Is This True?

[sfbaytf]

Now that you mention it my uncle was a bombardier in a B-29 squadron. Dad once mentioned something about my uncle being involved in radar directed aiming? Other than that I don't know any other details. My uncle loved to party and could drink like no tomorrow. Drove like a maniac too - spent a few weekends in jail for speeding. Quite a character.

Today the entire cost of the B-29 program will get you 1 B-2 bomber...

I've finally got my B-29's depolyed in the Pacific. the ones in China have mainly focused on mining ports with an occasional raid on ports and airbases. The squadrons in the Pacific have launched a night firebombing raid on Kobe from 5000 feet. Toyko is tonights target.

I tried launching a low level night raid on an airfield. A few Japanese planes got hit on the ground, but the overall results was minimal. I wanted to try this out to see if I could supress an airfield at night to minimize losses.

I'm still trying to figure out if daylight bombing is going to be productive at reasonable costs. Also need to figure out what the targeting priority should be. I see from recon that the Homeislands is packed with fighters. Quality of the enemy pilots is unknown.

[chesmart]

Ask the North Koreans what happened on there first try 

[minnowguy]

Re atomic bomb complexity ....

If you find the Manhattan Project interesting, I HIGHLY recommend _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ by Richard Rhodes.  Great stuff and very readable.

The uranium bomb used on Hiroshima was fairly straightforward engineering.  Los Alamos was so confident it would work that they didn't even bother with a test.  The problem was coming up with enough U-235.

The plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki was a different story.  Plenty of Plutonium could be created in breeder reactors, although there was some very ugly chemistry required to extract it.  OTOH, it required explosive implosion to generate an explosive critical mass and this required some very delicate design work and computational fluid dynamics that were right at the edge of the possible in the 1940s.  They weren't at all certain it would work -- hence the Trinity test.

[rjopel]

Didn't some grad student back a couple decades ago design a A-bomb as his thesis. Managed to get everything needed from comercial suppliers except the fuel.

His paper got classified by the Feds.

I recall seeing it in Reader's Digest.

[usersatch]

I got my undergrad degree in physics, and yes, designing a 1945 era device is very easy. Plenty of places on the internet to figure it out. Hell, you don't even need the internet to make the Little Boy design. The key is the pesky U235 or PU239 fuel (and the high explosives to initiate it). Like most things, the richer it is, the better it runs. In this case, the neutron chain reaction. That is where the vast amount of nuclear weapons money was spent--on enrichment. U235 requires thousands and thousands of centrifuges and giant gaseous diffusion plants to enrich it. PU239, while easier to produce, is unstable and extremely toxic to handle.

North Korea's device was extremely crude, most likely due to poor enrichment technology. I read today that an Iranian physicist defected. It will be interesting to see how far along they have gotten.

Most modern US weapons are fission-fusion or fission-fusion-fission devices, tamped with tritium, beryllium, etc. which requires painstaking testing with high explosives to initiate the proper sequence. Sandia Labs studys this, mostly with super-computers. While it is true that with the new computers, they can simulate the entire reaction, at some point they need to go out and test it in the field.

The Rhodes book IS excellent. So is the video series "Trinity and Beyond", which I think can be found on youtube. AND it is narrated by Denny Crane!

[Shark7]

When you take into consideration that this is the same government that is notorious for paying far greater than retail price...$600 for a $20 toilet seat for example.

[Misconduct]

Why doesn't one of the scientist create a bomb that divides by zero? we all know that's bad:)

[usersatch]

Or take the square root of negative one?

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: usersatch

Or take the square root of negative one?

One of my close friends I went to college with graduated as a nuclear scientist after 12 years I believe or 14 not sure how long but it was forever. I was actually studying Radio broadcasting at the time and was joking around with him about how to create an Atom bomb, he came back 2 days later with the entire diagram how to build and create it. Surprised the FBI didn't show up to inquire about it because he knows his stuff pretty darn good.

Oh and if anyone reads florida news, he also is the genius that sued his school loans and won in court, so he only owes half of his student loan which is more then I will make in 10 years.

[Dili]

"not the root cause"

One of root causes is imbalance between countries, there is no way that Russia can be convinced to abandon the only thing they have to stop China.

[usersatch]

[/quote]

One of my close friends I went to college with graduated as a nuclear scientist after 12 years I believe or 14 not sure how long but it was forever. I was actually studying Radio broadcasting at the time and was joking around with him about how to create an Atom bomb, he came back 2 days later with the entire diagram how to build and create it. Surprised the FBI didn't show up to inquire about it because he knows his stuff pretty darn good.

Oh and if anyone reads florida news, he also is the genius that sued his school loans and won in court, so he only owes half of his student loan which is more then I will make in 10 years.
[/quote]

Yeah, I had a couple of classmates like that. Once, I got to my fourth year (quantum mechanics), I was pretty lost. There were a few that "got it" without even going to class. They scared me LOL

[wwengr]

ORIGINAL: usersatch

Or take the square root of negative one?

Imagine that!

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: wwengr

ORIGINAL: usersatch
Or take the square root of negative one?

Imagine that!

darn Batman, "i" didn't think you could do that.

[moonraker65]

Not surprising at all that the B-29 cost more than the Manhattan Project. The B-29 changed a lot of things even though within 7 years it was virtually obsolete. A lot of the systems developed for it were right at the cutting edge for the time. As it happened you couldn't have had one without the other ultimately.

[The Gnome]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: wwengr

ORIGINAL: usersatch
Or take the square root of negative one?

Imagine that!

darn Batman, "i" didn't think you could do that.

*groan* /looks for rotten tomato to throw.