Uranium requires 20kilos of fuel per bomb, minimum. Plutonium requires perhaps 5. The test detonation which Hitler attended at Ohrdruf was supposedly highlighted by the fact that the amount of explosive, a reddish-purple liquid, used was on the order of a few ounces.I don't know anything specific regarding the U-534 and so I can't comment. U-864 is an interesting case, though. I agree that there is a real possibility that the mercury inside the wreck is, in fact, an amalgam, but I had never before considered the thought that the amalgamated substance might be either plutonium or Red Mercury. I have read, in Henry Stevens' useful book Hitler's Suppressed and Still Secret Weapons, Science, and Technology, about Red Mercury and how it can be used to detonate---wait for it---small fission and even some types of fusion devices (or perhaps neutron bombs; Stevens' writing, in Chapter 21, is a bit confusing on this point). I have also encountered claims that the term "red mercury" actually refers to lithium-6 deuteride, but this seems unlikely to me. I think these are two very different substances and are not insider-wonk synonyms for each other.
_In Theory_ this is indeed possible. If the material is plutonium.
You use irradiated beryllium as an injected radio source before a 'bazooka' (shaped charge) implosion of the plutonium contained in a dual-wall lead sphere is forced together with such force as to create a micro-criticality event. This then generates enough -thermal- (pressure) effect to fuse the lithium and deuterium of the booster surrounding the core to generate a much larger amount of neutrons. Down the tamper this flux goes to a secondary wad of U238 which _will fission_ if it's given a big enough flood of neutrons to jump start it into doing so. It's not pretty (huge gamma) but it works.
Castle Bravo went from 6-8MT planned to 15+ because nobody considered that little fact. But to the Germans who didn't have a lot of time and were trying to cut corners everywhere, I bet it did.
And now you have a functional, if low yield (sub kiloton trigger, 6-8KT full yield) weapon.
I personally believe it all comes down to the design of the pit volumes which must follow a very specific geometry of implosive collapse while remaining relative safe with the injection of a Pu-239 or Pu-240 isomer which is incredibly 'hot', even in it's metastable isomer state.
In one book I have read, perhaps this one-
_HITLER'S MIRACLE WEAPONS: Secret Nuclear Weapons of the Third Reich and their Carrier Systems volume 1 - Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine_
The German nukes were rumored to have very short shelf lives which would equate to their being powered by very high decay rate radio fuels (or those which went back to ground state).
From _Fifteen Minutes_ it is certain that ours did, with components having to be replaced on a tri-monthly basis as weapons rotated in and out of NAEC controlled stockpile.
Quantum mechanics defines potentialist energy states by charge geometries as electron orbit compression levels rather than absolute values of nucleus mass as Relativity defines them.In any case, yet again we run up against the possibility that the Germans were definitely pursuing atomic weapons or nuclear devices in some form, but that their weapons ran along technological and scientific lines that were significantly different from those pursued by the Allies. The reason for this is simple, though the implications are profound. German science had largely discarded Einsteinian, relativistic physics in favor of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics and relativity are, of course, related to one another, but (for lack of a better term) the "view" one has of the universe and all of its physical phenomena looks very different from one starting point as compared with the other. I would liken this to looking at the same object from opposite ends of a telescope. The object is still recognizable as itself either way, but the impression one gets of it is very different. This distinction caused German thought and science, at least when it came to their advanced weapons R&D and especially their work in nuclear weapons physics, to proceed very differently from what went on with their Allied counterparts.
The simple fact is that we waste 2/3rds of an atomic weapon's fuel in fission of the core nuclei of a comparatively small percentage of pit fuel, even today.
