HH 59 : The Destroyer of Worlds

[Fife]

These nukes you're talking about are not actually strategic by our definition of strategic, these are not hydrogen bombs, by nuclear war standards, these are tac-nukes, small bombs, the effects radius was actually quite limited, if you dropped it on a small city, it would destroy that city, but against dispersed combat power in the field, the Red Army on a thousand mile front, it's not going to slow them down much.

Is there any good reading out there on how Operation Unthinkable or a soviet press west from Berlin could have played out? All this talk of the nukes in the Pacific lately and this turn in this thread has me thinking about it. I know the soviet deployment on the front at Berlin towered over the US and Brits in May 45.

[Smitty-48]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactically, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

[Ex-California]

No. And much of their combat power in 1945, was forward deployed and dispersed on a wide front anyways, so as soon you go to bomb the homeland, the Red Army is rolling towards Paris. Your troops are going to have fight World War Three, on the spot.

Were soviet supply lines subject to strategic nukes? [A. I don't know much of anything about their supply chain up to Berlin, and B. I don't know much of anything about how much we had or could develop in terms of strategic nukes that would be accurate and effective in cutting off the deployed forces.]

Why would you need a nuke for that? Paratroopers, or even a tiny bombing run would cut any supply lines.

What is the fucking fetish with nuclear weapons around here??

We are all LeMays

[SilverEagle]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactially, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

Seems like you would have a lot more room for error with a H bomb.

[Fife]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactially, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

That's kind of what I was afraid of when I first asked the question about whether accurate strikes were even possible back at the time. I wonder how things might have progressed if the Trinity test had been completed 12 months earlier.

[Smitty-48]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactially, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

Seems like you would have a lot more room for error with a H bomb.

Well, first of all, the US doesn't have even one air droppable H-bomb until 1956, but even the H-bomb wouldn't neccesarily take out the bridge neither, the H-bomb does its damage by heat, doesn't necessarily melt bridges though, these weapons are basically designed to kill people, but they don't actually make great anti-armor weapons, tanks can roll right by them.

I was trained to fight on the nuclear battlefield in Europe, and we were not assuming that the Soviets would be stopped dead in their tracks by H-bombs, we were prepared to fight in the nuclear fallout zone, and so were they.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactially, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

Seems like you would have a lot more room for error with a H bomb.

Well, first of all, the US doesn't have even one air droppable H-bomb until 1956, but even the H-bomb wouldn't neccesarily take out the bridge neither, the H-bomb does its damage by heat, doesn't necessarily melt bridges though, these weapons are basically designed to kill people, but they don't actually make great anti-armor weapons, tanks can roll right by them.

I was trained to fight on the nuclear battlefield in Europe, and we were not assuming that the Soviets would be stopped dead in their tracks by H-bombs, we were prepared to fight in the nuclear fallout zone, and so were they.

What the... you're serious?

A tank would be a giant toaster oven for anyone inside, and whatever's within 50 miles of the bridge is a radioactive zone of death for the next 100+ years.

[Ex-California]

Also bear in mind, these bombs were not laser guided, so, tactially, it's like the US bombing bridges in Vietnam, you drop the A-bomb on the bridgehead; smoke clears; you missed; bridge still there.

That's kind of what I was afraid of when I first asked the question about whether accurate strikes were even possible back at the time. I wonder how things might have progressed if the Trinity test had been completed 12 months earlier.

Read about the Able airburst test here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

Without precision guidance the A bombs from those years are more anti-civilian, anti-personnel weapons

[Smitty-48]

Seems like you would have a lot more room for error with a H bomb.

Well, first of all, the US doesn't have even one air droppable H-bomb until 1956, but even the H-bomb wouldn't neccesarily take out the bridge neither, the H-bomb does its damage by heat, doesn't necessarily melt bridges though, these weapons are basically designed to kill people, but they don't actually make great anti-armor weapons, tanks can roll right by them.

I was trained to fight on the nuclear battlefield in Europe, and we were not assuming that the Soviets would be stopped dead in their tracks by H-bombs, we were prepared to fight in the nuclear fallout zone, and so were they.

What the... you're serious?

A tank would be a giant toaster oven for anyone inside, and whatever's within 50 miles of the bridge is a radioactive zone of death for the next 100+ years.

Only the tanks inside the kill zone, the tanks are dispersed over hundreds of miles, even Castle Bravo, could only kill a limited number of troops, and if they are dug in, it's not even that effective, the American scientists watching Castle Bravo, got caught inside the effects radius because the blast was three times what they were expecting, but since they were in a bunker; didn't kill them.

[Smitty-48]

We went over all this shit in NATO CENTAG constantly back in the 80's, when all the bombs were going to be H-bombs, and the conclusion we kept coming back to was; effective against population centers and industrial targets, not so effective against armies in the field, actually many ways to deflect the effects of even an H-bomb, when you are dispersed, dug in, and prepared, which is why the Carter and Reagan Administrations actually wanted to switch to N-Bombs, because in the end, even the H-Bomb wasn't hot enough to reliably kill Soviet tank formations.