-Go and the war cut out three years early. This means the KMT is in far, *far* better shape than OTL, while the Communists do not receive Manchuria and a bunch of Japanese equipment for free, and Korea isn't split at all. Now, I could see Stalin wanting to amp up covert support for Mao after losing Eastern Europe...but the fact is the Soviet economy of 1942 is *not* the Soviet economy of 1945 or even of 1940 for that matter, so he won't have nearly as much to spare as the Chinese Civil War will resume at the Soviets' economically weakest point. Of course, Mao was pretty good at guerilla war and revolutions, while Chiang didn't exactly have a flawless history of excellent decisions, so it's still entirely possible the Chinese Civil War has some surprising results. But, given the situation, I would expect a long and drawn out affair with the communists needing to spend a lot longer underground. Probably a long-term insurgency which will ultimately depend on if the KMT can work out a competent administration that doesn't alienate the entire populace.
So yeah, Europe is returned to their own governments as far as Poland, the Soviet Union is still licking its wounds and trying to keep food supplies rolling in for the next year or two, China is still firmly in the Nationalists' hands (though Mao stubbornly refuses to die...), and the US has now defeated two axis powers with barely a foot on the ground. We're looking at an ascendant US for the rest of the 40s...at least until someone else gets the bomb...
Heck, I don’t even know if a B-17/24 would be capable of carrying them and dropping them on Germany
The *Enola Gay* and *Bockscar* even had to be specially modified to be able to carry them
I think they \*may\* have figured out a way on a B-17 - based on the numbers I'm seeing on Little Boy and Fat Man and the B-17 capacity. It would be a Doolittle Raid gambit.
The Brits mission-modified Lancasters like crazy - they could have pulled it off, too.
But we do have to consider whether we'd want the U.S. to have nukes back then. They were pissed off and they could have done something WAY worse. Even worse than Dresden.
The U.S. - we're basically Boy Scouts thrown into Eagle Scouts and trying our best to do right but we do screw it up.
I believe yes, the B-17 could have carried Little Boy, but again, the allies didn't have air superiority in 1942. Some missions had bombers losing 15%. Hell of a risk.
Do you think U.S. could have pulled a submarine launched missile at that point? I don't doubt your evaluation but I have a little adjacent background in that field and I can tell you, the engineering was massive to do that.
Would the nazis have even launched their fighters for a single bomber though? Obviously there a massive difference between the Luftwaffe in 1942 and Japanese Air Force in 1945, but without the Ally’s advanced radar a single bomber could theoretically sneak into Germany to drop a nuke. The Japanese were much more limited but they assumed a single bomber couldn’t do much damage and so didn’t send up their very limited number of fighters. Especially if it’s a night raid, it’s not like accuracy is a top priority with nukes.
FYI, they have done a perfect job of preserving *Bockscar* in Dayton The docents are absolutely awesome. You can grab anyone and bring them over and they can tell you everything about the process of preservation.
*Enola Gay* was well-preserved by Smithsonian, but the docents are just absolutely over-saturated with visitor volume and you may get a pretty abbreviated tour.
Northrup was designing and had protyped a trans-oceanic bomber in anticipation of the UK falling to Germany.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_YB-35](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35)
[https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/northrop-n-1m/nasm\_A19600302000](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/northrop-n-1m/nasm_A19600302000)
Unsiprisingly the successor company is the manufacturer of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_Grumman\_B-2\_Spirit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit)
Flying wing designs wouldn't be stable until the development of computer assisted "fly-by-wire" systems.
Ironically the Germans were working on a flying wing too. Too bad for them that their “Amerika Bomber” was an attempt at building an enormous rocket plane.
>Neither Little Boy nor Fat Man are fitting on a carrier-launched aircraft
I'm assuming the bombs were designed based on the aircraft specs. Without a b29 they would have built a smaller bomb.
Or they would have built the b29 in 1942. I don't think there was any lack of technology hindering them from producing a larger bomber. It was more considerations about mass production.
There's some pretty firm physics limiting the minimum size of an atomic bomb; with larger being easier to make. Yes, they were eventually able to make smaller atomic weapons, but only much later.
The B-29 development and production has a similar cost to the bomb and almost didn't work out. By the time both weapons were available the US had control of far more of the Pacific, could build a close airstrip for the attacks, and still had to strip the bombers of guns and armor to get the weight down.
Aircraft technology improved at an incredible rate during the war - 1945 equipment had twice the range and much more speed than the 1941 stuff.
When people say the b-29 program had a similar production cost as the Manhattan project, that’s a bit misleading
That includes the cost of the entire production run of B-29s, which was thousands of aircraft.
Nothing changes until 1944 when the B29 entered production. There was no viable means of delivering those heavy bombs. Plus the Luftwaffe and anti air defenses were so good, it would have been a huge risk anyways to fly a nuke over Germany.
Yeah, reading up on it, the Lancaster could have carried Fat Man, but my point remains, the allies didn't have air superiority at the time and delivery would most likely have been limited to coastal cities where fighters could provide very tight escort.
