Finding a Nuclear bomb

[oldschoolto]

A true Northeast Wreck Diver like " ME " .. Would haul it up and put it in the living room as a proud trophy ... Oh.. And don't tell anyone where I found it...

Jim...

 

[kelemvor]

Even an unarmed nuclear weapon would be a bad thing for an adversary to find, especially at that stage of the Cold War. The Soviets had just tested their first nuke (which as we found out, was greatly helped by spies in the Manhattan Project) the year before and the US was busily making newer bomb designs. An unarmed bomb would have been a treasure trove of technical information; the Mark 4 bomb was the first mass-production nuclear bomb in the US arsenal (the preceding Mark 3 "Fat Man" bombs like the one used on Nagasaki were essentially handbuilt). The Soviets would have been interested in things like

There are a number of presumably intact nukes sitting on the bottom of the ocean due to accidents; thankfully most of them appear to be in deep water that would require submersibles to get to.

Meh, I think this is mostly spinsters trying to make us feel safer. I watched a documentary recently about Japanese nukes that were being constructed during the war. Apparently they had a successful test and ran out of material. Some of the guys who worked on it spoke about the project. There were even documents with technical details that had been smuggled out of Japan.

These days, lots of countries have nukes and what the US gets upset about is folks (Iran etc) making the hard to get material that is needed to do it. As Jared mentioned, you can get the plans for one on the internet if you're so inclined.

 

[Jared0425]

Japan was not even close to an atomic bomb. They didn't even have uranium 235 and had only about a half ton of U238 that a u boat managed to get through to them in mid 44. The u boat was requisitioned into the IJN which really ticked the Germans off for some reason... Japanese physicists and nuclear engineers didn't even replicate a controlled fission reaction that was done 14 years earlier in Chicago with a guy named Fermi. It took the US a substantial effort to produce just 4 operational weapons in late 45 with a massive devotion of infrastructure, capital, intellectuals, and material that Japan had no way of replicating even in peace time.

I have a least a dozen books that detail the history, design, and use of nuclear arms if anyone is interested in some.

 

[kelemvor]

Japan was not even close to an atomic bomb. They didn't even have uranium 235 and had only about a half ton of U238 that a u boat managed to get through to them in mid 44. The u boat was requisitioned into the IJN which really ticked the Germans off for some reason... Japanese physicists and nuclear engineers didn't even replicate a controlled fission reaction that was done 14 years earlier in Chicago with a guy named Fermi. It took the US a substantial effort to produce just 4 operational weapons in late 45 with a massive devotion of infrastructure, capital, intellectuals, and material that Japan had no way of replicating even in peace time.

I have a least a dozen books that detail the history, design, and use of nuclear arms if anyone is interested in some.

Someone uploaded the documentary I was talking about to youtube. Worth a watch.
Maybe we are saying the same thing. They had the plans, the plans were/are good. They did not have the material to do anything beyond some initial test. Which was what I originally stated. If the bomb that was found here contained no nuclear material then it is of extremely limited value. You can learn to produce fission in any phd producing university - probably even in bachelor level studies. Getting the nuclear material is the only real roadblock.

Therefore, I think that given our government's response it's more likely than not that this particular bomb did actually have nuclear material inside.

 

[oldschoolto]

There are two books everyone should read if you are interested in this subject.. Both are written by Richard Rhodes...The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. They are very long and very detailed in the history of the race for the bomb..

Jim...

ps: Edited to add, I used to keep the books in the sleeper of my tractor trailer truck... When other drivers would use the truck.. They would ask " What kind of truck driver reads that stuff... " You need to get something in there that is easier to understand... LIKE HUSTLER..."

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Meh, I think this is mostly spinsters trying to make us feel safer. I watched a documentary recently about Japanese nukes that were being constructed during the war. Apparently they had a successful test and ran out of material. Some of the guys who worked on it spoke about the project. There were even documents with technical details that had been smuggled out of Japan.

These days, lots of countries have nukes and what the US gets upset about is folks (Iran etc) making the hard to get material that is needed to do it. As Jared mentioned, you can get the plans for one on the internet if you're so inclined.

Nowadays an unarmed Mark 4 bomb it wouldn't be worth much, true. In 1950, it was a different story at least in the eyes of the US. We were still finding out about how thoroughly the Soviets had infiltrated the nuclear program, and in addition to designing more powerful bombs the engineers were still working on making them smaller, more reliable, and easier to produce. This is why while North Korea has tested small-yield bombs, they don't seem to have yet gotten one that could actually fit on a missile and work reliably after launch and re-entry.

