Alot means about 2 tons and this implies, with that tech, 200,000 kilotons. Half than a lot (i.e. 1 t) means X kilotons. Does somebody has any idea how much could be X?
X=0?
X=100 kilotons?
X=............
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Alot means about 2 tons and this implies, with that tech, 200,000 kilotons. Half than a lot (i.e. 1 t) means X kilotons. Does somebody has any idea how much could be X?
X=0?
X=100 kilotons?
X=............
I'm wondering about your use of the number of "200k Kilotons"... do you mean 200 Megatons (ie, not possible in the WWII timeframe constraints), or just 200 Kilotons (about right)?
I'm pretty sure that just using more conventional explosive isn't going to work, because of the buildup of "bad" elements building up inside the reaction which will retard the expansion of the explosive. Unless you have the necessary capacity to build a thermonuclear device which can 'draw off' the bad elements that would retard the expansion.
Also, why again are we discussing nuclear physics? I mean, are we discussing being able to build city busters or tactical nukes and what the difference is between being able to build either?
I'm pretty sure that just using more conventional explosive isn't going to work, because of the buildup of "bad" elements building up inside the reaction which will retard the expansion of the explosive. Unless you have the necessary capacity to build a thermonuclear device which can 'draw off' the bad elements that would retard the expansion.
Also, why again are we discussing nuclear physics? I mean, are we discussing being able to build city busters or tactical nukes and what the difference is between being able to build either?
I think you should have to research "Retard the Expansion" Doctrine in order to build nukes in the game.
Also, you should be able to BUILD them. Perhaps the nuclear facilities (and you should be able to build more than one) should produce weapons grade plutonium based on their size at certain rates and using that you can build the nukes. Or is that adding an uneccesary step? It would allow you to have multiple types of nuclear weapons and not have every nuke magically upgraded to hydrogen bomb as soon as you finish research.
- MVSN
Regarding how a nuclear reaction works (simplified)...
It is a chain reaction in which a neutron hits a fissionable atom causing it to fission. That fission releases on average 2-3 new neutrons. Those neutrons plus two new smaller atoms (the fragments of the original one) go flying off. A very slight amount of the total mass gets converted to energy (much less than the mass of a single proton or neutron). A high percentage of that energy goes to the motion of the fission fragments, which ultimately manefest itself as heat. You also release a gamma ray or two. The released neutrons may hit another fissionable atom, hit something non-fissionable within the device and get absorbed (typically making that non-fissionable atom a radiactive isotope of the same element), or leak out of the device altogether as neutron radiation.
If on average at least one of those neutrons causes another fission, you get a chain reaction. In a power reactor (except during startup or shutdown) you want on average exactly one of those neutrons to cause another fission. To get a bomb, you want an "uncontrolled chain reaction" in which the number of fissions in each generation grows rapidly.
In a power reactor, the material isn't arranged densly enough to get a boom, and materials that can absorb multiple neutrons without becoming unstable are used to absorb excess neutons and control the reaction.
The problem you have in a bomb is that if the total mass of fissionable material is too small (less than "critical mass"), too many of the neutrons leak out before causing a fission and you don't get the boom. However, if you assemble the bomb with a lump of fissionable material already at or above critical mass, it goes boom in your bomb factory. So, the conventional explosives are used to bring pieces of fissionable material rapidly together in a dense enough lump to achieve this critical mass. Making this work just right is tricky and techs precision control of how the explosives are ignited. Miniaturization involves figuring out how to do this with less conventional explosives as well as miniaturizing the electrical circuitry & components involved (the latter depending on advances in fields other than nuclear physics).
Critical mass is why you can't just cut the amount of fissionable material in half and get half as much boom. So how do you make a smaller boom? There are materials/structures referred to as "reflectors" that will in essense send those leaking neutrons bouncing back through the fissionable material for another shot at triggering a fission, lowering the amount of material it takes for critical mass. WWII era bombs didn't have this, of course. Latter "tactical nukes" do. In a "hydrogren" or "thermonuclear" bomb, the fission bomb(s) is used basically as a blasting cap to set off a much larger fusion explosion.
Critical mass for a bare chunk of U-235 ("Little Boy") is 57kg. For Pu-239 ("Fat Man") it is 10kg.
