You familiar with the [untested!] WWII Nazi *Virus House* design? Simple, and rather elegant:
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Circa 1944-45 by Pat F.
| Suspension Lug (Fin Attachment?) | |||
Impact Plunger to |
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U-235/238 (551 kg) Kerosene Ballast (Iron?) Shear Pins Polonium/Beryllium Total Weight:
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| |–––––– approx. 2.2 feet (0.65 m)–––––| | P.F - 2000 |
PART ONE: IN THE BEGINNING....
Over the years,there has been a good deal of speculation on the German's atomic program of W.W.II. By putting together information from a number of reliable sources (listed at the end of the article), I have endeavored to give a brief overview of the project, as well as a cutaway drawing of what the finished weapon may have been like, and how it may have been delivered.
In the year 1914, H.G. Wells authored a small book entitled "The World Set Free". In it, he described a fictional future war fought with atomic weapons. The book caused a stir in physicists worldwide, and some began to look into the possibility that the energy that slowly emanated from radioactive elements could, if released all at once, cause considerable destruction.
First in Great Britain, and then later in the United States, research began to show that such a weapon stood within the realm of possibility, if certain fundamental problems could be solved:
- Uranium, the most available of the radioactive elements, consisted of two different isotopic forms: U-238, a stable, non-reactive form composed over 99% of the metal as found in nature, while U-235, a highly radioactive form, comprised the tiny remaining proportion. In it's natural form, the metal was not capable of sustaining a nuclear reaction.
- A nuclear reaction required that the neutrons emitted by one decaying atom strike other atoms in the vicinity to cause them also to decay; but the speed at which neutrons left a decaying U-235 atom was so high that they were far more likely to simply pass through other uranium atoms, without having any effect on them. A method would have to be found to slow them down.
- If a method could be found to refine natural uranium to the point where the proportion of U-235 would reach around 3%, then a reactor could be made. This would allow non-reactive U-238 to be transformed, by bombardment with radiation, into a new element-plutonium; with the atomic number of 239 which also could be used for weapons.
PART TWO: GERMAN RESEARCH
In Germany, the story was very different - nuclear physics was viewed with suspicion, due to fact that many physicists were Jewish; and the whole concept stood at odds with the party's official view of the cosmos - which was very strange indeed.
(See "The Nazis and the Occult" by Dusty Sklar; and remember "Ice is not frozen water; water is melted ice.")
Besides not devoting enough effort to research, the German's made a simple, profound mistake early on; when they tested graphite as a moderator to slow the neutrons of a decaying uranium atom down to a speed where they could be used to cause other atoms to fission - But the graphite they used wasn't pure; and the impurities absorbed the neutrons, making the researchers write it off as a candidate for nuclear research - in reality it was an excellent moderator, low in cost and easily acquired.
With the apparent failure of graphite, the only other substance that appeared to hold promise was "Heavy Water" an exotic, and rare form of ordinary water in which deuterium, a form of the hydrogen atom, that is greater in atomic weight, replaces the ordinary hydrogen in H2O.
With a minuscule budget, and heavy water obtained from separators in hydro-electric dams, the German atomic bomb program got off to a very shaky start.
Working with what little they had, the physicists started trying to build a working atomic reactor - and here's where things start to get VERY interesting - according to the commonly held chain of events, the atomic reactor was a complete flop. It was found at the end of the war, a large cauldron of heavy water with hundreds of cubes of uranium suspended by chains inside it. The whole device looked more like something to be used in black magic, than serious science, and would have been right at home in a Wagner opera.
But there was another device built earlier; and on June 23, 1942, something went very wrong with it. This "Uranium Machine" as it, and the other test reactors were called, was located at the University of Leipzig, and was under the control of Werner Heisenberg, Head of the German atomic program.
The device consisted of two large aluminum hemispheres bolted together around the periphery, and contained a central sphere of heavy water surrounded by powdered uranium; it had been immersed in a pool of ordinary water for twenty days, when on the 23rd of June, it was noticed that bubbles were beginning to escape from it.
The sphere was lifted out of the water, and a access hatch on its outside was opened to determine what was amiss.
On opening the hatch, a hissing sound, followed by a jet of fire, came out of the sphere. Thinking that the uranium had somehow ignited, the scientists hosed the sphere down with water, until the fire appeared to be out. They then drained the heavy water out of the inner sphere, so that it would not be contaminated, and re-sealed the sphere and lowered it back into the water tank for safety's sake.
