Most Dangerous Position on a Bomber....?

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

Thats cool I always thought they were the same kind of bombs only built differently.

Nope. They were not sure either type would work, so both were constructed.

The actual building of a nuke is really not that complicated. The enrichment of uranium or creation of plutonium however is extremely difficult, and handling the weapons grade material is likewise difficult. This is why it is so critical that we not allow Iran to develop the centrifuges which they can then use to enrich uranium.

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Lunatic

[the lancaster kicks ass]

do they still use heavy water in the bombs??

[MP-Willow]

Interesting reading! Lancaster, I have not read about Heavy water in bombs now most use a solid.

Nice to see the Ball is only 3% behind the Tail. If any of you are interested in more reading for the Atomic bombs, read "Flyboys" has some interesting stuff about the second flight to Nagasaki.

Originally Posted by the lancaster kicks ass

do they still use heavy water in the bombs??

They never did. At least not in A-Bombs. In H-Bombs, it might be used as the hydrogen source material in some bombs, but it is not absolutely necessary.

[MP-Willow]

Thanks

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Does anyone know how many tests were conducted on H-Bombs?

[Medvedya]

Try this....

http://www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicve...learTests.html

And for the Soviets....

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwpnprog.html

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

cool thanks

[the lancaster kicks ass]

do they still use heavy water in the bombs??

They never did. At least not in A-Bombs

then why were the germans making it for their A-bomb??

[cheddar cheese]

They never actually made their A-bomb though...

Originally Posted by the lancaster kicks ass

then why were the germans making it for their A-bomb??

It was an error. Heisenburg, after the war, tried to indicate that this "error" was intentional, as he didn't want the German's to have the bomb, and tieing the development to the need for heavy water bogged down the program. Supposedly none of the non-Jewish German physicists were astute enough to catch the error.

However, I must say that looking at the facts I'm not convinced. It is easy to see how this mistake could in fact occur and I don't think Heisenburg or any member of his team were nearly as sharp as Einstein, Szilard, and/or Oppenheimer. I personally think the German team just goofed. Moreover, I doubt Germany had the resources to build a bomb in WWII anyway, it'd have taken them a decade to do it even if they were on the right track. If you investigate the scale of the Manhatten project you will see that just the centrifuge effort (to enrich uranium) was increadibly huge. And it was a gamble, there was no gaurantee it was going to work and many of the intermediate steps had to be scrapped, rethought, and another avenue tried to achieve success. It required a patience with failures that the Nazi's didn't have.

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Lunatic

[the lancaster kicks ass]

They never actually made their A-bomb though...

because we destroyed their supplies of heavy water..............

[cheddar cheese]

I know...

Originally Posted by the lancaster kicks ass

because we destroyed their supplies of heavy water..............

No. It would have made no difference. But, the US intelligence people had no idea if it was important or not, so they destroyed it. Significant resources were devoted to heavy water research in the Manhattan project, because they didn't know what they were doing and thus had to cover every possiblity even though they didn't believe heavy water was necessary (and they were right). Heavy water was of no real special value as a moderator, regular water or graphite was quite sufficient and much more available.

Research the effort to create U-235 and plutonium for the making of A-Bombs. The German's were not even close to achieving this! Remember, after millions of $ were spent developing the first US uranium enrichment faclility at Berkley, it failed only producing about a gram of U-235. Another method was developed, and a huge facility at Okridge Tenn. was constructed, to produce about 90 grams of U-235 per day. And the German's had no idea that the man made elemement U-239 (plutonium) even existed or could be produced.

In fact, the German's had just established their first atomic pile and had not yet even generated a successful chain-reaction when the war ended, putting them where the USA was in 1942 at the very start of the Manhattan Project. Hiesenberg had incorrectly calculated that it would take tons of U-235 to create nuclear bomb, when in fact it only takes few kilograms (about 40 kg at the purity level of Littleboy).

It is even possible that Hiesenburg intentionally mislead the Nazi's as to the viability of a nuclear bomb, but I personally doubt this, he did the math, and just goofed it, it's not an easy calculation only afew phyicists of the time were capable of working correctly. But the fact that no one else in the project was capable of checking his math shows just how far from a bomb they really were. The article at http://www.eas.asu.edu/~holbert/eee4...%20Failed.html pretty compellingly disputes the idea that Hiesenberg intentionally sabotaged the Nazi bomb program.

A few more links on the topic:

http://www.mnlegion.org/paper/html/manhattan.html
http://www.me.utexas.edu/~uer/manhattan/project.html
http://www.me.utexas.edu/~uer/manhattan/index.html
http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/MANHATTN.HTM

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Lunatic

[the lancaster kicks ass]

But, the US intelligence people had no idea if it was important or not, so they destroyed it.

hey hey hey, i aint even gonna read past that line 'till that's been put straight, it was a highly trained group of BRITISH and NORWEGIAN commandos, not an american in sight.................