It is a chain reaction in which a neutron hits a fissionable atom causing it to fission. That fission releases on average 2-3 new neutrons. Those neutrons plus two new smaller atoms (the fragments of the original one) go flying off. A very slight amount of the total mass gets converted to energy (much less than the mass of a single proton or neutron). A high percentage of that energy goes to the motion of the fission fragments, which ultimately manefest itself as heat. You also release a gamma ray or two. The released neutrons may hit another fissionable atom, hit something non-fissionable within the device and get absorbed (typically making that non-fissionable atom a radiactive isotope of the same element), or leak out of the device altogether as neutron radiation.
If on average at least one of those neutrons causes another fission, you get a chain reaction. In a power reactor (except during startup or shutdown) you want on average exactly one of those neutrons to cause another fission. To get a bomb, you want an "uncontrolled chain reaction" in which the number of fissions in each generation grows rapidly.
In a power reactor, the material isn't arranged densly enough to get a boom, and materials that can absorb multiple neutrons without becoming unstable are used to absorb excess neutons and control the reaction.
The problem you have in a bomb is that if the total mass of fissionable material is too small (less than "critical mass"), too many of the neutrons leak out before causing a fission and you don't get the boom. However, if you assemble the bomb with a lump of fissionable material already at or above critical mass, it goes boom in your bomb factory. So, the conventional explosives are used to bring pieces of fissionable material rapidly together in a dense enough lump to achieve this critical mass. Making this work just right is tricky and techs precision control of how the explosives are ignited. Miniaturization involves figuring out how to do this with less conventional explosives as well as miniaturizing the electrical circuitry & components involved (the latter depending on advances in fields other than nuclear physics).
Critical mass is why you can't just cut the amount of fissionable material in half and get half as much boom. So how do you make a smaller boom? There are materials/structures referred to as "reflectors" that will in essense send those leaking neutrons bouncing back through the fissionable material for another shot at triggering a fission, lowering the amount of material it takes for critical mass. WWII era bombs didn't have this, of course. Latter "tactical nukes" do. In a "hydrogren" or "thermonuclear" bomb, the fission bomb(s) is used basically as a blasting cap to set off a much larger fusion explosion.
Critical mass for a bare chunk of U-235 ("Little Boy") is 57kg. For Pu-239 ("Fat Man") it is 10kg.
Hmm according too Wikipedia "little boy" had a pretty big Tungsten-Carbide plug around its fissionable U-235. This was the material used as a "Reflector" so the technology was there and already used in the very first few bombs.
This might be one of the reasons the US nuclear program was so expensive. They basically designed two of everything and no bomb looked like the other, each new one was a new experiment. Just look at how different "little boy" and "fat man" are.
They made two bombs both working but using entirelly different technology just to test them both out.
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Critical mass changes based on the refinement of the uranium.
Current technology in the USA allows purity levels of 98.3%. I doubt the centrifuges and instruments they had in the 40's could get to that point.
The point of ALL of this is that:
In order to fit a nuclear warhead into a V2 you HAVE to miniaturise the warhead.
miniaturisation takes substantial ammounts of time, and LIKELY should not be accomplished within the basic games time frame.
Yes, if you focus your entire research effort into nuclear weaponry and rocketry, you could probably get it done. You would also probably lose the war due to having crap tanks and aircraft and submarines.
on edit: I've been away at my mothers house helping her fix the place up. What did I miss?
Current technology in the USA allows purity levels of 98.3%. I doubt the centrifuges and instruments they had in the 40's could get to that point.
The point of ALL of this is that:
In order to fit a nuclear warhead into a V2 you HAVE to miniaturise the warhead.
miniaturisation takes substantial ammounts of time, and LIKELY should not be accomplished within the basic games time frame.
Yes, if you focus your entire research effort into nuclear weaponry and rocketry, you could probably get it done. You would also probably lose the war due to having crap tanks and aircraft and submarines.
on edit: I've been away at my mothers house helping her fix the place up. What did I miss?
First of all let me say that I'm not a nuclear scientist!
Second, for what I read the gadget, little boy and fat man had between 5 and 10 g of fissionable material (uranium/plutonium). So no issue to carry it. The issue is to understand what it was necessary to get a nuke blast. We know that little boy and fat man weighted about 4 tons but we don't know if a V2 should carry 4 tons. We know that the blast was about 20 kilotons and 20 kilotons means one big city largely destroyed and at least 100,000 people dead. We know that the following research was first on the efficiency e.g. same fissionable amount but bigger blast and second (when the rocket tech was enough developed) on the miniaturizing.