As for the allegations of a Japanese bomb, the supposed test site is conveniently in modern-day North Korea - i.e., nobody's getting a chance to look at it any time soon. The story was based off a 1946 newspaper report quoting a pseudonymous source ("Captain Wakabayashi") that has pretty much been discredited; it was never corroborated by any of Japan's nuclear scientists and there's no evidence any of them went to Korea for the test. Japan in fact had two separate nuclear programs during the war; as usual one was run by the Army and one was run by the Navy and there was no collaboration between the two (Imperial Japan could have taught a master class in interservice rivalry). It appears neither team ever produced any weapons-grade U-235; the Army's facility was destroyed two months after it started operating by a firebombing raid and the Navy team only got as far as designing the centrifuges for processing uranium.

There was a shipment of 550 kg of unprocessed uranium oxide that departed Norway on the submarine U-234 for transport to Japan in April 1945, but U-234 surrendered in the Atlantic after V-E Day and her cargo was offloaded in the US. It's not even sure if the uranium oxide was meant for processing into bomb material; it may have been meant as a catalyst for the production of synthetic menthol for aviation fuel. If it was meant for bomb material, it was only about 20% of what they would have needed for a functioning weapon.

Sorry for the spiel, but history is an amateur hobby of mine. It will be interesting to see if what the diver found is in fact the missing Mark 4; that would be a hard one to top at the dive bar!

 

[scubafanatic]

Nowadays an unarmed Mark 4 bomb it wouldn't be worth much, true. In 1950, it was a different story at least in the eyes of the US. We were still finding out about how thoroughly the Soviets had infiltrated the nuclear program, and in addition to designing more powerful bombs the engineers were still working on making them smaller, more reliable, and easier to produce. This is why while North Korea has tested small-yield bombs, they don't seem to have yet gotten one that could actually fit on a missile and work reliably after launch and re-entry.

As for the allegations of a Japanese bomb, the supposed test site is conveniently in modern-day North Korea - i.e., nobody's getting a chance to look at it any time soon. The story was based off a 1946 newspaper report quoting a pseudonymous source ("Captain Wakabayashi") that has pretty much been discredited; it was never corroborated by any of Japan's nuclear scientists and there's no evidence any of them went to Korea for the test. Japan in fact had two separate nuclear programs during the war; as usual one was run by the Army and one was run by the Navy and there was no collaboration between the two (Imperial Japan could have taught a master class in interservice rivalry). It appears neither team ever produced any weapons-grade U-235; the Army's facility was destroyed two months after it started operating by a firebombing raid and the Navy team only got as far as designing the centrifuges for processing uranium.

There was a shipment of 550 kg of unprocessed uranium oxide that departed Norway on the submarine U-234 for transport to Japan in April 1945, but U-234 surrendered in the Atlantic after V-E Day and her cargo was offloaded in the US. It's not even sure if the uranium oxide was meant for processing into bomb material; it may have been meant as a catalyst for the production of synthetic menthol for aviation fuel. If it was meant for bomb material, it was only about 20% of what they would have needed for a functioning weapon.

Sorry for the spiel, but history is an amateur hobby of mine. It will be interesting to see if what the diver found is in fact the missing Mark 4; that would be a hard one to top at the dive bar!

What if the NK's used the MK 4 bomb just for it's successful design, (reverse engineering their own version) loaded it aboard a small 'commando' style sub (or something like the small subs the Columbian cocaine lords are using to smuggle vast amounts of drugs into the USA) and detonated the nuke/sub in any one of dozens of major US port cities ?

NK has plenty of fissile material (both uranium and plutonium) they lack a 'debugged' design, which the MK 4 would provide them.

 

[Jared0425]

The Koreans would have to find a super silent sub that we could not detect, let alone find a sub with a range that could get close to our coasts. As said above, the MK IV would be heavily damaged by corrosion beyond any use to them. Secondly the point is moot because I'm sure there is now monitoring on the suspected site so that nobody runs off with it.

I am a big fan of Rhodes's books as the details contained is enormous. Most would find it dry, but for us that like the history of nuclear weapons these books are pretty informative.

I watched the documentary and the theories that were put forward were more or less debunked. Their calculations and methods have been concluded to have been waaay off and was quite far behind anything we put forward. Also mostnof the scientists and labor was interrogated by general Groves whom ran the Manhattan Project and investigated the Nazi project.

 

[Sunn]

Anyone has seen this diver ? Did he became fluorescent ?

 

[archer1960]

There are two books everyone should read if you are interested in this subject.. Both are written by Richard Rhodes...The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. They are very long and very detailed in the history of the race for the bomb..

Jim...

...

Excellent books; I own them both.