For a few hours all seemed to be well - then the sphere was seen to be emitting bubbles again, and more disturbingly, the water that it was immersed in began to boil, indicating a great deal of heat was being generated.
The scientists gathered around, and began frantically discussing what to do.... then, in horror, they noticed that the sphere was vibrating, and BEGINNING TO SWELL IN SIZE.
Everyone fled from the room, as a loud explosion, and a hailstorm of burning uranium, followed.
Fire crews were called and quickly put out the fires in the room; but no amount of water seemed capable of dousing the fire in the sphere, until it burnt out on its own two days later.
This is a very interesting event. First off - what was the purpose that the sphere was supposed to accomplish? Why put uranium and heavy water in a sphere made of aluminum and then sit back and wait three weeks?
As we read above, heavy water is a moderator - a substance that slows down neutrons, so that they may interact with other atoms.
If natural uranium undergoes nuclear bombardment, some of the U-238 will be transmuted into plutonium, while some is transmuted into U-233, another fissionable form. Aluminum, like beryllium, has the property of emitting neutrons when bombarded by alpha particles such as those generated by radium or polonium To accomplish a significant amount of transmutation will take a while, several weeks in fact.
Wanna put one and two together? If this all sounds speculative and far fetched, you might want to get a copy of the March 1999 "Readers Digest", which reprints an article from "Harpers" magazine about a young man of seventeen years of age named David Hahn, who in 1994 built a "Uranium Machine" of his own out of aluminum, uranium metal, some thorium from gas lamp mantles, radium paint, and of course duct tape. His contraption worked so well that the EPA had to wear full environment suits to haul the end results of his experiment to a radioactive disposal site.
Now, he was a Boy Scout - but considering what he had to work with, is it inconceivable that Heisenberg could have accomplished at least as much in 1942?
Maybe you don't have to go to all the trouble of enriching the uranium; maybe be you can give it a friendly environment, and some of it will turn into plutonium, with a little help from some radium.
This is admittedly speculation. But something very odd indeed happened in that laboratory. And the description of the difficulty in putting the fire out sounds a lot like those at Chernobyl.
And from that accident, I think, came the germ of an idea, and the germ would be nurtured in the "Virus House".
PART THREE: VIRUS HOUSE
Virus House was a code name for German Atomic research, that came from one of the laboratories being a former medical research building. The German researchers came to the conclusion that building an atomic bomb, while possible, would be extremely costly, and time consuming - and it didn't look like Germany had the time or resources for the program.... but suddenly, in late 1944, a number of odd events occurred.
- German aircraft designers were told to tender designs for a bomber capable of flying to New York and back, without refueling. The bomb load was to be 4000 Kilograms; surprisingly light for an attack that could have any real effect. The Horton firm was given the assignment, with the beautiful Ho XVIII flying wing bomber being the only design that could achieve the required specifications. They were told to begin construction as soon as possible.
- Work was restarted on a submarine towed pod, code named 'Test stand XII", to transport and launch the V-2 (A-4) missile. Up to three of these could be towed by a Type XXI submarine. The work was given high priority, and one of the pods, minus its internal equipment, was finished by the war's end.
- The German rocket team at Peenemunde were told to dust off the plans for the A-9/A-10 project, a two stage ICBM capable of reaching New York. This seemed an awfully big project to start this late in the war.
PART FOUR: THE GERMAN ATOMIC BOMB
On page 225 of Myhra's book is shown a cutaway of a atomic bomb of German design. The bomb consists of a sphere, approximately 2 1/2 feet in diameter, made up of two hemispheres, bolted together around the periphery (sound familiar?). In this case though, the interior is entirely different. Ten layers of uranium, in the form of circular plates of differing diameter, are stacked inside the top half of the sphere. The plates do not lie on top of one another, but are spaced apart, so that kerosene (Paraffin, as it's referred to in the cutaway) can flow between them, in alternating layers ofuranium- kerosene- uranium- kerosene, etc. Kerosene is an excellent absorber of neutrons, so that the plates cannot interact in an atomic manner. The diagram states that the total weight of the uranium is 551 kilograms, and it would be fascinating to compare this to the weight of uranium in the "Little Boy" bomb used on Hiroshima, but I've been unable to find information on that subject (it may still be classified). A tube runs vertically through the bomb's center, and the diagram shows a small, spherical object referred to as a "Paräparat" mounted at the very center of the sphere. "Paräparat" translates as "supplement" or "compound" in English, not terribly helpful unless you know that our nuclear weapons used a small crushable ball of beryllium and polonium (called a "Urchin" or "Golf ball") to release a spray of neutrons at the beginning of the fission process. If that's what the "Paräparat" is, then its in the exact right place to accomplish the same purpose. The bottom half of the sphere appears to be a solid mass of ballast - judging by the total weight of the sphere (1000 Kilograms), this is too light to be uranium; too heavy to be heavy water; so it's probably steel or iron. It's there for a very good reason, which we will get to shortly.
