🚀 go-pugleaf

From Brian Douglass <anasaz!briand@anasazi.com>

In article <C1F74x.L3M@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> Steve Williams <swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil> writes:
>
>From Steve Williams <swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil>
>
>
>In sci.military, aylwyn@maths.tcd.ie (Aylwyn Scally) writes:
> >From aylwyn@maths.tcd.ie (Aylwyn Scally)
> >
> >It seems to be a commonly held view that by the end of the Second World War,
> >German physicists were very close to developing their own atomic bomb.
>
>This was a common view at that time, but there's nothing to sustain
>this concept.  The Germans initially had a five-year lead in the nuclear
>research, but they took a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

[stuff deleted]
>Note: All of this from my memory; please correct me if I am wrong.  
>      No flames, please.  There's a book on this subject that I read
>      some time ago; I think its title was "Making of the Atomic Bomb".

There is also a documentary out, somewhere in which the principal subject
was the Army Officer responsible for going through captured facilities
looking for evidence of the German program.  Though he did find such
evidence, what he found led him and others back at the Manhattan project to
believe the Germans were not even close to completion of a bomb.  

What sticks out in memory about this documentary was how this officer said
"...though shocked to realize the Germans were so far behind, Oppie and the
rest never even thought about stopping the project [Manhattan].  After all,
there was still a war on in the Pacific."  to paraphrase.

Whether or not Manhattan should have been stopped was another question the
documentary was attempting to answer.

>---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve Williams                           swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil
>---------------------------------------------------------------------


-- 
"The best government of all is that government which governs the least."
	Jefferson
Brian Douglass		briand@anasazi.com 	602-870-3330 X657