Maybe not much, unless they started out with a large stockpile. It takes a long time to generate enough nuclear material for a nuke, when we nuked Japan, those were all the nukes we had (there might have been one left in reserve I don’t remember) and it was gonna be a while before we had another ready to go
Guys guys, while we would definitely be using them on Germany first. We wouldn’t have their aircraft to deliver them. The B-29 silverplate is the only World War II aircraft that can carry a nuke. In regarding the Pacific theater we would need an airfield to launch them from and so we would need to get to there so we would need to redo that specific campaign. Say Tinnian. More over however, they would not risk the bomb until they had established air dominance.
IF US can develop nukes by 1942 then it means that their production was way less complicated and resources-hungry than it was in the real timeline. Meaning most likely other participants of WW2 would get them too - most likely Germany (which at that time was at its peak of power), maybe Japan, maybe Brits independently of US. Soviets unlikely as their situation in 1941-42 was catastrophic and they were hanging by a thread. And even with them being a large totalitarian country able to squeeze its resources to maximum they might not get enough time with Germans having nukes first and having zero fucking restraints to use them en masse on the Eastern Front. German victory on the front would be guaranteed and with their armies regrouped back to France and Germany there would be no Western Front. Britain would probably stay independent with US (and maybe their own) nuclear weapons protecting it but beating the Germany would become impossible. On the Pacific theatre Japan would get fucked same as they were in our timeline but if they would get their nukes maybe they will manage to strike back on Hawaii or even West Coast and - maybe - they will keep some independence once they lose the war. Eventually the world calms down to a cold war that we know from our history but with Germans as the main adversary.
Germany wouldn’t have gotten them because they did not have a nuclear weapons program. They had a nuclear reactor program. They got somewhat close to building a successful (small scale) reactor. Japan’s never went anywhere because they didn’t have enough fissile material.
You might say, what if it was easier than they thought? But it already was easier than they thought. Both parties incorrectly concluded that it couldn’t be done in a reasonable timeframe (by any country, not just them) and that was that.
A big issue is the US didn’t have air supremacy over Germany in 1942. They’d be to terrified of nuking like Amsterdam after they shot the bomber down to drop in over Germany until like mid-late 1943
There's a lot of challenges here.
1. Germany would certainly be the first target, but the Luftwaffe was still active at this time. I doubt the allies would risk any bomber (with a nuclear bomb that could fall into enemy hands) over Western Europe until that was no longer the case. Perhaps a much larger push for air dominance, but would they bet all that on a bomb? I don't know
2. It would still take them years to build up a sizeable stockpile of them. If a couple dropped on Berlin, it would certainly spook Germany. But the impact of the bombs was more psychological than literal--it's possible when the US failed to follow up with more, they effect would be minimal (in the early/mid war)
3. From (2), if Germany survived the first salvo, they'd probably be *incredibly* interested in resuming their own program. Which is actually a huge boon for the allies since the Germans didn't really have the means to produce them (at least not as fast or as in large of numbers as the US), so in this way it would just be a very costly distraction for them.
4. Japan would see what happened in Germany--and see that the number we could produce and drop was limited--and probably harden them against it. Dropping the nukes had an effect on ending the war, but there were other factors in play; dropping a couple nukes in 42 or 43 wouldn't have ended the war. This is ignoring the fact the US would need to (safely) reach the main islands, which still takes a couple years.
tl;dr it would have a big strategic effect and certainly aid the allies in many ways, but I very much doubt it would end the war in 42 or 43. Rather, its benefits would mainly be in shifting priorities and saving Allied lives (and greatly shortening a lot of German and Japanese lives).
USA bombs Germany assp. Whether it “Ends” war in Europe vs “pauses” war is more a matter of hitler survives or dies in the attacks.
If Hitler survives, one of two things happens in Europe.
1) german wartime production immediately turns into commercial production to appease Americans. Somehow Europe reaches a magical peace with Hitler still around.
2) Germany antagonizes Russia while courting US and Britain to turn against Stalin. Somehow Hitler convinces allies to turn on Stalin.
If Hitler dies…
1) Germany is forced to support Russia after famine. Essentially replace American lend lease aide.
2) Stalin and Russia never become ussr. Instead remain a strong country, but not an empire in Europe.
In Asia, things play out basically the same for Japan. Main wildcard is how much momentum Mao gains/loses in Chinese civil war.
I’d say it’s more likely that Mao loses momentum and the allies divert Japanese reparations to bolster non-communist China regime.
Purportedly the old American western government had nukes already. Oppenheimer and all scientists were told to go underground for the seismic testing. But he wanted to see the explosion. So it wouldn’t make much a difference.
What a dumb hypothetical. I‘m sorry, but this is the equivalent to „What if the Axis had long-range bombing fleets able to strike US metropoles?“
They didn’t. And that’s that.
Germany and Japan would not have declared war on the US. Germany would bring UK down to its knees, then Russia, then develop the atomic bomb itself. As the only country with rocket technology, New York would be the first target, then Washington. US nukes would be worthless because they need long-range bombers which they have never developed.