PART FIVE: HOW DOES THIS THING WORK?
Okay, lets have a look at this device in action.
It's noon in New York, and millions of people are milling about, in their happy, non-National Socialist way.
Little do they suspect that only a few miles away, and thirty thousand feet above them, death awaits like a hovering Teutonic eagle, in the form of a boomerang shaped flying wing. Cunningly the aircraft has entered into American airspace undetected, its smooth shape and special carbon glued wooden structure offering little for the defense radars to see. (Yes, the Ho XVIII was indeed a stealth bomber.) The bomber's crew are tired and tense - pray to God that the bomb hasn't sprung a leak of some sort... if the kerosene were to get out from between those plates....
The bombardier sights carefully - There's the Empire State building, and that would mean with this wind.... Bomb away! Now bank, hard, and run as fast as you can!
Below the bomber, a twelve foot long, near perfectly streamlined shape, about 2 1/2 feet in diameter, begins to accelerate earthward - its speed climbs until, like Britain's "Grandslam" bomb, it is moving supersonically. The armored nose cap, for all of it's weight, now performs a vital function. The bomb strikes a twenty story building, and passes though it in a half second, drilling deeply into the ground beneath - the rapid deceleration snaps the shear pins holding the uranium plates apart, and they crash into each other hard as the top half of the sphere disintegrates under the hydraulic pressure of the compressed kerosene, which sprays, ignited by the diesel effect, in all directions. As the bomb sphere drives itself down onto the armored nose cap, a plunger crushes the "Paräparat", and neutrons spray into the mass of uranium... and... and...
One of three things happen:
- 1. The building the bomb fell through becomes, for a few seconds, the highest structure in New York, possibly by several thousand feet. New York now has, at 500 feet across, and 200 feet deep, the biggest pothole in its history. And a hundred alarm fire to put out.
- 2. The uranium begins to undergo a meltdown, deep under the ground of Manhattan, its weight causing the fissioning mass to sink deeper and deeper until the water table is reached. Then hot, radioactive, steam fills the air, and a good sized section of the city is uninhabitable for a decade or two.
- 3. The people in the building assume that "Those idiots" up on the 20th floor were trying to move a safe, and we now finally have the makings of a elevator shaft, which will beat the hell out of going up all those stairs.
But let's suppose, that instead of dropping it from a plane, we were to put it into the nose of a V-2 missile, and tow it up near New York, in one of the "Test stand XII" launching containers. The device is small enough to fit with ease into the warhead compartment, and weighs the same amount as the V-2's normal warhead - coincidence? Also, the ballast in the bottom part of the sphere serves as a anvil for the Uranium to smash into, while drilling into the ground.
Now, interesting possibilities arise - the two halves of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb's uranium were shot together at around a thousand feet per second; the V-2 hits the ground at over three times that speed, and the uranium plates would be driven together with enough force to melt them on impact; under these conditions a nuclear event is far more likely - especially when it's considered that three thousand feet per second is what our Los Alamos team considered as the speed at which plutonium could be made to fission.
Remember the heavy water/uranium ball experiment?
PART SEVEN: SO HOW FAR DID THEY GET?
At the end of the war two of the prototype bomb spheres MAY HAVE been found, south of Stuttgart, also found there was the uranium cauldron that I mentioned earlier. The two prototype bombs were supposedly found submerged in water by forces of the French Army, who supposedly destroyed them, along with the lab they were in, by explosives. The fact that they were being stored under water makes it sound like they may well have been ready for testing, and it would be interesting to know if the supposed site is still contaminated.