So in my opinion the first point to clarify is the following: given that a V2 can carry 1 ton what would be the minimum weight of a nuke warhead with that early tech?
If the answer is 2 tons then a the V2 is not anymore sufficient. A "much" bigger rocket is required. How much bigger? I haven't seen a clear answer to that.
Second point: given that the optimal weight should be 2 t how much should weight a "suboptimal" nuke?
If the answer is about 1 t then I think that it is plausible the Axis would use the V2 with a less efficient bomb that instead to destroy London would destroy half London.
I stand corrected on the total absense of a reflector, but smaller yield weapons still involve advances in that technology. It still took until the 1950's historically before the combination of more advanced rocketry and nuclear miniaturization produced the equivalent of a nuclear V2.
Since you like Wikipedia as a source, if you look at the article on the Soviet R-11 (the first "SCUD") it was capable of delivering a 50kt nuclear warhead to a range of 150km. It became operational in 1958 - a good 10 years past the HOI3 time frame. Meanwhile, from the same source, the first US nuclear-capable short range nuclear missle - the MGR-1 Honest John - was operational in 1953 but was considerably less capable than the above Soviet example (initially a 20kt warhead to a range of only about 25km).
The point is that nobody came close to a weapon capable of delivering a nuke over even V2 ranges until years after the timeframe of the game. So, letting it happen in the game is sort of Nazi Superscience fantasy.
On the other hand, if they prioritized it early enough, in addition to the historical US B-29 the UK, USSR and Germany (in decreasing order of likelihood) could have produced nuclear-capable heavy bombers.
The questions here is, Is this because of lack of nuclear technology or lack of rocket technology? And would a war situation where Germany starts several years ahead in heavy rockets technology and don't have air superiority have speeded up such development?
How many years after 1942 did USA and USSR test their first (non captured) rocket with V2 performance? How many years ahead were Germany in this field?
I agree, granted there is air superiority bombers can carry heavier nukes (read earlier/more primitive) than rockets, Just like ships and subs can carry yet heavier nukes than bombers.
For those of you who discuss the topic Germany/rockets/mini-nuclear bomb, please read this article, which also includes links to its right regarding the development of the V2 and speculations that the Germans did something similar of a nuclear test in march 1945:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4598955.stm
Furthermore, regarding Germany's capacity to develop the nuclear bomb, it is plausible that it was not lack of resources that lead to the Germans not developing a bomb before the Americans, but partly the head of the project (Heisenberg) lacking the ability to develop the bomb, building on what the Germans knew (ahead of the Americans) by the early 1940s. Heisenberg's travel to see Bohr is famous, where the Dane Bohr refuses to offer any help to Heisenberg's project. Instead Bohr later travels to the US and take part in the Manhattan project. It is possible Heisenberg's misunderstanding about how much nuclear material was needed had the consequence the project was seen as impossible to finish in time for it to affect the war outcome. However, if you read this article about the production of heavy water in German occupied Norway (link below), the Germans should have had more than enough heavy water to build a nuclear plant capable of producing nuclear bombs already in 1942-43, had they had better knowledge of how to develop a bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
Another issue is how the Germans really thought they would use nuclear power. I have read that after deciding it was not worth the effort to use nuclear power to produce nuclear weapons, that the development of nuclear power was researched with the aim of developing submarines that could use nuclear power to stay on missions for months at the time, which could have altered the Atlantic warfare. As someone else suggested earlier in this thread, Germany saw its submarine warfare as an essential strategy to make the UK surrender, due to starvation. Developing better submarines that could stop the merchant ships from the US to the UK and the SU therefore had key priority, and probably was seen as a much more realistic way to end the war than to develop a bomb which was beyond most people's imagination at the time.
In my opinion I think the Germans would have been well capable of developing nuclear weapons before the Americans had they had a senior scientist and a team capable of understanding how to make the bomb in 1941-1944. They had the heavy water to make a nuclear reactor had they produced it and transported it from Norway to Germany in 1941-43, and if its true that the u-234 submarine had nuclear material sufficient for two nuclear bombs, which was used in the bombs dropped on Japan (see link below), it shows that Germany had the material but lacked the skills, or focus, to put it all together (on time).