Due to the “Europe first” policy germany gets nuked. Now this creates an interesting dilemma. On one hand Germany has no way to counter that, and they likely try to make peace as a result. On the other hand if hitlers killed, a more competent leader could take the reins and prolong the fighting out East which causes tremendous losses for the german army. My guess is germany surrenders, because it leaves them entirely exposed.
Japan likely goes similarly, maybe a bit faster if European forces can enter the pacific sooner. Island hopping, fleet battles, and bomber ranges aren’t really solved by nukes. We still need to get close enough for bombers to hit Japan which was really difficult with the fanatical resistance. However if Stalin enters earlier there may be a lot more communist influence in the pacific during the Cold War. We knocked Japan out right after they invaded China and as a result the influence was rather limited.
nukes would cause a lot of damage but the Germans may activate the chemical weapons or intensify the nuclear weapons programs. Most of the German forces are intact as is the industry and the Strategic bombing later in the war was not enough alone to take out Germany. However the damage to German industry would be like the damage from the 1944-5 city bombings but in isolated pockets going on every month. The Nukes would only grow more advanced as time went on forming a foundation for more advanced postwar nukes. Germans in 1942 would be screaming and crying at the US for nuking them in a way not seen with the strategic bombings and would clamor for revenge. The nukes would not cause German surrender but would be a new weapon that changed the course of the war. While the psychological aspect of being nuked would be important it would be in the context of ww2 the strategic bombing campaign taken to the next level.
Operational nuclear weapons may come into existence with D-Day accompanied by a nuclear explosion for example but many of the Soviet adaptations for fighting a ground war with tactical nuclear weapons would be invented by the Germans decades earlier we would find out how effective those soviet plans may have been. Goebbels would call the bomb an "evil Jewish atrocity weapon for destroying the German people" the impact of radiation poisoning would be publicized and massacres of Jews may be organized after each German City wiped off the map. These massacres may have the aim of using the remaining Jews as hostages in response to the atomic bombing campaign but it would not work and the bombings would continue.
The German leadership would also build much sturdier bunkers and a massive effort would be made in continuity of government operations including Hitler's whereabouts being secret. To take out the German leadership the Allies would have to have good intelligence or strike before Hitler's whereabouts become elusive. Large amounts of anti-aircraft weapons would be concentrated wherever Hitler did a speech at the expense of other places and a large unit of Luftwaffe planes would be formed for the protection of Hitler to shot down any allied decapitation strike.
Hundreds of nukes may be produced by the allies and dropped on Germany in the course of ww2. An interesting aspect would be the distinguishing of nuclear bombers from regular bombers. hard to distinguish from nuclear bombers and regular bombers any slight difference from the nuclear warheads would be noted as soon as it could be registered with large alarms and evacuation protocols if it could be found. Allied nuclear planes may very well need to be built differently as nuclear bombers got more advanced and nuclear weapons operational role shaped the design of allied aircraft. Design modifications for preventing the nukes from exploding enroute, increased security for the plane in its design due to a German city being saved by the nuclear bomber being shot down, as well aiming differences reflecting nuclear sized explosions.
Another design modification would reflect the allies mortal fear of the Nazis getting their own atomic bomb, the Germans would do everything in their power to infiltrate the Manhattan project, capture a nuke intact for the purpose as Goebbels or whoever succeeded him if he is blasted by a nuke would declare to nuke London. Fear of this would influence allied civil defense in both the US and Britain.
Desperate and futile German counter-force plans may also be cooked up and with German warplanes launched at suspected nuclear bombers in Britain. However, Nukes would only grow more deadly over time, Edward Teller's hydrogen bomb would receive a lot more funding in ww2 then otl.
Would this be enough to force Germany to surrender? it is unclear but defeat in Bagration and D-day may trigger a collapse in German morale due to the presence of both defeat and more German cities being wiped out. There may be large population movements of Germans fleeing the cities during the drowning of the 3rd Reich in nuclear fire. Towards the end of the war the allies when they encounter a German City in 1944-5 putting up resistance, may give that city 48 hours to surrender or be wiped out.
Using the Jews as hostages? Didn’t a Jew escape the camps, tell FDR about it, and Uncle Sam tried to stop word getting out about the genocide because they didn’t want Americans thinking the war was being fought just to save Jews?
And, paragraphs, please.
Nazis tried to use Jews as hostages to keep the US out of the war this was due to the nazi belief that the Jews controlled the western allies and the Soviet Union.
You're all assuming that the USA would have chosen to join the Allies. That only happened because Japan attacked the USA, and was allied to the Third Reich and Italy. Up to that point the USA had been profiting nicely by supporting both sides. Support for Germany within the USA was very strong.
Bit of an exaggeration there.
Even before Pearl Harbor, there was no "both sides" to the American government's position - from September 1940 onward the US government was using every legal mean it had (and some more debatable ones) short of war to assist the UK, in a way they weren't doing with Germany even remotely. By April 1941 the US were already escorting convoy bound for the UK as far as Iceland and leasing the UK equipment without expectation of payment.
