April 10, 1963

[Duncan Edwards]

Question... wasn't Scorpion the sub which had a hanger on deck to launch a winged missile from?

No, Scorpion was Skipjack-class, pure hunter-killer SSN. The boat you thinking of is USS Halibut which went on to do, er , other things during her service history, most of which remain classified to this day

Ah! Gotcha!

It is interesting how often people tried to work out a way of carrying aircraft/rockets on submarines before they perfected the missile technology used today. I saw a great documentary on a Japanese sub class from WW2 which featured a sealed hanger on deck where an airplane was stored. The idea being the sub would surface, the aircraft deployed, including attaching its wings (or were they folded? Can't recall) and from there they could launch airstrikes, possibly at North America. After the war, the US Navy apparently examined a couple of captured ones to check out the technology, which was quite advanced for the time, then sunk them quick to keep the Soviets from knowing about it.

On a side note, apparently the Japanese also developed nuclear weapons technology at the very end of the war, using German uranium smuggled to them via U-boat. They even detonated a fission bomb, but that was the day before they officially surrendered in September 1945. The site of this test is within what is now North Korea, which is why not much was known about it today. There was a news article written at the time, but it was overshadowed by the signing of the surrender papers and mostly forgotten. The US forces apparently seized all of the Japanese equipment and research and essentially purged the program from existence and memory, while it was also convenient for the Japanese government to let the program fade into the shadows.

I'd love to read that history book.

[kham]

Uh, no
If you refer to the Snell article published in the Atlanta Constitiution, lets just say that it fails to pass muster by objective analysis. They had completed 2 cyclotrons but were not conducting any heavy water/neutron moderation -type testing or experiments. Plus the sheer logistics required were beyond their capabilities. Considering at the time, the process of an atomic initiation was highly classified, someone suggesting an explosion is likely indicative of a lack of knowledge of how the process works. Without venturing into finger-breaking territory, it's a little more complex than just "boom"

[jack c]

One of my mother's best friend's husband was the executive officer on the Thresher, so it hit close to home - they lived just down the street in Connecticut where I grew up.

[PM2K]

Uh, no
If you refer to the Snell article published in the Atlanta Constitiution, lets just say that it fails to pass muster by objective analysis. They had completed 2 cyclotrons but were not conducting any heavy water/neutron moderation -type testing or experiments. Plus the sheer logistics required were beyond their capabilities. Considering at the time, the process of an atomic initiation was highly classified, someone suggesting an explosion is likely indicative of a lack of knowledge of how the process works. Without venturing into finger-breaking territory, it's a little more complex than just "boom"

Well, that'll learn me to take anything the History Channel runs at face value... Of course, considering they mainly seem to run reality shows now...

Thanks for the correction, though.... It did lead me to look into this a bit further, and then I ran into this over at Wikipedia... quite interesting... but I'll leave it to the viewers to determine its value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_n ... on_program

[kham]

I've often wondered why such ideas about Japan having a program persist. Perhaps it's part of the meme that many key elements of their hardware were so advanced in 1940 (A6M, Night-fighting capabilities, Type 93 Torpedo to name a few) so , they MUST have been up to date on EVERYTHING.
FAIL
How advanced were they? Advanced enough; however, also incapable of reproducing a DB 605N engine when in possession of the blueprints and a working copy. In 1942.
It's a lot like the Napkinwaffe effect you see, with folks doing the "oh, if only the war had persisted into 1946, wait till you see what the Luftwaffe would have had!"
It requires losing your grip on reality, as well as objective facts and the laws of physics, but hey, that's never happened before!

[Duncan Edwards]

I've often wondered why such ideas about Japan having a program persist ...It requires losing your grip on reality, as well as objective facts and the laws of physics, but hey, that's never happened before!

Exactly. It would be impossible to hide such an effort. The United States built three cities, Hanford, Washington, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the effort to create an atomic bomb. Employed tens of thousands of people, spent billions of dollars, and used more copper in the Manhattan project alone than Japan produced in the entire war, and we weren't being bombed night and day or even going hungry. We worked hand in glove with the British and we had possession of most of the world's brilliant atomic scientists yet Japan was able to produce a bomb at the same time the United States did with none of this?

I guess the moral of the story is that history and atomic energy are difficult subjects. The North Koreans appear to have trouble with both.

Guess we better just leave all that alone.

[kham]

The NKs have at least 2 other nation states assisting them with perhaps both hardware and scientific knowledge. Maybe 3. The only stupidity there is acting towards Kim Dong Small and his minions like they are actually important. Or relevant.
The Curtis E. Lemay response would have been the proper one; total, utter , obliteration. And YEAH, that would be a direct threat

[bbjohn]

I've often wondered why such ideas about Japan having a program persist. Perhaps it's part of the meme that many key elements of their hardware were so advanced in 1940 (A6M, Night-fighting capabilities, Type 93 Torpedo to name a few) so , they MUST have been up to date on EVERYTHING.
FAIL
How advanced were they? Advanced enough; however, also incapable of reproducing a DB 605N engine when in possession of the blueprints and a working copy. In 1942.
It's a lot like the Napkinwaffe effect you see, with folks doing the "oh, if only the war had persisted into 1946, wait till you see what the Luftwaffe would have had!"
It requires losing your grip on reality, as well as objective facts and the laws of physics, but hey, that's never happened before!

As for the Luftwaffe, it's true they had some interesting designs on the drawing boards at the time the war ended. However, given how devastated Germany's industrial infrastructure was by then, it's doubtful they could've had any of them become operational.

An example of Germany's desperation at this time was the Natter. It was basically a plywood rocket plane which was launched vertically. It was designed to intercept Allied bombers and fire its rockets at them. The plane would then break up, with the pilot and the rocket engine parachuting to the ground.

Yes, it was as dangerous as it sounds. The thing killed its only test pilot, Lothar Siebert. It was a sign of how desperate Germany was that such an idea was even considered, let alone reaching the test flight stage.

I'd also seen the History Channel program on Japan's atomic weapons program. Even if they did achieve a detonation (which now appears unlikely), they did not have the means to deliver such a weapon to its target. We had the B-29 Superfortress, which could fly further and carry a heavier load than any of the Japanese bombers. While I have no doubt the Japanese could've developed such a plane, it would've taken them years to do so. When the Japanese leaders saw the Americans had atomic weapons and the means to deliver them, they knew they were licked.

I'm glad the war ended when it did and with the Allies victorious. I don't think I'd want to live in a world where German Nazis and Japanese militarists were still major forces. All Americans owe the veterans of World War II a debt of gratitude.

Big Bad John

[Mynock]

The Germans were always a step ahead of us technology wise but they never had the infrastructure to bring that advantage to the field. If they had been able to crank out Tiger Tanks like we did Shermans we would have been fucked.

[PM2K]

The Germans were always a step ahead of us technology wise but they never had the infrastructure to bring that advantage to the field. If they had been able to crank out Tiger Tanks like we did Shermans we would have been fucked.

Their complexity was their undoing. The Germans tended to over-engineer everything so while their equipment was second to none - the Tiger and the Panther, the latter considered one of the best all round tanks of the war, bar none - it was a bugger to maintain in the field and took too damn long and used too many resources to construct it on the assembly line.

The Sherman, on the other hand, was well designed to be mass produced (like the famous Liberty ships), and was, compared to the panzers, anyway, a cinch to maintain. Granted, a Tiger was unmatched in battle against Shermans, (or against pretty much anything); but Allied air power, when applied, more than made up for that on the battlefield. Plus, in the long run, even if every Tiger could take out 50 Shermans apiece, there was always another 100 on the horizon... A nation just can't compete against that..