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/i-m/lastdays1.html
Regarding HOI3:
Yes, I think the AI should build nuclear weapons, but the usage and the effect should perhaps be more political than military. I am confident many human players will rush to produce nuclear bombs, and use them, after all you guys know an atomic bomb's significance. However, until the bomb was actually developed, tested and used, no one except a few scientists, politicians and officers had the imagination to understand the bomb's significance. For this reason I think a project aimed at developing the nuclear bomb should come as a 'special event' that unlocks the opportunity to develop such a weapon. Being at war, such as the US being pulled into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, being one criterion. Having an economy large enough so that starting such a project is seemed as a good investment, is another. I.e. if the production would cost X IC over Y years, then the country in question should have an economy where such a project would only account for Z % of its total gross domestic production (total IC). In this way "trigger happy" human players could not start researching nuclear weapons before the country is at war and also has a war industry where the opinion or leadership would see such a huge project as a legitimate usage of resources. Furthermore, a significant drop in IC, or the end of war, could cancel or slow down the project. The third criterion for such a project to start is the presence of a research team having the realistic capacity of researching the bomb. In the case of Germany there could be two or more special events with a small % of success that could change the historical outcome of the German nuclear project. First, that the German team gets help from e.g. Bohr. Second, if the German project gets under way at an early stage, that the Norwegian heavy water plant successfully produces the heavy water necessary to set up a German nuclear plant by 1942-43, or that the commando raids in 43-44 are unsuccessful so that a German plant is built in 43 or later. However, German success in conventional warfare, e.g. victory on the east front, could lead to a halt or closure of the German atomic project, unless there is war against the US.
I also think that alternative nuclear technologies should be included in HOI3, such as the Germans developing nuclear submarines.
As for the rockets flying nuclear weapons, it is very fictional to suggest the Germans would have developed nuclear rockets of similar strength of the American bombs dropped on Japan. However, as the above article suggests, and in line with someone posting in this thread suggested, it would have been more likely that the Germans had fitted the size of their nuclear weapons to the rockets they had at their disposal, e.g. a modified and somewhat improved version of a V2. This means that in HOI3 nuclear bombs must be developed in combination with either large bomber planes or rockets, where the former has much more significance than the latter in terms of destruction. However, would a series of V2-mini-nuclear attacks on London or Moscow have been as devastating as the larger nuclear attacks on Japanese cities? Maybe.
Dissent certainly would be affected by nuclear weapons. (Their horrific damage could be equal to if we today had been attacked by an unknown force out of our control to resist against, e.g. biological weapons of epidemic proportions dropped on major cities). Once their effect had become publicly known, e.g. by spreading pictures and publishing death tolls, both attacker and the attacked would most likely have been affected. Especially under suspicion that the enemy also could develop or already possess similar weapons of mass destruction. If one nation was repeatedly nuked or two nations nuked one another the dissent should reach such levels that the economies would be in chaos, soldiers may revolt or desert, and a coupe or public revolt (to try negotiating peace) would have a high risk of success.
Nukes in HOI3 could also be affected in peace time, e.g. that special events demanded the number of nuclear weapons to be reduced. In a post WW2 era with peace this could be the scenario. One thing I think is lacking in HOI is that war never really ends, with conditions such as those after WW1. Warfare continues for ever, but I think the AI, and dissent in human controlled nations, should increase slowly as years passes by. I know this is off topic, but after all civilians want peace and most of the soldiers in HOI are conscripts, not professionals. As such, the timing at which atomic weapons are used should also have an effect. A nation suffering from war for a long period may have a higher dissent penalty or suffer a higher risk of a revolt/coup, bringing the war to an end.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4598955.stm
Furthermore, regarding Germany's capacity to develop the nuclear bomb, it is plausible that it was not lack of resources that lead to the Germans not developing a bomb before the Americans, but partly the head of the project (Heisenberg) lacking the ability to develop the bomb, building on what the Germans knew (ahead of the Americans) by the early 1940s. Heisenberg's travel to see Bohr is famous, where the Dane Bohr refuses to offer any help to Heisenberg's project. Instead Bohr later travels to the US and take part in the Manhattan project. It is possible Heisenberg's misunderstanding about how much nuclear material was needed had the consequence the project was seen as impossible to finish in time for it to affect the war outcome. However, if you read this article about the production of heavy water in German occupied Norway (link below), the Germans should have had more than enough heavy water to build a nuclear plant capable of producing nuclear bombs already in 1942-43, had they had better knowledge of how to develop a bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
Another issue is how the Germans really thought they would use nuclear power. I have read that after deciding it was not worth the effort to use nuclear power to produce nuclear weapons, that the development of nuclear power was researched with the aim of developing submarines that could use nuclear power to stay on missions for months at the time, which could have altered the Atlantic warfare. As someone else suggested earlier in this thread, Germany saw its submarine warfare as an essential strategy to make the UK surrender, due to starvation. Developing better submarines that could stop the merchant ships from the US to the UK and the SU therefore had key priority, and probably was seen as a much more realistic way to end the war than to develop a bomb which was beyond most people's imagination at the time.