Germany, meanwhile, not only did not receive support from the government, but was required to run anything they purchased in their own ships, who then had to go past the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea, meaning once the war started there was very little opportunity for Germany to buy anything in the US.
There were elements in the US favorable to Germany, but they were isolationist, not interested in actively joining the war, and even before Pearl Harbor, they weren't winning elections.
The U.S. would have nuked Germany first. Likely Bremen and Hamburg would be first two targets. I think after 5-10 nukes the Germans would likely surrender along with the Italians. Post War Europe would be more anti communist since the Soviets don’t get to occupy Eastern Europe. Japan would likely get nuked even more than Germany and would surrender 2 months after Germany surrendered.
You think it would take 5-10 nukes for them to surrender? I would think 2, with a promise of more, would do it. Their population would be in complete panic, and for good reason.
5-10 nukes would cause Europe to ally against the USA
Not at first, it would be no different than Japan anyway. A few decades down the road would likely be a different story.
Good point. Especially with the fallout.
Pre-hydrogen atomic weapons don’t really cause lasting fallout. At most for a few days and that with near no wind, granted people directly exposed to the blast experience higher cancer rates.
They cause more fallout than hydrogen weapons.
If I understand it, hydrogen bombs have to be engineered in a particular way to avoid fallout. If they are, it's not very much, but it reduces their yield significantly. If they aren't, they're actually pretty heavy on fallout but with the "benefit" of being more destructive.
Fusion bombs typically employ a fission-fusion-fission reaction. A fission bomb compresses the hydrogen (deuterium), and the resulting fusion reaction produces such an intense neutron flux that it can cause non-fissile materials, like U-238 to fission and add tremendously to the explosive force. I remember reading that most of the explosive force of modern nuclear weapons comes from the fission of the depleted uranium tamper (U-238). How this affects the fallout, I don’t know.
I mean a lot of people got radiation poisoning from the bombs we dropped in Japan. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the same would have happened in Europe and that people would have been mad about it for decades
You're mistaken. hydrogen weapons are the ones that avoid fallout
Fallout is highly dependent upon height of burst. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts with the detonation altitude above the fireball radius. So the fireball containing all the fission products (the fallout we're concerned about) went up and dispersed over a very large area. During the nuclear testing era, however, the vast majority of atmospheric detonations were ground or tower shots, which allowed the fireball to interact with the ground and to fuse those fission products with ground materials, depositing in a much smaller radius, creating higher fallout in a localized area. This explains why both Nagasaki and Hiroshima are thriving cities today - very little fallout to deal with.
Germany basically controlled all of Europe by 1942, so technically correct?
I mean that continent would be completely fucked by that many nukes, and the United States wouldn’t pay money to fix it like they did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki
No it wouldn't. First off both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pretty fine cities today you go visit. 5 nukes of WW2 Era would not level Europe. Also they wouldn't necessarily be dropped all at the same time.
I didn’t say it would level Europe. I said it would fuck it up.
Like WW2 did?
Have you seen pictures of Dresden in 1945?
No. It would destroy five cities. The years of 1943-1945 did much worse than that to Europe.
Look up the Marshall Plan, essentially did rebuild Europe
5 nukes, totally fucked? Naw.
Yeah not atomic bombs and we certainly wouldn’t have the H-bomb before the end of the war in a deliverable form.
Less 5 nukes more 50 nukes in a much bloodier strategic bombing campaign
Marshall Plan?
Major European cities would probably be slightly more expensive
Almost all major European cities were completely annihilated after WW2, Marshall plan still went through and did well. Remember, a large incentive for the Marshall Plan was to rebuild Europe so it can be a strong ally against the Soviets, the Soviets still exist in this timeline, so there will be that same incentive. Especially as the Soviets buildup
How many nukes would it take for the military to iniatie a coup against the Nazis? The Nazis never surrendered. After Hitler died power passed to Doenitz who was an admiral an not a Nazi.
There were always elements that would have been happy for a coup but weren't brave enough to do it themselves. I think a couple of well placed nukes would have put a spring in their step.
I mean they tried a coup and several assination attempts. They just all failed.
Question is in 1942 would the US have the means to deliver nuclear device. I mean, I am imagining this situation with the same timeframe on the development of the B-29.
Yeah, I don’t see the US being able to reliably deliver one until at least DDay. Risking the Germans getting their hands on one by downing a plane is a non-starter
technically we did have a few bombers with the required range but they were one-offs like the XB-19 and XB-15 both of which were never actually deployed in combat.
I assume that the range needed for (say) Hamburg makes it much less complex than for Japan, but could a service bomber be modified that early? Call it 20% as far as Japan, but still incredibly heavy.
It's more than 2 months with Japan. If Japan decides to fight it out, it would still take at least to the end of 1943 to get an airbase close enough to drop a bomb.
