What causes South America to become Axis?
Are you supposing they have nukes and ICBMs, or at least IRBM, but not early warning radar? If so, then this could work, provided Hitler had complete knowledge of all such sites with the range to hit Germany. Miss even one or two, and he still gets it hard right in the Berlin.
If Radar is in the mix, then we’ve basically got MAD about 20 years earlier. Anyone crazy enough to launch one missile might as well launch them all. Actual damage is limited only by the number of weapons available to be deployed.
But the whole point of the nuclear deterrent is to deter all aggression. There’s no way a 1940s era power would hold back on using nukes if they thought a major invasion force was coming their way. Any blitzkrieg that gets underway, or any fleet that puts to sea, gets nuked in the field long before it reaches any useful prize.
Does everyone country magically have access to the same levels of tech as well as resources to build the same numbers of weapons? I doubt they would, so you’d get a situation where some would have more than others, and some would be more refined designs (i.e. able to be smaller, more compact, more powerful, etc etc). Depending on where they are technologically is going to depend on how this would play out. The early bombs weren’t very deploy-able except with very large bombers. Which brings up the second issue…not all countries had large bombers capable of reaching the other combatants, especially in 1939. So, how would most of the countries, even assuming they had atomic bombs compact enough to put in any bomber at all, deploy them?
Personally, I think that even if the tech was available, not every nation or even most of them would or could build a significant number of bombs small enough to be militarily useful, so I doubt it would have impacted the early war. It certainly would have changed the direction of research and development of ways to use the things, pushing the Germans into either heavy bombers and/or rockets, say. It probably would push for the development of counter measures as well.
If you assume magic and everyone has access to equal numbers of usable bombs AND deployment methods then you get into MAD…sort of what happened during WWII wrt chemical weapons being in basically all the combatants arsenals but pretty much unused because no one wanted to open that can of worms.
I did some research earlier, and it seems like the Lancaster and Halifax bombers had enough payload capacity to carry either of the Little Boy or Fat Man bombs. So it’s certainly possible to deploy them from some aircraft of the period. You’d have to play around with their combat ranges and some maps to figure out what they could hit.
For powers without similar aircraft, they might be stuck using them in static defenses. Picture a Nuclear Maginot Line (NML), with pre-positioned nuclear landmines on the most likely routes of invasion. Secrecy and misdirection as to exactly where the nukes are becomes paramount, lest the enemy be able to skirt the effective blast area. Having people close enough to detect the invasion and set off the nukes also becomes important, and, coincidentally, one of the worst jobs in the military.
The big problem with the NML is that there’s probably no way Hitler or Stalin would have been willing to cede enough discretion to the front line people to allow them to detonate in time to actually do anything useful. Remember what happened to the panzer reserves on D-Day? Control freaks don’t do well with distributed power structures.
Hello what’s this ? I never thought about this before, but I don’t recall much about chemical weapons being used in WW2, now you mention it.
Web says -
Hmm…
Bomb weights:
Lancaster: 12,000 lb
Halifax: 14,500 lb
B 17: 17,600 lb (overload, whatever that means)
B 29: 20,000 lb
As I recall, a pit had to be dug and the aircraft taxied or pulled over it to load the atomic bombs.
[QUOTE=Horatius]
I did some research earlier, and it seems like the Lancaster and Halifax bombers had enough payload capacity to carry either of the Little Boy or Fat Man bombs. So it’s certainly possible to deploy them from some aircraft of the period. You’d have to play around with their combat ranges and some maps to figure out what they could hit.
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Yeah, the Brits would be in a very good position I think if they had a bomb small enough to put on one of their heavy bombers in 1939. They would also be in good shape wrt radar to counter possible German bombers (assuming Germany went ahead with something like the JU 89). The B-17 would probably be able to carry a bomb as well, at least somewhat. The Russians would be screwed, at least initially wrt bombers, since they didn’t really have a good one at this point.
If they were smart enough to do it and to pre-position them properly. I doubt the Russians would have been able to do this, since as you say it would take giving control to a field officer or I suppose a political officer. They would also have to know that war was coming (and that War…War Never Changes™). Since in real life they were caught completely flat footed, I assume that would happen again, if Germany still went ahead with plans. What’s interesting to speculate on is how THEY would or could use some sort of tactical nuke in their attack on Russia. I doubt they would do it, but if they could somehow get one into Moscow when Stalin was there that could definitely be a war winner for them.