In my opinion I think the Germans would have been well capable of developing nuclear weapons before the Americans had they had a senior scientist and a team capable of understanding how to make the bomb in 1941-1944. They had the heavy water to make a nuclear reactor had they produced it and transported it from Norway to Germany in 1941-43, and if its true that the u-234 submarine had nuclear material sufficient for two nuclear bombs, which was used in the bombs dropped on Japan (see link below), it shows that Germany had the material but lacked the skills, or focus, to put it all together (on time).
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/i-m/lastdays1.html
Regarding HOI3:
Yes, I think the AI should build nuclear weapons, but the usage and the effect should perhaps be more political than military. I am confident many human players will rush to produce nuclear bombs, and use them, after all you guys know an atomic bomb's significance. However, until the bomb was actually developed, tested and used, no one except a few scientists, politicians and officers had the imagination to understand the bomb's significance. For this reason I think a project aimed at developing the nuclear bomb should come as a 'special event' that unlocks the opportunity to develop such a weapon. Being at war, such as the US being pulled into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, being one criterion. Having an economy large enough so that starting such a project is seemed as a good investment, is another. I.e. if the production would cost X IC over Y years, then the country in question should have an economy where such a project would only account for Z % of its total gross domestic production (total IC). In this way "trigger happy" human players could not start researching nuclear weapons before the country is at war and also has a war industry where the opinion or leadership would see such a huge project as a legitimate usage of resources. Furthermore, a significant drop in IC, or the end of war, could cancel or slow down the project. The third criterion for such a project to start is the presence of a research team having the realistic capacity of researching the bomb. In the case of Germany there could be two or more special events with a small % of success that could change the historical outcome of the German nuclear project. First, that the German team gets help from e.g. Bohr. Second, if the German project gets under way at an early stage, that the Norwegian heavy water plant successfully produces the heavy water necessary to set up a German nuclear plant by 1942-43, or that the commando raids in 43-44 are unsuccessful so that a German plant is built in 43 or later. However, German success in conventional warfare, e.g. victory on the east front, could lead to a halt or closure of the German atomic project, unless there is war against the US.
I also think that alternative nuclear technologies should be included in HOI3, such as the Germans developing nuclear submarines.
As for the rockets flying nuclear weapons, it is very fictional to suggest the Germans would have developed nuclear rockets of similar strength of the American bombs dropped on Japan. However, as the above article suggests, and in line with someone posting in this thread suggested, it would have been more likely that the Germans had fitted the size of their nuclear weapons to the rockets they had at their disposal, e.g. a modified and somewhat improved version of a V2. This means that in HOI3 nuclear bombs must be developed in combination with either large bomber planes or rockets, where the former has much more significance than the latter in terms of destruction. However, would a series of V2-mini-nuclear attacks on London or Moscow have been as devastating as the larger nuclear attacks on Japanese cities? Maybe.
Dissent certainly would be affected by nuclear weapons. (Their horrific damage could be equal to if we today had been attacked by an unknown force out of our control to resist against, e.g. biological weapons of epidemic proportions dropped on major cities). Once their effect had become publicly known, e.g. by spreading pictures and publishing death tolls, both attacker and the attacked would most likely have been affected. Especially under suspicion that the enemy also could develop or already possess similar weapons of mass destruction. If one nation was repeatedly nuked or two nations nuked one another the dissent should reach such levels that the economies would be in chaos, soldiers may revolt or desert, and a coupe or public revolt (to try negotiating peace) would have a high risk of success.