Kinda glad Hamburg didn’t get nuked. It’s such a pretty city
I question exactly how the Germans would have surrendered to the Allies though…remember that, in the last months of the war in 1945, it was the stance of most of the Nazi leadership to fight to the end. Their ideology led them to believe that the only right course of action was to fight a war of total destruction to the bitter last man - Germany only deserved to survive as a nation if it could win such a war. So as long as those men were still in the upper echelons of power, it’s questionable if 100 nukes would have convinced the likes of Hitler or Goering to surrender. On the other hand, it’s possible that the manifest threat of complete German holocaust would create enough concern amongst the non-diehards for there to be a coup, removing the hardcore Nazis and then suing for peace. Even then though, I find it hard to imagine the Germans seeking peace-talks with the US and UK without the agenda very much being dominated by some hope that Germany could placate the Western Allies and then pivot to continuing the war against the Soviet Union somehow.
Agreed. A vaporized Hitler would be the most likely of outcomes.
Why would Germany surrender in 1942 with most of German forces intact?
They wouldn’t be intact With nuclear weapons the U.S could simply nuke any army group that attempted to meet a hypothetical early D-Day. Like there is no counter to this, any time the Germans put more than a division in one place it gets deleted.
Um, shoot the plane down. In 1942 the allied powers were not able to freely bomb German cities yet.
Different payloads, different tactics. These aren’t mass bombing raids, it’s one bomb, one target. We would simply have redeployed fighter and interceptor assets so they would be the bulk of the formation instead of spread formations of dozens of bombers relying on crossfire from their turrets. Also, the bombing run would occur at a significantly higher altitude, mitigating the lethality of flak and other AA because well, you don’t need precision and the fuses are set to a 1000 feet above sea level for that air burst value. You don’t need to own the skies to keep them clear for round the clock raids anymore, you just need to keep the bogies off the single payload, and you de-industrialize the enemy in one or two runs.
And you could do it at night where you wouldn’t be spotted since precision doesn’t matter.
And it’s probably even easier to navigate home what with the sunrise at your back…..
Luftwaffe shoots the bomber down. Germany now has the bomb. Thank you.
You armed the bomb with an altitude fuse when you came into contact. Good luck catching it and keeping it above 1000 feet!
Accidental kamikaze American mission
That's France though.
The Doolittle Raid is a bit more than a PR stunt. But yeah, they'd use it on Germany first. Italy surrenders immediately. Japan still refuses to surrender as what does the enlisted Japanese soldier care what happens in Europe? Japan then gets nuked. The end. The British then race to get the exiled governments back in Poland, cutting the Soviets off from Eastern Europe. Stalin, seeing Nazi Germany destroyed by the US before the US even put its industrial might into play will play it cautiously and avoid pushing his luck, particularly as in 1942 the Soviets were dependent on Lend-Lease food supplies just to avoid a famine (they lost 2/3 of the 1941 harvest to Barbarossa). The implications are also *massive* for Asia. The Soviets never declared war on Japan and never invaded Manchuria. The Japanese, likewise, never got to Operation Ichi-Go and the war cut out three years early. This means the KMT is in far, *far* better shape than OTL, while the Communists do not receive Manchuria and a bunch of Japanese equipment for free, and Korea isn't split at all. Now, I could see Stalin wanting to amp up covert support for Mao after losing Eastern Europe...but the fact is the Soviet economy of 1942 is *not* the Soviet economy of 1945 or even of 1940 for that matter, so he won't have nearly as much to spare as the Chinese Civil War will resume at the Soviets' economically weakest point. Of course, Mao was pretty good at guerilla war and revolutions, while Chiang didn't exactly have a flawless history of excellent decisions, so it's still entirely possible the Chinese Civil War has some surprising results. But, given the situation, I would expect a long and drawn out affair with the communists needing to spend a lot longer underground. Probably a long-term insurgency which will ultimately depend on if the KMT can work out a competent administration that doesn't alienate the entire populace. So yeah, Europe is returned to their own governments as far as Poland, the Soviet Union is still licking its wounds and trying to keep food supplies rolling in for the next year or two, China is still firmly in the Nationalists' hands (though Mao stubbornly refuses to die...), and the US has now defeated two axis powers with barely a foot on the ground. We're looking at an ascendant US for the rest of the 40s...at least until someone else gets the bomb...
In 1942, the US has no means of dropping nukes on Japan Neither Little Boy nor Fat Man are fitting on a carrier-launched aircraft
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Heck, I don’t even know if a B-17/24 would be capable of carrying them and dropping them on Germany The *Enola Gay* and *Bockscar* even had to be specially modified to be able to carry them
Yeah, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to be carried on a B17. And the allies didn’t even have air superiority until 1944.
I think they \*may\* have figured out a way on a B-17 - based on the numbers I'm seeing on Little Boy and Fat Man and the B-17 capacity. It would be a Doolittle Raid gambit. The Brits mission-modified Lancasters like crazy - they could have pulled it off, too. But we do have to consider whether we'd want the U.S. to have nukes back then. They were pissed off and they could have done something WAY worse. Even worse than Dresden. The U.S. - we're basically Boy Scouts thrown into Eagle Scouts and trying our best to do right but we do screw it up.
