# How much damage from a WWII era atomic bomb mounted on a torpedo? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782 "2015-07-21T15:21:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/21 "2015-07-22T03:10:03Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Very early Cold War planning played with schemes of using sub-delivered atomic bombs on Russian cities, and decided it was worthless as a tactic. Detonating it in the water or at the surface would do very little damage to the city, and the early atomic bombs were too large to effectively be launched into the air from a sub. I was wondering…what about a 16" gun (or an 18"…or 20"…hell, go all Texas sized and go with a 24" gun)? They could only fire shells weighing 2000-3000 lbs, true, and the shock would probably break the bomb, but what if you made a shorter barrel and used an air cannon design with the subs ballast tanks as the accumulator? You’d only need to fire the thing a couple hundred feet into the air over, say, New York, to get an air burst. Be kind of hard on the crew, but I think you could do it, depending on if you could slim down the bomb a bit at the same time you hardened it for the shock and designed a gun that could fire the thing without breaking it. It’s got a real Rube Goldberg-esqe feel that I like as well… ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/22 "2015-07-22T03:20:35Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > 1. Those cant cross the Atlantic- barely the English channel. > > 2. They didnt have enuf payload. The X-Craft were towed behind full sized submarines until they were relatively close to the target. Granted, that would make going through the heavily patrolled Atlantic an iffy proposition, but if they’d go all the way to develop an atomic bomb and decided sub delivery was the thing it wouldn’t take that much effort to attach the mini submarine directly to the mothership instead of towing. It could also be a rather oversized version of the Chariot manned torpedos, easier to build and easier to elope. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/23 "2015-07-22T07:06:51Z")
When the Manhattan Project first started they didn’t know for sure how big or heavy the A-Bomb was going to be, but they figured it wasn’t going to be small or light. Initially they were planning on having to deliver it to an enemy harbor by a ship of some kind (unmanned). And as for what a WWII size atomic bomb could do when detonated underwater, [the Crossroads Baker shot showed that…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m9wFvk3ybqc#t=30) ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/24 "2015-07-22T07:29:11Z")
would it really be necessary to use a submarine? What if you just put the bomb inside a normal freighter of something like rubber or rice or uniforms, Set the timer, then let the boat be captured? Not guaranteed to reach port, but what are the chances that the boat would be fully searched for a nuke before being taken somewhere it could do major damage? 4400kg is pretty small in relation to a full size freighter. ---
**Author:** ![Obtenebrate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9f8e36/32.png) [@Obtenebrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obtenebrate)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/25 "2015-07-22T09:45:11Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I was wondering…what about a 16" gun (or an 18"…or 20"…hell, go all Texas sized and go with a 24" gun)? They could only fire shells weighing 2000-3000 lbs, true, and the shock would probably break the bomb, but what if you made a shorter barrel and used an air cannon design with the subs ballast tanks as the accumulator? You’d only need to fire the thing a couple hundred feet into the air over, say, New York, to get an air burst. > > Be kind of hard on the crew, but I think you could do it, depending on if you could slim down the bomb a bit at the same time you hardened it for the shock and designed a gun that could fire the thing without breaking it. It’s got a real Rube Goldberg-esqe feel that I like as well… > **[Nuclear artillery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery)** > > Nuclear artillery is a subset of limited-yield tactical nuclear weapons, in particular those weapons that are launched from the ground at battlefield targets. Nuclear artillery is commonly associated with shells delivered by a cannon, but in a technical sense short-range artillery rockets or tactical ballistic missiles are also included. > The development of nuclear artillery was part of a broad push by nuclear weapons countries to develop nuclear weapons which could be used tactically against en... Which is not to imply the Nazis could have, as a practical matter, gotten far enough in the design process to have actually built one before the fall of Berlin. But the concept is sound and they functioned as intended. However, while I personally would like to avoid having a 15 kiloton nuclear weapon fired at me, as a one shot weapon of war it’s really rather lackluster. Certainly not the sort of thing which would inflict damage equivalent to what was done to Germany with conventional weapons. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/26 "2015-07-22T12:34:55Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Little Boy was probably too big to be carried by Torpedo, but from [Nukemap](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/). > > About 100,000 casualties 15,000 dead. The SE of Brooklyn. > > Most of the US East Coast is choke full of shallow waters and inlets, which make a submarine delivered torpedo less likely. Thanks, I had forgotten about that site. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Half the blast goes away from the city, assuming a shoreline hit and not in a narrow harbor. Half also is directed downward causing lots of damage near the point of detonation, but not very far inland. So it could be down to nearly 25% of the immediate effect of the blast. Is you play around on Nukemap, they have settings for airburst and surface. There is a huge difference in fatalities and casualties. ---
**Author:** ![GythaOgg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@GythaOgg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GythaOgg)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/27 "2015-07-22T14:39:51Z")
This reminds me of some of the ridiculous theories that were being proposed a few years back about the [Port Chicago disaster.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster#Nuclear_bomb_theory) I think we even had a thread here at one point about it. The scientists at Los Alamos did use what data they could get from the incident to help them get a feel for how an atomic bomb explosion might behave in a port situation. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782/28 "2015-07-22T15:58:00Z")
Check out [**the Halifax explosion**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion) (Wikipedia) of Dec. 6, 1917. > [@](#): > > The blast was the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons,[2] releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT. Also a buncha stuff [**on YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halifax+explosion). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-from-a-wwii-era-atomic-bomb-mounted-on-a-torpedo/725782.md?page=1)