Vanir Ausf B Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 but your facts have proven me wrong, well at least enlightened me thanks ~ Definitely not Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MengJiaoRedux Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Hi sarge. Sorry if I was a bit abrasive!! But you are also correct. The German's had the THEORY for sure! .... They were, and still are a clever lot of people! Which is great when you don't have some madmen like Hitler and his Nazi's running the show!!! But attrition on the eastern front (one heck of a meat grinder over there) and B-17s, B-24s and Lancasters pounding their industrial heartland and oil-refining facilities ...... Manhattan projects were just not a viable option (thank God) You would think from the role-call of Nazi quantum physicists (that's Jordan and Heisenberg and...possibly nobody else...and even to keep Heisenberg, Himmler's mother had to intervene...) that the Germans would have had a hard time assembling a good team to do the work and build an A-Bomb. Unfortunately, Heisenberg, the only person to bother to do the calculation, was off by a factor of at least 100 in his over-estimate of the amount of fissionable material required. Significantly, nobody in the German bomb program checked that calculation and they assumed they had about a thousandth of the amount of fissionable material required while in fact they only needed about 10 times what they had. Planning for using fission assumed the "bomb" would weigh about 1000 tons or so. A ship-sized bomb. Apparently that was what they were working on sort of, though not very hard. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 So Heisenberg was the world's most significant saboteur... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 So Heisenberg was the world's most significant saboteur... I do seem to recall some discussion that his mistake was more of a "mistake" 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winkelried Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 You are joking right?? I don't recall that the Russian or the US forces ever encountered the MASSIVE facilities and resources into refining fission material to weapon's grade, building launching devices, testing fission reactions, heavy water facilities, electric plants, refinement plants etc .... The Manhattan Project had it's origins back in '39 and was a combined project by the US, British and Canadians. By '42 it was one of the biggest projects undertaken in man-kind in both resources and man-hours ... with full government commitment and virtually unlimited resources. Seems that the Germans just had different priorities - the A4/V2 cost approx 3 Bio US$ in wartime dollars compared the Manhattan project which cost 1.9Bio US$ ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MengJiaoRedux Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 So Heisenberg was the world's most significant saboteur... It appears he simply did not think the problem through. He was taped later having a hard time believing a small bomb was even possible, so either he was the greatest actor of all time or he was just not trying very hard either because he wasn't that interested in bombs or in Nazis or both. Laura Fermi thought he was just burned out with self-satisfaction and his sadly declining tennis game was her proof. She didn't like him much anyway. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MengJiaoRedux Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 I do seem to recall some discussion that his mistake was more of a "mistake" He was taped after the war and it sounds like it was an actual mistake. ie not one he made consciously. Perhaps unconsciously he just didn't have the interest to do a fairly elementry (or isotopic?) visualization of the problem before he did the calculation. Between the tapes after the war and Laura Fermi's views of his bad tennis game before the war, it sounds like he just wasn't motivated to push himself any more at all, but that he was to self-satisified to see that about himself. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Hi sarge. Sorry if I was a bit abrasive!! But you are also correct. The German's had the THEORY for sure! .... we're good - i am never put off when someone presents facts to prove i'm wrong and i try to take any 'assumed' abrasiveness, as an internet limitation of delivery. so no worries there either ~ you'd have to say something that is insulting....then say I meant that as an insult for me to take it that way 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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