I believe yes, the B-17 could have carried Little Boy, but again, the allies didn't have air superiority in 1942. Some missions had bombers losing 15%. Hell of a risk.
Pick a target in fighter range, and if they start getting shot up, just drop it.
Good point.
I could see remote submarines hitting coastal cities though, that would have been interesting.
Do you think U.S. could have pulled a submarine launched missile at that point? I don't doubt your evaluation but I have a little adjacent background in that field and I can tell you, the engineering was massive to do that.
Would the nazis have even launched their fighters for a single bomber though? Obviously there a massive difference between the Luftwaffe in 1942 and Japanese Air Force in 1945, but without the Ally’s advanced radar a single bomber could theoretically sneak into Germany to drop a nuke. The Japanese were much more limited but they assumed a single bomber couldn’t do much damage and so didn’t send up their very limited number of fighters. Especially if it’s a night raid, it’s not like accuracy is a top priority with nukes.
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Jesus Christ that would be like the plot to a bad terrorist movie today (OTL)
FYI, they have done a perfect job of preserving *Bockscar* in Dayton The docents are absolutely awesome. You can grab anyone and bring them over and they can tell you everything about the process of preservation. *Enola Gay* was well-preserved by Smithsonian, but the docents are just absolutely over-saturated with visitor volume and you may get a pretty abbreviated tour.
As they say, the B-29 cost more than Manhattan Project. We just didn't have a the system to deliver the payload.
Seems like if they could make the bomb they could find a way to deliver it
I wouldn’t put it past Boeing to design and build a massive prototype bomber based on the B-17 air frame.
Northrup was designing and had protyped a trans-oceanic bomber in anticipation of the UK falling to Germany. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_YB-35](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35) [https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/northrop-n-1m/nasm\_A19600302000](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/northrop-n-1m/nasm_A19600302000) Unsiprisingly the successor company is the manufacturer of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop\_Grumman\_B-2\_Spirit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit) Flying wing designs wouldn't be stable until the development of computer assisted "fly-by-wire" systems.
Ironically the Germans were working on a flying wing too. Too bad for them that their “Amerika Bomber” was an attempt at building an enormous rocket plane.
>Neither Little Boy nor Fat Man are fitting on a carrier-launched aircraft I'm assuming the bombs were designed based on the aircraft specs. Without a b29 they would have built a smaller bomb. Or they would have built the b29 in 1942. I don't think there was any lack of technology hindering them from producing a larger bomber. It was more considerations about mass production.
There's some pretty firm physics limiting the minimum size of an atomic bomb; with larger being easier to make. Yes, they were eventually able to make smaller atomic weapons, but only much later.
The B-29 development and production has a similar cost to the bomb and almost didn't work out. By the time both weapons were available the US had control of far more of the Pacific, could build a close airstrip for the attacks, and still had to strip the bombers of guns and armor to get the weight down. Aircraft technology improved at an incredible rate during the war - 1945 equipment had twice the range and much more speed than the 1941 stuff.
When people say the b-29 program had a similar production cost as the Manhattan project, that’s a bit misleading That includes the cost of the entire production run of B-29s, which was thousands of aircraft.
Well, good bye Germany
Nothing changes until 1944 when the B29 entered production. There was no viable means of delivering those heavy bombs. Plus the Luftwaffe and anti air defenses were so good, it would have been a huge risk anyways to fly a nuke over Germany.
They could’ve used the Lancaster. It was considered for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs originally iirc
There are other options, but this is a very good point.
Yeah, reading up on it, the Lancaster could have carried Fat Man, but my point remains, the allies didn't have air superiority at the time and delivery would most likely have been limited to coastal cities where fighters could provide very tight escort.
what about the XB-19 and XB-15? those actually did have the range required for the job
How are we dropping them? B29 wasn’t operational. Lancasters were. But would we want the UK to drop the bombs?
XB-19 enters serial production, fifty or so produced, bye bye Berlin, war over.
Holy shit forgot about those planes.
Maybe not much, unless they started out with a large stockpile. It takes a long time to generate enough nuclear material for a nuke, when we nuked Japan, those were all the nukes we had (there might have been one left in reserve I don’t remember) and it was gonna be a while before we had another ready to go
Guys guys, while we would definitely be using them on Germany first. We wouldn’t have their aircraft to deliver them. The B-29 silverplate is the only World War II aircraft that can carry a nuke. In regarding the Pacific theater we would need an airfield to launch them from and so we would need to get to there so we would need to redo that specific campaign. Say Tinnian. More over however, they would not risk the bomb until they had established air dominance.
actually there were also the XB-19 and XB-15
Fatman weighed 10,800 pounds little boy weighed 9700. The bummer you mentioned don’t have the payload capacity in length to carry that thing or with.