Nukes in HOI3 could also be affected in peace time, e.g. that special events demanded the number of nuclear weapons to be reduced. In a post WW2 era with peace this could be the scenario. One thing I think is lacking in HOI is that war never really ends, with conditions such as those after WW1. Warfare continues for ever, but I think the AI, and dissent in human controlled nations, should increase slowly as years passes by. I know this is off topic, but after all civilians want peace and most of the soldiers in HOI are conscripts, not professionals. As such, the timing at which atomic weapons are used should also have an effect. A nation suffering from war for a long period may have a higher dissent penalty or suffer a higher risk of a revolt/coup, bringing the war to an end.
For the love of God, if I trusted the television version of WW2 all that stopped the Germans from winning was Stalin riding on top of Frosty the snowman and Churchill with a tommy gun.
Every single one of these documentaries takes one aspect of the German war machine, jet fighters, nukes, subs. Goes over how advanced it was, how revolutionary, and then in the last 5 minutes, glosses over the fact that they couldn't afford to actually use it.
When you watch too many "how the Axis could have won" or "how the Allies could have lost" documentaries, you lose sight of the fact that the Axis didn't have a snowball's chance in hell after 1941.
The Germans did know about the possibility of an atomic bomb, but they couldn't afford it and the plan called for war to be over before then. Hitler saw a two year war not a six year one. In that respect, not wasting billions of Marks on a weapon that would take at least 4 years to develop was a prudent decision.
Also, having enough uranium oxide material to make two nuclear bombs implies a perfect refining rate. They write this to mean "if all of this stuff were utilized with the technology that the US had after already refining and enriching 30 tons." Just because two countries can make equally good fuel doesn't mean their cars can get the same mileage.
You make too much of the "air superiority" consideration.
Historically, the Germans were still sending bombers against England almost right up to to eve of D-Day. The Allies started strategic bombing of the Continent long before anybody would say they had air superiority there (and accepted heavy casualties to continue doing so).
Furthermore, both the Bomb and the bomber would be long term projects, requiring commitment several years before an operational system would be available. The Germans did not clearly lose air superiority until 1944. Do you think that they would base their planning in 1940 or even 1938 on the assumption that by the time the Bomb was available they would have lost control of the air to the extent that a bomber could not get through?
It seems highly unlikely that the war could last more than a year or so past a successful opening of a true "second front" by the Western Allies. So, to get the war to last until 1948 (so that the delivery system decision could be made after the 1944 loss of air superiority) you'd pretty much require D-Day to fail. For D-Day to fail you'd probably have to have the Allied 1944 campaign against the Luftwaffe in France that was conducted in preparation for D-Day to fail. Had the Germans won that, they wouldn't be in a position in 1944 to conclude that a bomber wouldn't work.
So, I don't believe HOI3 needs to support any delivery system for nukes other than heavy bombers in the base game (as opposed to an early cold war expansion). I would support including in the base game the capability for modders to add nuclear-capable missiles, though. I'm game for anything modders might want to to.
It is one thing to lose a bomber carrying 4tons of TNT. Can you even begin to imagine what the result is of loosing a single low flying bomber carrying a nuke? You could basically be giving your most secret weapon that have cost unimagineable tech and IC efforts away for free to your enemies. Nighttime + lowflying in many cases just replace the Interception risk with other risks such as fire by small caliber AA or hitting trees / wires.
To be certain to hit a city with a strategic bomber you need daylight and decent weather. If you want to fly back home and tell about the story / give damage reports you need high altitude.
How long does a high altitude bomber approaching London in full daylight and good visibility after 1941 survive?
Yeah giving it to modders would be great. But I do think there is a need for alternative delivery systems.
Especially the Submarine that theoretically can tow something the size of a nuke into enemy harbours even before the war. Or by neutrally flagged merchant ships. Both of these crafts were notourious for beeing able to avoid detection and suitable for such a mission.
Also if Heisenberg team actually missjudges how large a nuke needs to be (like some have said) and builds one thats much larger It might not be possible to drop from a bomber. That would limit them to delivery by water.
I don't agree with your scenarios either. If Germany does succeed in Soviet or gets a favorable peace treaty It can bring 75% of its Industry and Research efforts around towards weapons to defeat the allies with. Such as Rockets, Uboats and Nukes.
I actually belive its a much more plausable scenario that Germany nukes Newyork with a Uboat or Rockets launched from one, then that they nuke Newyork with a strategic bomber. Not because it would have been easier, but because It would have been their way of doing things. Just like Japan most likely would have chosen a kamikaze solution to deliver nukes, thats just their way of doing things.
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