Exactly. I doubt either Germany or Russia could have given that sort of power to someone in tactical command, which they would have to do for it to work effectively. My guess is Stalin would hold the things in reserve and Hitler would push for some sort of super weapon to deploy them…maybe a beefed up V2 with a highly refined war head to fit on board (which would have been a bitch to achieve during the war, and probably would have worked out as well as his other super weapons :p). The country I see in the best position to use an atomic bomb effectively in 1939 would be the Brits or maybe the French on the defensive…be pretty hard on the French people though. :eek:
So all of those bombers could carry either some sort of Fat Man or Little Boy type bomb.
[QUOTE=MrQwertyasd]
Hello what’s this ? I never thought about this before, but I don’t recall much about chemical weapons being used in WW2, now you mention it.
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Yeah, but there is another angle you might want to consider. The thing is, people feared chemical weapons during this time period because they had seen the effects in WWI. However, assuming no one had ever used an atomic bomb in war before they came into wide spread use, they might not have known, really, what they were capable. Oh, maybe intellectually, but in their gut they might not have grasped all the implications and ramifications of using them. So, you could get a situation analogous to someone who is afraid to fly by is perfectly ok driving down the freeway with a breakfast burrito in one hand and a cell phone in the other. :eek:
Well, that’s not clear. The B-17 might not have been able to carry it any kind of useful distance. From Wiki:
That “overload” number looks like, “Well, it can get off the ground, but it’ll never reach Germany” kind of performance. As the Little Boy bomb was had a weight of 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg), even the “short range” mission profile wouldn’t work.
So, while it’s technically possible to deploy a nuke with planes of this era, the combat performance will likely be so degraded that this will have massive impact on any war plans you develop.
London to Berlin is 678 road miles. Call it 600 miles as the B-17 flies. so with a Little Boy type bomb, it might just make it, as a one-way trip. With no detours. Or escorts.
Okay, I think I’ve found a job even worse than the NML guy I mentioned earlier.
Modified Lancasters could and did deliver Grand Slams, 22,400 lb ordnance.
The crew drops a nuclear weapon on Berlin, and bails out.
There are probably better ideas. :dubious:
The problem there is again how to forward deploy it. For defensive purposes, it’s a lot easier, you just allow the invading army to overrun the position you’ve prepared with a nuclear land mine. On offense, you’d want the nuke delivered in advance of your invasion.
I suspect any large, “Dear Comrade Stalin, Happy Birthday!” packages that might get sent would be looked at very closely 
Which raises the more serious question: how much trade/transport was there between Germany and the USSR in the late 30s? How hard would it have been to get a truck bomb into the USSR in the months leading up to the war?
I suspect a robust espionage/infiltration unit would be of paramount importance if you didn’t have air assets capable of delivering a nuke.
It’s only slightly more than the short range and well below the top ‘overload’ capacity. Might have had to ditch the guns and some other stuff, but we are only talking a thousand pounds to meet minimum specs. I think it’s possible, though probably be better to push for the Super Fortress on the American side. The other bombers in that list seemed able to meet minimum specs.
Well, the Russians and Germans were secretly testing and developing tanks, and I know there was other trade between them. Not sure how much in the months just before Germany pulled the trigger, but as it caught Stalin completely flat footed I’d guess there was some trade and not TOO much paranoia at the time prior to Operation Barbarossa…but that’s just a guess. Not sure how feasible getting a bomb into Russia would be, but if they could it would be decisive I’d guess.
Well, neither Germany nor Russia started the war in our universe with something that could carry such a bomb to the other guys capital, so that would be the only way I could see them using it besides trying to put it in the path of an advancing army and detonating it when they got to the choke point (most likely a city or logistic/rail junction or ford/river crossing/bridge).
We could build a huge wooden horse, and hide the bomb inside it.
I think a giant wooden badger would work better, to be honest…
Shit, my old man remembers German missiles dropping on London. Delivery isn’t a problem.
The V2 could only carry a 1000 lb warhead. And it takes major testing and engineering to develop an atomic warhead to go on a rocket (not to mention all the work it takes to develop a rocket capable of carrying such a warhead at least nominally reliably and accurately). That wasn’t going to be a realistic option in 1939 for the Germans, even assuming they would have the resources to develop an atomic bomb capability AND a rocket capability, which I doubt.
If “delivery isn’t a problem”, then why did we not have primarily missile-based nukes until the 1960s?
As a hypothetical, trying to fight a nuclear war with all other tech being no better than 1939/40 is actually pretty interesting. We’re so used to the MAD concept of nuclear war, we’ve forgotten that it wasn’t always that way. With limited delivery systems, it actually becomes possible to fight a nuclear war, with potential winners as well as losers, rather than just have a nuclear apocalypse. And if we’re going to fight, we need to think about all aspects of that - tactics, strategy, and logistics.