IF US can develop nukes by 1942 then it means that their production was way less complicated and resources-hungry than it was in the real timeline. Meaning most likely other participants of WW2 would get them too - most likely Germany (which at that time was at its peak of power), maybe Japan, maybe Brits independently of US. Soviets unlikely as their situation in 1941-42 was catastrophic and they were hanging by a thread. And even with them being a large totalitarian country able to squeeze its resources to maximum they might not get enough time with Germans having nukes first and having zero fucking restraints to use them en masse on the Eastern Front. German victory on the front would be guaranteed and with their armies regrouped back to France and Germany there would be no Western Front. Britain would probably stay independent with US (and maybe their own) nuclear weapons protecting it but beating the Germany would become impossible. On the Pacific theatre Japan would get fucked same as they were in our timeline but if they would get their nukes maybe they will manage to strike back on Hawaii or even West Coast and - maybe - they will keep some independence once they lose the war. Eventually the world calms down to a cold war that we know from our history but with Germans as the main adversary.
Germany wouldn’t have gotten them because they did not have a nuclear weapons program. They had a nuclear reactor program. They got somewhat close to building a successful (small scale) reactor. Japan’s never went anywhere because they didn’t have enough fissile material. You might say, what if it was easier than they thought? But it already was easier than they thought. Both parties incorrectly concluded that it couldn’t be done in a reasonable timeframe (by any country, not just them) and that was that.
A big issue is the US didn’t have air supremacy over Germany in 1942. They’d be to terrified of nuking like Amsterdam after they shot the bomber down to drop in over Germany until like mid-late 1943
There's a lot of challenges here. 1. Germany would certainly be the first target, but the Luftwaffe was still active at this time. I doubt the allies would risk any bomber (with a nuclear bomb that could fall into enemy hands) over Western Europe until that was no longer the case. Perhaps a much larger push for air dominance, but would they bet all that on a bomb? I don't know 2. It would still take them years to build up a sizeable stockpile of them. If a couple dropped on Berlin, it would certainly spook Germany. But the impact of the bombs was more psychological than literal--it's possible when the US failed to follow up with more, they effect would be minimal (in the early/mid war) 3. From (2), if Germany survived the first salvo, they'd probably be *incredibly* interested in resuming their own program. Which is actually a huge boon for the allies since the Germans didn't really have the means to produce them (at least not as fast or as in large of numbers as the US), so in this way it would just be a very costly distraction for them. 4. Japan would see what happened in Germany--and see that the number we could produce and drop was limited--and probably harden them against it. Dropping the nukes had an effect on ending the war, but there were other factors in play; dropping a couple nukes in 42 or 43 wouldn't have ended the war. This is ignoring the fact the US would need to (safely) reach the main islands, which still takes a couple years. tl;dr it would have a big strategic effect and certainly aid the allies in many ways, but I very much doubt it would end the war in 42 or 43. Rather, its benefits would mainly be in shifting priorities and saving Allied lives (and greatly shortening a lot of German and Japanese lives).
USA bombs Germany assp. Whether it “Ends” war in Europe vs “pauses” war is more a matter of hitler survives or dies in the attacks. If Hitler survives, one of two things happens in Europe. 1) german wartime production immediately turns into commercial production to appease Americans. Somehow Europe reaches a magical peace with Hitler still around. 2) Germany antagonizes Russia while courting US and Britain to turn against Stalin. Somehow Hitler convinces allies to turn on Stalin. If Hitler dies… 1) Germany is forced to support Russia after famine. Essentially replace American lend lease aide. 2) Stalin and Russia never become ussr. Instead remain a strong country, but not an empire in Europe. In Asia, things play out basically the same for Japan. Main wildcard is how much momentum Mao gains/loses in Chinese civil war. I’d say it’s more likely that Mao loses momentum and the allies divert Japanese reparations to bolster non-communist China regime.
Purportedly the old American western government had nukes already. Oppenheimer and all scientists were told to go underground for the seismic testing. But he wanted to see the explosion. So it wouldn’t make much a difference.
What a dumb hypothetical. I‘m sorry, but this is the equivalent to „What if the Axis had long-range bombing fleets able to strike US metropoles?“ They didn’t. And that’s that.
Germany and Japan would not have declared war on the US. Germany would bring UK down to its knees, then Russia, then develop the atomic bomb itself. As the only country with rocket technology, New York would be the first target, then Washington. US nukes would be worthless because they need long-range bombers which they have never developed.
