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FastestGunAlive posted:Please spoiler that poo poo neonen Artlillarists are not immortal, my friend.
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Jan 24, 2017 22:03
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Fangz posted:You can substitute the industrial capacity to pursue multiple designs and separation methods with luck at picking the right one. For example they proposed 5 different designs for the bomb, and in the end two of them proved successful. They considered 4 different types of isotope separation and 3 of the 4 were successful, and 1 was especially so. So if you were willing to assume some level of good fortune (or effective espionage), you could scale down a successful Manhattan project by several orders of magnitude. (For example, in terms of technically trained people, the Soviet nuclear program was a tenth the size of the US one.) Even then it's still not going to work. The American program was using all three diffusion methods to create U235, and managed to produce just enough of it for one bomb (the biggest reason why they didn't test Little Boy, but it was also just a very simple design comparatively). Germany absolutely did not have this capability, even before the Allies start doing anything. Hell, I think there's been analysis done on the electrical energy production of Nazi Germany that suggests that they couldn't even have run one effort to completion, even if they knew it was going to work at the outset. The alternative then is Plutonium production, but it wasn't isolated until 1940, let alone produced in sufficient quantity to determine its properties. Without knowing any of that, staking a national research effort on it would be ludicrous. Plus you need the reactor facilities to produce and purify the Plutonium, which is rapidly going to become target #1 for the Allied bombing campaign. Espionage is out, because of a number of factors; first there's nobody sympathetic to the German cause like there was for the Soviets, second and more important is that this effort would be concurrent with the American effort, so there's nobody who yet possesses a working knowledge of the bomb for you to steal it from. So the smaller Soviet program (which was still exceedingly expensive) can't happen either. The Germans likely could have succeeded had they been given another few years, but if you fix the dates of the start of the war and the discovery of fission, Germany producing a bomb before the Americans and before being overrun by the Soviets, is completely implausible. Finally, even if you build a time machine and hand deliver an assembled Mark 3 bomb to Hitler in December '44 or something, they don't have the capability to bomb anyone other than themselves with it.
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Jan 24, 2017 22:04
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:(the biggest reason why they didn't test Little Boy, but it was also just a very simple design comparatively) Was there any contingency plan for if it failed? What would have happened if they'd dropped the bomb and it was a dud? For that matter, were there any duds in post-war atomic tests? I'm guessing there isn't a quarantined atoll somewhere in the Pacific with a UXO atomic bomb on it, but what was the procedure for retrieving a dud?
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Jan 24, 2017 22:13
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Ensign Expendable posted:I struggle to think where they hit an M3 15 times with a 75 mm Pak and not knock it out. Only the front, at long range or at a high angle, maybe. It's possible most of those "hits" were just very near misses, like all the stories of people saying "I fired 20 rounds at him and he kept coming!".
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Jan 24, 2017 22:28
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Koramei posted:Was there any contingency plan for if it failed? What would have happened if they'd dropped the bomb and it was a dud? I suspect "keep firebombing", "drop shitloads of mines and wait for everyone to starve", or "start landings".
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Jan 24, 2017 22:31
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I mean more in the sense of what to do about the bomb. I guess the Japanese wouldn't exactly be able to retrieve it to bomb New York or something though.
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Jan 24, 2017 22:37
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PittTheElder posted:Finally, even if you build a time machine and hand deliver an assembled Mark 3 bomb to Hitler in December '44 or something, they don't have the capability to bomb anyone other than themselves with it. London is still in range in late '44 ?
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Jan 24, 2017 22:46
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Saint Celestine posted:London is still in range in late '44 ? In range of what?
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Jan 24, 2017 22:56
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Koramei posted:Was there any contingency plan for if it failed? What would have happened if they'd dropped the bomb and it was a dud? No contingency. They were very confident it would work. Assuming it doesn't, there were multiple redundant fuzes on it, so it's certainly going to explode. Possible it fizzles if the explosives misfire or something, but there's nothing you need to do about that in the short term. As far as bombs go it was not particularly complicated, especially next to Fat Man, which involved a lot of hydrodynamics questions that couldn't be simulated with the computational power available at the time. Fun fact: one of ENIACs first tasks was simulating a nuclear detonation, as an exploration into thermonuclear bomb design. Saint Celestine posted:London is still in range in late '44 ? In range of what? They have neither aircraft nor rocket with sufficient payload to deliver a WW2 era design. As an additional complicating factor, the Allied air forces rule the skies. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 22:56
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Koramei posted:
There were a couple fizzles; Castle Koon was a hydrogen bomb test where the fusion stage failed to ignite, so the yield was much lower than expected. It was quite overshadowed by Castle Bravo, which took place a few days earlier and had the opposite problem. I think one of North Korea's earlier nuclear tests mostly failed as well. Edit: Upshot-Knothole Ruth as a device with uranium hydride fuel (to use slow neutrons), it failed quite badly. 
