The Rosenberg group in New York forwarded information on the Los Alamos, New Mexico atomic bomb test site to Moscow. By October 1940 Berlin, Tokyo and Moscow were fully informed on US atomic bomb testing.
Japan and Nuclear Fission
In October 1940 Japanese scientists commenced work on nuclear fission in university laboratories, however they had very little uranium in Japan. As the war progressed search teams sought uranium in Korea and asked Germany to provide more as their research developed.
Germany and Nuclear Fission
In 1939 Germany commenced a program to build an atomic weapon. Hitler expected Germany's V2 rockets would deliver atomic nose cones aimed at the total destruction of London and Moscow. German research concentrated on the use of heavy water (deuterium oxide) requiring vast amounts of electricity to manufacture it and it was only produced at the Vermork Plant, Rjukan, south Norway.
Germany and Japan Co-operate
A shipment of heavy water, from the Vermork plant, and uranium oxide, from Czechoslavakia, was sent by freighter submarine from Norway to Japan which refueled at the refueling depot in Penang, Malaya, manned by German technicians. Further supplies of uranium and nuclear data were sent to Japan by Germany.
The last uranium shipment for Japan left Norway on April 15, 1945 on board U-234 with sufficient heavy water and uranium to manufacture two atomic bombs due to be exploded over General MacArthur's invasion fleet in November 1945. On May 8 U-234 received a radio message to surrender to the Allies. Kapitan Leutnant Johann Fehler's U-234 was boraded by USS Sutton on May 14 and was escorted into Portsmouth, New Hampshire where its valuable cargo of uranium oxide, heavy water and nuclear data was transferred to the War Department in Washington. Two months later the US discovered they had a successful bomb when they exploded it in the deserts of New Mexico in July 1945.
Germany and Japan made Fundamental Mistakes
Japan used the German approach when, in attempting to separate uranium they used heavy water instead of graphite, and used thermal diffusion instead of ultracentrifuge. The scientists working for US General Groves on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos went the graphite-and-ultra centrifuge route, and so, the United States won the race to develop the atomic bomb.
German War Technology was Superior
Germany compounded their errors by forcing German Jewish nuclear fission scientists, including Einstein, to emigrate to the US. German rocket propulsion was so advanced that the US and Russia took these German scientists to their own countries to develop their respective moon programs in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. The Good German book by Joseph Kanon provided a fictional account of this gathering of German scientists post World War Two .
There remains evidence of German experiments on electro-magnetism in the Harz Mountains today. Electro-magnetism could lift heavy objects almost effortlessly. There are no German scientists alive today to explain these structures.
Sources
- The Good German
- Hirohito, The War Years by Paul Manning Bantam Books, 1989
- Uboot 234
Michael Manning - ' The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity' W.B.Yeats