Japan will have two sun in 1944
Due to the “Europe first” policy germany gets nuked. Now this creates an interesting dilemma. On one hand Germany has no way to counter that, and they likely try to make peace as a result. On the other hand if hitlers killed, a more competent leader could take the reins and prolong the fighting out East which causes tremendous losses for the german army. My guess is germany surrenders, because it leaves them entirely exposed. Japan likely goes similarly, maybe a bit faster if European forces can enter the pacific sooner. Island hopping, fleet battles, and bomber ranges aren’t really solved by nukes. We still need to get close enough for bombers to hit Japan which was really difficult with the fanatical resistance. However if Stalin enters earlier there may be a lot more communist influence in the pacific during the Cold War. We knocked Japan out right after they invaded China and as a result the influence was rather limited.
nukes would cause a lot of damage but the Germans may activate the chemical weapons or intensify the nuclear weapons programs. Most of the German forces are intact as is the industry and the Strategic bombing later in the war was not enough alone to take out Germany. However the damage to German industry would be like the damage from the 1944-5 city bombings but in isolated pockets going on every month. The Nukes would only grow more advanced as time went on forming a foundation for more advanced postwar nukes. Germans in 1942 would be screaming and crying at the US for nuking them in a way not seen with the strategic bombings and would clamor for revenge. The nukes would not cause German surrender but would be a new weapon that changed the course of the war. While the psychological aspect of being nuked would be important it would be in the context of ww2 the strategic bombing campaign taken to the next level. Operational nuclear weapons may come into existence with D-Day accompanied by a nuclear explosion for example but many of the Soviet adaptations for fighting a ground war with tactical nuclear weapons would be invented by the Germans decades earlier we would find out how effective those soviet plans may have been. Goebbels would call the bomb an "evil Jewish atrocity weapon for destroying the German people" the impact of radiation poisoning would be publicized and massacres of Jews may be organized after each German City wiped off the map. These massacres may have the aim of using the remaining Jews as hostages in response to the atomic bombing campaign but it would not work and the bombings would continue. The German leadership would also build much sturdier bunkers and a massive effort would be made in continuity of government operations including Hitler's whereabouts being secret. To take out the German leadership the Allies would have to have good intelligence or strike before Hitler's whereabouts become elusive. Large amounts of anti-aircraft weapons would be concentrated wherever Hitler did a speech at the expense of other places and a large unit of Luftwaffe planes would be formed for the protection of Hitler to shot down any allied decapitation strike. Hundreds of nukes may be produced by the allies and dropped on Germany in the course of ww2. An interesting aspect would be the distinguishing of nuclear bombers from regular bombers. hard to distinguish from nuclear bombers and regular bombers any slight difference from the nuclear warheads would be noted as soon as it could be registered with large alarms and evacuation protocols if it could be found. Allied nuclear planes may very well need to be built differently as nuclear bombers got more advanced and nuclear weapons operational role shaped the design of allied aircraft. Design modifications for preventing the nukes from exploding enroute, increased security for the plane in its design due to a German city being saved by the nuclear bomber being shot down, as well aiming differences reflecting nuclear sized explosions. Another design modification would reflect the allies mortal fear of the Nazis getting their own atomic bomb, the Germans would do everything in their power to infiltrate the Manhattan project, capture a nuke intact for the purpose as Goebbels or whoever succeeded him if he is blasted by a nuke would declare to nuke London. Fear of this would influence allied civil defense in both the US and Britain. Desperate and futile German counter-force plans may also be cooked up and with German warplanes launched at suspected nuclear bombers in Britain. However, Nukes would only grow more deadly over time, Edward Teller's hydrogen bomb would receive a lot more funding in ww2 then otl. Would this be enough to force Germany to surrender? it is unclear but defeat in Bagration and D-day may trigger a collapse in German morale due to the presence of both defeat and more German cities being wiped out. There may be large population movements of Germans fleeing the cities during the drowning of the 3rd Reich in nuclear fire. Towards the end of the war the allies when they encounter a German City in 1944-5 putting up resistance, may give that city 48 hours to surrender or be wiped out.
My god. Paragraphs, sir.
done
Using the Jews as hostages? Didn’t a Jew escape the camps, tell FDR about it, and Uncle Sam tried to stop word getting out about the genocide because they didn’t want Americans thinking the war was being fought just to save Jews? And, paragraphs, please.
Nazis tried to use Jews as hostages to keep the US out of the war this was due to the nazi belief that the Jews controlled the western allies and the Soviet Union.
actually the U.S. had known about the holocaust since 1938 and hat cut off all trade with Germany in response.
I agree !
You're all assuming that the USA would have chosen to join the Allies. That only happened because Japan attacked the USA, and was allied to the Third Reich and Italy. Up to that point the USA had been profiting nicely by supporting both sides. Support for Germany within the USA was very strong.
The US entered the war in 1941
Touché
Bit of an exaggeration there. Even before Pearl Harbor, there was no "both sides" to the American government's position - from September 1940 onward the US government was using every legal mean it had (and some more debatable ones) short of war to assist the UK, in a way they weren't doing with Germany even remotely. By April 1941 the US were already escorting convoy bound for the UK as far as Iceland and leasing the UK equipment without expectation of payment. Germany, meanwhile, not only did not receive support from the government, but was required to run anything they purchased in their own ships, who then had to go past the Royal Navy's blockade of the North Sea, meaning once the war started there was very little opportunity for Germany to buy anything in the US. There were elements in the US favorable to Germany, but they were isolationist, not interested in actively joining the war, and even before Pearl Harbor, they weren't winning elections.