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Jan 24, 2017 23:11
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http://i.imgur.com/6f9sY6K.gifv Bf-109F-4 shooting at Yak-1, apparently. 20mm cannon chewing out wing and rear control surfaces.
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Jan 24, 2017 23:21
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Fangz posted:I do seriously recommend people read that transcript I linked though, Agreed. Worth the read. Lots of CYA.
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Jan 24, 2017 23:39
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Jobbo_Fett posted:http://i.imgur.com/6f9sY6K.gifv In my experience with War Thunder, that doesn't count as a kill somehow.
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Jan 24, 2017 23:42
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Ensign Expendable posted:In my experience with War Thunder, that doesn't count as a kill somehow. 
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Jan 24, 2017 23:44
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Ensign Expendable posted:
my dad posted:
Thanks for the answers! Really interesting stuff. While I'm thinking of it, how does one properly pronounce 'Bagration'?
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Jan 24, 2017 23:54
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Koramei posted:Was there any contingency plan for if it failed? What would have happened if they'd dropped the bomb and it was a dud? The Hiroshima bomb ("Little boy") was of the gun-type. In this type of bomb, the fissile material is in the shape of a sphere with a missing cylinder in the center, this missing cylinder is placed at the other end of a barrel with a gunpowder charge. When the charge detonates, the cylinder is quickly shot into the slot, forming a complete sphere. Physics take over and level the city. This configuration is as others mentioned very simple and there was confidence in it working. In contrast, Fat Man over Nagasaki was a implosion type bomb, where a hollow sphere of fissile material is surrounded by high explosives. The explosives are triggered with very high accuracy such that there is a spherical shockwave traveling inwards. The hollow shell of material is compressed to a very dense ball and a few shakes of a lambs tail later, the bomb explodes. Concerning UXO, the two bomb types have different failure modes. As also mentioned, the gun type is exceedingly simple, but if the cylindrical slug get stuck halfway into the sphere, it could fizzle. The bomb contains no real nonnuclear explosives, so the worst case is a mostly complete bomb (still dropped from altitude) with incredibly valuable uranium. The Japanese would have had no chance of utilizing this for a bomb of their own, but it would be military disaster. If the bomb almost detonates as planned, it would have lower yield and leave even more uranium everywhere. Little boy was very inefficient, being a prototype and all. For the implosion type bombs, the failure mode is usually incomplete or mistimed detonation of the high explosive shell around the fissile material. This is usually likened to squeezing a handful of modeling clay in your fist, leaving the thumb off. The plutonium in Fat Mans case would fail to reach sufficient density and spew out of the bomb. The bomb contains enough HE material to demolish the casing, so you would have a slug of highly radioactive plutonium going somewhere and being a awful mess to clean up. No big boom though. The trinity test was a implosion type weapon, both to test the detonation mechanism and the physics calculations for yield and so forth.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:03
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EggsAisle posted:While I'm thinking of it, how does one properly pronounce 'Bagration'? Well it's named after this dude, wikipedia provides a couple different pronunciations depending on the language you're speaking. Short answer is that you should pronounce the hard 't', rather than using the usual English -tion syllable. But I've only ever heard it pronounced the latter way.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:05
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EggsAisle posted:Thanks for the answers! Really interesting stuff. Bahg-ra-tee-ON
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Jan 25, 2017 00:09
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Maimgara posted:The Hiroshima bomb ("Little boy") was of the gun-type. In this type of bomb, the fissile material is in the shape of a sphere with a missing cylinder in the center, this missing cylinder is placed at the other end of a barrel with a gunpowder charge. When the charge detonates, the cylinder is quickly shot into the slot, forming a complete sphere. Physics take over and level the city. This configuration is as others mentioned very simple and there was confidence in it working. Two nitpicky points about that:
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Jan 25, 2017 00:20
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I saw in a documentary ("Countdown to Zero") that you could build a very rudimentary low yield fission bomb by taking an artillery piece, sealing the muzzle end with half a cylinder of uranium, and firing off an uranium-tipped shell. When the two piece of uranium collide you get a dirty boom.
