The science is only half of the question. Another substantial issue was, even with equal knowledge to the US, did German and/or Japan have the industrial capacity to create a nuclear weapon?
Fun fact also: For all the effort put into the Manhattan project, MORE time/resources were spent on its eventual delivery system (the B-29) than the bomb itself. So even if Germany/Japan had a nuclear bomb, could they have also developed a practical delivery method, something capable enough to trust with such a weapon?
I had this discussion last week with someone who asked about whether Canada could build a bomb. Ya. Easy. Modern industrial capacities dwarf anything from the 1940s and Canada certainly has the brainpower and raw materials. But could Canada so easily develop a delivery platform, say an ICBM or stealth fighter? Likely not.
The Manhattan Project was so very expensive because they pursued plutonium production and uranium enrichment simultaneously. They also developed three uranium enrichment methods in parallel. Two of these actually contributed to the Hiroshima bomb. The uranium enrichment projects were much more expensive than the plutonium project. Britain and France built their first atomic bombs much more economically by pursuing the plutonium path alone.
No that's the entire point of the article even if they had the physics down, they did not have enough uranium in the whole of Germany for a working reactor let alone a uranium fission bomb.
The delivery method was much closer in reach than the bomb, given their missile program if they had a concrete target they could probably easily build a scaled up version of a v1 or v2 to deliver the weapon.
The Manhattan Project employed around 130,000 people compared to something like 17,000 on the V-2 project (plus 60,000 concentration camp prisoners). Cost comparisons are in the neighborhood of $1.9B for the A bombs versus $800M for the V-2.
Germany did put U-boats off of the US East Coast. It would probably be a one way trip to put one off of the Brooklyn docks. If they had two and used the first to clear a path for the second, it could have worked.
Yes but that would be wildly inefficient. A nuke on the ground ("lay-down" delivery) is already maybe 40% as powerful as one in the air. Put it under even a few feet of water and that becomes only 20% as most of the energy goes sideways/down through water/dirt rather than directly at the target buildings. Water is shockingly dense at scale.
Inefficient compared to a B-29 dropping a bomb over a city but not inefficient compared to whatever other means (if any) Germany had of attacking an east cost city like New York.
Rest assured that if this alternate history scenario had occurred historians would not be talking about the inefficiency of the attack, they would be talking about the most devastating attack that Germany was able to conduct against Americans on their own soil during the war. It would have completely changed the American mindset and culture forever.
I'm not sure, water is very good at conducting shockwaves. If you had an aquarium the size of an olympic swimming pool you could kill all of them by dropping a hand grenade in it.
Fun fact also: For all the effort put into the Manhattan project, MORE time/resources were spent on its eventual delivery system (the B-29) than the bomb itself. So even if Germany/Japan had a nuclear bomb, could they have also developed a practical delivery method, something capable enough to trust with such a weapon?
I had this discussion last week with someone who asked about whether Canada could build a bomb. Ya. Easy. Modern industrial capacities dwarf anything from the 1940s and Canada certainly has the brainpower and raw materials. But could Canada so easily develop a delivery platform, say an ICBM or stealth fighter? Likely not.