If it was Uranium, it would have to be HEU and it would have to be in a form which would hold for the duration of a sea journey which rules out the use of a metastable isomer or isoton. For Japan to have received enough fuel for conventional (gun) weapons to build a useful stockpile of weapons -based on what Germany was transporting- (560 kilos in U-234), then Germany would have had to have had enough fuel for her own arsenal and I believe it was the shortage of such fuel which lead to a choice in the German high command to avoid the retaliatory consequences of a limited atomic release, on their own soil. It may well also have been that the OSS/SS (Dulles) connection or some other (Industrial/BIS) equivalent also gave them assurances that German culture was not on a one way trip to agrarianism or historical footnote.Okay, but there is also another, less esoteric possibility, namely, that the amalgamate might have been uranium in some form. Not as sexy as Red Mercury or Plutonium, but still definitely useful to the Japanese if it got through to them. General Kawashima, chief logistics officer for Project Ni, stated in a 1982 Japanese TV documentary (sorry, don't have the name of it just now) that about 2,000 kg of "uranium"---uranium oxide?---had reached Japan via blockade running submarines during the War. He made no mention, as far as I know, of Red Mercury. But this does not write "finis" to this line of inquiry, not by any means. Just reporting what I can say I "know" with some degree of certainty, to this point in time.
The other problem with HEU is that it would not have remained so all these years and would have likely burned holes through even gold lined casks in it's decay, leading to a very ugly contamination problem indeed.
I believe that this is where what we are told of the Japanese efforts at Konan begin to take focus. For if the Uranium could be materially transformed or enriched through a high speed breeding process sufficient to create 10-20 weapons for use on Japanese soil, it might well have been sufficient overall for a much more limited transshipment of remaining Reich's stockpiles.
It would be a comparatively easy thing, all the way up through perhaps mid 1944, for the Germans to stage forward out of Norway or Lapland and using their weather stations above the arctic circle or perhaps U-Boats as far East as the Laptev, push a Bv-222 flight into Korea with the requisite PDC 'Bell' or perhaps a cascade of Type IIIB centrifuges to cause the final enrichment to happen in the Far East.
The problem is that this doesn't explain the gold shipping casks for what would essentially be pre-weaponized Uranium of no more than 40-50% concentration, nor does it make sense for the volumes stated to be on the U-234. Even as spike fuel to speed other conversions in a reactor, you cannot make sufficient weapons with 560 kilos of non enriched Uranium to be useful.
The Me-262 in this case was supposedly (Farrell, _The Brotherhood Of The Bell_, I believe?) an instrumented airframe with a precision radar altimeter and linked bomb-trigger (radio?) mechanism designed specifically to ensure correct release of the weapon in company with a time fuse. Some of the German concept art weapons are slender enough for a 250-500kg ETC bomb rack to have usefully dropped one (assuming a heavy U234 core). The airframe was unique in being a two-seater which 'disappeared' from Rechlin towards the end of the war.Hitler originally mandated that the Me-262 be produced as a bomber. At first glance this was madness. The payload of a bomber version of the Me-262 would have been miniscule and certainly less than comparably sized, propeller driven attack craft of that time. Unless...wait for it...we're talking about a jet-powered, high speed dash over a target on which a small, lightweight nuclear weapon of some kind was to be dropped. Of course it might be that Hitler was just plain nuts. But what if, at least in this instance, he wasn't?
If you are dropping fairly primitive weapons in typical European weather, it stands to reason that something as fast as an Me-262 would need a specific safe:arm and precision trigger mechanism because it would not only be outrunning Allied fighters but it's own weapon blast effects.
See above. Plutonium proves the Germans were not just ahead in the race to produce a functional gun bomb which is kind've a cave man approach to atomic weapons -if- you get the separation efforts down early enough, but that they also had the understandings to make an implosion weapon (plutonium dissembles too quickly for anything else) and the industrial method to 'change the numbers' from 20-40kilos to perhaps 5-10 ('Pineapple'), per weapon.I am guessing that the same would hold true for uranium? Just asking. Here is an article regarding the transport of uranium, in the form of uranium hydride, as an amalgam with mercury: https://books.google.com/books?id=0QcRA ... ry&f=false
This is very frightening because it essentially means that, by underestimating the ingenuity of the Germans in deriving an alternate means for producing the radio fuel, the Allies protracted the war (going for the 'Mediterranean Strategy' of do-nothingism to let the Russians bleed the Germans down for a year) by thinking the very thing we accuse the Germans of doing: "If we can't make it (this way) any faster, those morons certainly can't beat us."
And so long as they had Griffin and the Ultra/Fish efforts, the Allies dedicated atomic intelligence unit had every reason to believe that they were right on the money.
Until the SS stepped in and all reporting became one of compartmented, controlled signature. courier process.
