"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote in message
...
Arny Krueger wrote:

One point - this Nazi development (never a practical tool of war) was a
fighter not a bomber. Even in more modern times developing a stealth
bomber
was far more difficult and there was a delay of many years between the
first stealth fighter and the first stealth bomber.


How big a bomber and how unpractical a tool of war is a fighter sized
airplane that can't be seen until you are 20 miles off the coast and it's
carrying an atomic bomb?

Given the lack of effectiveness of bomb sighting and delivery in those days,
you needed a lot of big bombers to do any strategic damage at all.

The distance from the coast to London is 92 miles so it needs to go 112
miles to drop the bomb directly on London. If it was travelling 100 mph,
that would take enough time for it to be noticed and if a fighter got
lucky,
it would be shot down visually.

I thought we were talking about Germany bombing the US.


The cargo load of the airplane was about 2000 pounds, about 1/5 of the
size
of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki (fat man and little boy) bombs, but that
does
not mean that someone could of built an atomic bomb that would fit the
weight
critera if one did not care to survive the construction of the bomb and
the
flight.

I now of no evidence that care taken during construction the shielding of
the bomb while being delivered was making the bombs that big and heavy. I'm
under the impression that most of the gains that were made in minaturizing
atomic bombs had to do with the design of the mechanism.

After all how much size or weight in shielding do you have on an A-Bomb that
you can fire with a mortar or a bazooka?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_delivery

"Other potential delivery methods include artillery shells, mines such as
the Medium Atomic Demolition Munition and the (very odd) Blue Peacock, and
nuclear depth charges, and nuclear torpedoes. An atomic mortar was also
tested. Even an 'Atomic Bazooka' was designed to be used against large
formations of tanks."

More may be known about comparable Russian weapons because of the break down
of the Soviet military:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke

"These devices, "identified as RA-115s (or RA-115-01s for submersible
weapons)" weigh from fifty to sixty pounds."

While the active materials in an A-bomb are radioactive, they aren't all
that radioactive until they become a critical mass.