🚀 go-pugleaf

From Ewan M Munro IE90 <emunro@cs.strath.ac.uk>


In article <C1D84A.989@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, aylwyn@maths.tcd.ie (Aylwyn Scally) writes:
|> 
|> From aylwyn@maths.tcd.ie (Aylwyn Scally)
|> 
|> [Stuff about WWII nuclear research deleted]
|>
|> Does anyone know of any evidence confirming or disputing the existence of a
|> German nuclear research programme? If there was one, was it very far
|> advanced by the time the war ended?

The BBC ran a "Horizon" programme about this topic, not so long ago - it was
called "Hitler's Bomb."

The show was partly based on secret recording that had recently been
declassified. British Intelligence gathered a group of German Nuclear
Physicists in a country mansion and recorded their reactions to the news
that the bomb had been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At the beginning of the war German nuclear research was *AT LEAST* on a
par with America's or Britian's.

In 1941, German scientists were asked if the could produce a bomb. They said,
in theory, it could be done - but it would take about three or four years to do.
German generals were unwilling to commit themselves to such a long term project,
since it was generally believed that the war would only last a couple more
years, win or lose. Instead, scientific projects which offered more immediate
weapons, such as rocket research, were pursued.

This was in contrast to the American belief that it would take *MANY* years to
grind down Germany and her allies.

German nuclear research continued right until the end of the war, but the scale
was nowhere near as great as that of the "Manhattan Project." The research was
not funded by the military, but by the "Ministry of Culture" (!!!) and was
hampered by availability of Uranium & Heavy water.

The German goal appears to have been to produce a sustainable nuclear reaction
is a Uranium machine. I think that this was basically a large number of Uranium
cubes, suspended in Heavy Water. They got about 75% of the reactants that they
needed before the reactor was caopture by the allies.

An implication is that, since the Germans chose rocket research instead of
nuclear ( in fact these funding decisions were made by one man ), the Germans
could have procured the bomb instead of the missile, but not both. It is argued
that the Germans spent more on rocket research than was spent in the "Manhattan
Project."

Hope that this info is of interest.

-- 
#include <disclaimer.h>                    Internet: emunro@cs.strath.ac.uk
"You don't understand. If you do drop <the microprocessor> through a crack
 and lose it, then there are millions more where that came from."
        Robert Noyce : co-inventor of the integrated circuit.