The discovery of Uranium on the U-Boats could (and has) been laughed off as 'Uranium Oxide'. But Plutonium makes the whole lie crumble into cinders. Since, nominally, the only way to get sufficiently useful quantities of Plutonium is through a breeder reactor and 'We all know Haigerloch was a high school science project by comparison with Hanford...'.
Except that that isn't the only way to get Plutonium. It can be got, essentially, by running massive current loads around Thorium or Uranium until it changes state. This is what the Bell did. This is what Tokomaks do today.
And with Plutonium **and boosting**, which we knew nothing about, the Germans had a war winning capacity right up to the end. Not just as a nasty slap from the loser on the way down but the ability to flatten the capitals of Europe and put serious dents in the front lines with -numbered- strikes. Because it takes so much less radio material.
From reading _The Virus House_, I have always wondered if Heisenberg tinkered with his device to cause the one at the KWI. It was massively irresponsible to be doing atomic work in the suburbs of Berlin to begin with but my recollection was that he 'inspected' the sphere which was to be the basis of the experiment several times and it after it began to blow like a tea kettle that he convinced all and sundry to get out.I was aware, from Heisenberg's experiments (which, BTW, also produced a nuclear accident), that the Germans used paraffin as a moderator in some of their "uranium machine" designs. I had never before heard of the Diebner group's reactor cook-off. Do you have a source for this incident? Many thanks.
The Diebner/Army incident is from an unnamed documentary in three parts, hosted on You Tube under the title: 'Hitler Atomic Bomb'.
I just checked and it is no longer listed.
Aside from the excess of menacing violin play, it is a very nice resource if you can come by it as it includes direct interviews with Von Weitzsacker, Claire Werner, Luigi Romersa and Rochus Misch, all highlighting various factors of the German Atomic development process which are not covered in the common histories. It also shows the Ruegen and Ohrdruf test sites and a Uranium Separation facility which was part of Ohnesorge's (Von Ardenne's) efforts.
After showing the site of the burned out lab building, it is stated that Kurt Diebner, who ran the experiment to super criticality and melt down is quoted by Von Weitzsacker as having said: "Well, at least we can now go to Hitler with proof that the bomb can be built." And according to Von Weitzsacker -everyone- in the Uranverein jumped down his throat with "Don't you dare!" threats and dire warnings.
Which, with the Gestapo and from them the SS, being privy to their very regular, ordered, monthly conferences as well as (I assume) all written exchanges, would have been the time to realize that these were all weak sauce moralists who were a step away from the noose in terms of defeatism.
Short of executing them all and advancing the ranks of their underlings as an example, the obvious thing to do was to split off the useful (Diebner, Harteck, Von Ardenne) element and let the rest 'do their experiments' in their little university fiefdoms, at least until war's end when their activities could be looked into without consequence.
Which I believe is exactly what happened. Paul Harteck stopped vying for dominance with Heisenberg to run real (low temp) cross section experiments because, after 1942, he had a new source of Uranium through the SS and Monawitz. Diebner was flatly told to make it work and the Plutonium production would be handled elsewhere. Which he did with the Schumann/Trinks design and IR photo initiators in a sealed pit.
Von Ardenne worked both the PDC and the Lithium separation experiments, Houtermanns (at Von Ardenne's extensive lab) 'did the math' on the fission-fusion-fission process which no less than Edward Teller would later admit was the root of all subsequent fusion research. And the mystery men in Austria (at least) ran the component level proofing experiments, sourcing systems and processes developed at Pilsen.
It is because the SS had their ears to every door and their fingers in darn near every pie that they were able to synthesize the best of the -multiple- bomb making processes together. And from that, get to a working bomb, quicker. Germany as the Greater Reich had the talent pool to work with and no where else within the Nazi system do you see single lines of technology base development. Let alone for something this potentially critical.
It is for this reason that the Allied Myth fails first.
I also think it is highly instructive that Heisenberg and Company specifically played games with the Allied eavesdroppers at Farm Hall. They had been stung, and badly, by prior experience with the masters of the surveillance art which led them to being split up and sent to their rooms as it were. But it did not lead to the end of German atomic research. For which their efforts remained as a cover.
also, to have made these designs in the first place. Somebody find me a " U-NAZI-VAC" 12K 
, 2.5mHz 
, buried in the 3rd Reich Ruins or something.