Animal fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 01:15
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
I agree that it cant be a 234 but that drawing posted earlier looks like a 234. Especially the fender in one piece instead of two seperate fenders and the shape of the rear. Maybe it's possible he drew those pictures later, after they received 234's?
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Jan 25, 2017 01:38
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I thought that drawing had '1944' written on the same page, but I can't find it right now to check. Of course it's possible that he was a time traveller, which would explain his constant sick leaves, he has no resistance to illnesses long defeated.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:52
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Molentik posted:I agree that it cant be a 234 but that drawing posted earlier looks like a 234. Especially the fender in one piece instead of two seperate fenders and the shape of the rear. Maybe it's possible he drew those pictures later, after they received 234's? Looking at the photo again, it does show 8(?).12.44 so yeah, it was. A 2nd photo with a 234/3 shows a 43, which is impossible given its production timeline of (earliest) June '44, and that is most likely a SdKfz 233. God damnit Krengel, stop loving with me! 
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Jan 25, 2017 01:55
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The impression I'm getting is that modern day history buffs care more about the specific models of vehicles and equipment used than the people actually fighting with them did.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:58
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ponzicar posted:The impression I'm getting is that modern day history buffs care more about the specific models of vehicles and equipment used than the people actually fighting with them did. edit: never trust a commander's own report of the number of enemies his side killed without double checking, for instance. it may not be conscious lying, but there's a lot of wish fulfillment there HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 02:01
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So he lost the card game that bad, huh.
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Jan 25, 2017 02:07
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ponzicar posted:The impression I'm getting is that modern day history buffs care more about the specific models of vehicles and equipment used than the people actually fighting with them did. Correct. This makes it hard to track down some interesting equipment since it might get referred to in inconsistent ways or worse. For example, some Red Army documents call the M10 "SU-76" so it's hard to tell them apart from SU-76es in the same unit
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Jan 25, 2017 02:20
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HEY GAIL posted:cyrano said some things about this, but eyewitness reports are often kinda muddled about some things, whether because the authors are mistaken, because they're talking about things they wish happened, or they're lying. My favorite is the 15th century mercenary who swore in his diary that the king of Denmark knighted him and all his friends. Reading Wellington's Guns about, well, wellingtons artillery, right now. Author cheekily calls out a Capt Cookson who claims in his diary that he personally directed several of his guns in combat against French cavalry harassing a British retreat. Two other battery commanders have completely different recollections of the event w no mention at all of Cookson, who goes on to complain in his diary how Lord Paget has totally forgotten his contribution.
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Jan 25, 2017 02:44
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FastestGunAlive posted:Reading Wellington's Guns about, well, wellingtons artillery, right now. Author cheekily calls out a Capt Cookson who claims in his diary that he personally directed several of his guns in combat against French cavalry harassing a British retreat. Two other battery commanders have completely different recollections of the event w no mention at all of Cookson, who goes on to complain in his diary how Lord Paget has totally forgotten his contribution.
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Jan 25, 2017 02:58
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Paget was too busy inventing carbines and banging the Duke Of Wellington's wifes sister to care.
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Jan 25, 2017 03:00
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The Krengel Diary Part 22 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 1943 6 February: Several of our men who had been captured by the enemy at Siwab and managed to escape from a POW camp return to the unit. I am staying in camp with the unit. There is no enemy activity except the normal air attacks with Stirling bombers and US fighters. I received my second soldbuch and visit Eric Wolff of 2nd Company. On the 13th my bandages are coming off. 14 February: Two years today I have been in Africa. At 1:00 we have an inspection and congratulations go all around to the "Old Africans" as they call us now. A small celebration is in order for tonight. 17 February: Nothing is going on so I made myself a nice metal badge of a Puma* with AA-3 scratched on it [3rd Panzer Reconnaissance Platoon] [Aufsklarung-Abteilung 3]. On the 18th, two of our Pumas* returned from the front line and on the 19th I returned to full-time duty. 20 February: The returning unit that was at the front has lost 3 men. Sgt.Rosenfeld was killed in action and Pvt's. Loechner and Lengaiker were wounded when they ran into an Italian mine field. We get news that 5 of us will be returning to the front shortly. The weather is cold and wet. 21 February**: We are supposed to go to the front, or so we hear but we are still at the camp on the 22nd. On the 23rd orders arrive to get ready. We set off in our Pumas* on that date. The weather is very bad - rain and wind, and several times we get stuck on bad roads. By the late evening we are with the Battle Group. My orders are to protect Lt. Wille's Pioneer Company. I have trouble with my Puma*; the engine keeps stalling. 23 February**: We are told today during an inspection that the recent battle at Gafsa, 169 British tanks and vehicles were destroyed. Some of our group is still engaged at the front. Lt.Kurt Rosenthal has been KIA; Rudi Wechner and Willie Lengader are wounded. 21 February and 23 February entries are backwards. Not sure if 23rd Feb is supposed to be 24th or not.  I believe the battle at Gafsa is linked to the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid 25 February: I set off early to pull 1st Lt. Wille's jeep out of a mud hole, but by doing so, the differential on the Puma breaks and we ourselves now need to be pulled back to base. On the 26th we finally have the Puma* going again and head south with a rest stop at 11 AM. Group Commander Wangemann arrives and awards me the Iron Cross 2nd Class for my tank kill on 15 January. The award comes with a temporary certificate signed by Rommel. At 6 PM I return to the unit and work on the vehicle. In a small Arab village we find a native who sells us 300 eggs, enough for the whole company. I receive many congratulations for the Iron Cross. Later I see the field doctor for an examination. 1 March: In the morning, I visited the Aid Station and got an appointment to see the doctor at Base Hospital tomorrow. I set out on foot hoping to catch a lift on a truck. I got a lift in a Jeep, first to Gabes. A forward airfield was under attack there by fighter-bombers, but I managed to reach the Base Hospital at Sfax. I met Willy Langacker there. He had lost an eye so I wrote a few letters home for him. 3 March: An Italian artillery truck gives me a lift to Tunis. I am supposed to report to another Base Hospital (36) at Carthage for an eye examination. In the evening I go out in Tunis and walk around town. 5 March: I make it to Carthage Base Hospital 36 and get examined by Dr.Eisenhardt who recognizes me from Tripoli. When I tell him that I have been in North Africa over 2 years, he promises to get me home to Germany immediately. In the evening I strolled around the harbor and met up with Franz Genk, [Claus von] Stauffenberg, and Horst P. Later, I get a farewell from the hospital staff. News from the front is scarce right now. I received news of my departure, scheduled for the day after tomorrow.
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Jan 25, 2017 06:00
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How many times per month does Krengel see the doctor? Seems to be once every week or two, usually for multiple days at a time. Gives an interesting perspective on how soldiering used to go.
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Jan 25, 2017 08:08
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gohuskies posted:How many times per month does Krengel see the doctor? Seems to be once every week or two, usually for multiple days at a time. Gives an interesting perspective on how soldiering used to go. I'd conservatively bet twice a month so far.
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Jan 25, 2017 08:17
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spectralent posted:Was it usual for someone so low ranking to see high-ranking officers this often? I suppose it's only 2-3 times over a year, but still. Reading through my grandfathers war journal as a Lieutenant he got to meet James Doolittle when he was in command of the 15th Air force in North Africa, Doolittle actually lead a some of the bombing missions personally despite you know being a general.
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Jan 25, 2017 08:58
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Jack2142 posted:Reading through my grandfathers war journal as a Lieutenant he got to meet James Doolittle when he was in command of the 15th Air force in North Africa, Doolittle actually lead a some of the bombing missions personally despite you know being a general. Curtis lemay did the same over Europe. He might have been bugfuck crazy, but drat if he wasn't brave.
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Jan 25, 2017 09:51
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drat it, now I want to know about the Short Stirlings in the middle east.
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Jan 25, 2017 12:01
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Pontius Pilate posted:This was great thanks for the link. Loved this line: It kind of amuses me how they're clearly sort of aware that they're being recorded, but still think of things in terms of race ideology (lots of talk of Anglo-Saxons ruling Europe). They also waaaaay underestimate the USSR and Stalin and behave like the next war is inevitable. Also HAHN:They seem to have made an explosive before making the engine and now they say: "in future we will build engines". is a loving amazing line.
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Jan 25, 2017 13:56
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Jan 25, 2017 15:25
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That post is just so very perfect. Im working on a post about the Iran-Iraq war that i hope to post here soon, Ive been kind of busy with other stuff until now but stay tuned, if im not bad it should get put up this weekend I hope.
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Jan 25, 2017 15:47
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CoolCab posted:It kind of amuses me how they're clearly sort of aware that they're being recorded, but still think of things in terms of race ideology (lots of talk of Anglo-Saxons ruling Europe). They also waaaaay underestimate the USSR and Stalin and behave like the next war is inevitable. Also Also, the "engine" came first, the US succeeded at that, too, unlike the Germans.
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Jan 25, 2017 15:51
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