B-29s dropped the atomic bombs. The B-29 project was also more expensive than the Manhattan project:
> The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $52 billion in 2024), far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project, made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.
Sure, because the United States wanted a truly powerful long-range bomber that could fly at extreme altitude with a pressurized, climate-controlled cabin such as its liberators and B-17s didn't have. They wanted this for initially bombing Japan, since the B-29 was developed before the US navy had conquered islands close enough for easy access with older bombers to the home islands.
But, none of this as necessary for delivery of the bomb, especially if we're talking about Nazi Germany, which could have (had it developed the bomb) used any one of its Dornier, Heinkel or Messershcmitt bombers to do the same. Given the size and weight of the two American atomic bombs, the Germans probably could have even used their medium bombers like a modified Heinkel 111, had they already developed their own atomic bomb with a size similar to Little Boy.
You're perhaps confusing useful co-developments with need.
Also worth noting, had Germany invested resources well -instead of frittering them away under Hitler's often incoherent leadership penchant for forcing through personal whimsies and irrational strategic desires- it could have redirected the whopping 160 billion in 2024 dollars that it spent on the largely worthless Atlantic Wall into all kinds of powerful projects.
There's a figure that dwarfs both the Manhattan Project and the B-29 combined. The Nazis could have invested in atomic development while still developing their strategically inert but technically marvellous V Weapons with that kind of money, which they spent anyhow on concrete nonsense.
It's sort of ironic too, since Hitler directly benefitted from the Maginot Line being useless, then went ahead and built his own colossal version of the same foolishness against invasion.
Also, the Germans developed a very useful surface-to-air missile during the war. It was called the wasserfall, and genuinely had promise for severely damaging the allied bombing effort, but no, Hitler was fixated on his giant, immediately worthless V rocket, and wasserfall was neglected then cancelled, the technology applied to the much more difficult V2.
Not to take away from your thesis (I agree that this was likely a very solveable issue, and after all they didn't need to fly across an ocean), but even Little Boy was 9700 lbs, which was nearly 2000 lbs/25% more than the He 111's capacity even with rocket assisted takeoff. So it is indeed easy to overlook that simply having something to deliver the massive things was no small feat
> Up to 3,600 kilograms (7,900 lb) could be carried externally. External bomb racks blocked the internal bomb bay. Carrying bombs externally increased weight and drag and impaired the aircraft's performance significantly. Carrying the maximum load usually required rocket-assisted take-off.
You're right about Little Boy, i'd misread kilos as pounds, oops, and sorry. That said, my main points stand:
First, that lack of financial resources wasn't an obstacle to the Bomb. Hitler had his government spend absurdly colossal sums on other and ultimately useless things mainly because of his stubborn fixations (real surprise, that) and even with the scientific brain drain due to Nazi persection of jews and dissidents of all stripes, enough sharp minds remained in Germany to pull it off I believe, but only if the whole concept had been taken seriously enough, early enough and with good planning and funding.
Secondly: Assuming they'd actually developed the bomb, delivery would have been a very solveable problem at that point for stopping a western Allied invasion dead in its tracks.
Stopping the vast soviet army would have been a different matter entirely, especially if they only developed the atom bomb later in the war. I'm not entirely sure about even a nuclear weapon being enough to put a brake on that level of thirst for revenge, combined with so much military force for applying said revenge.
In broad strokes I agree, but my overall point was exactly about this facet, which I excerpt:
> even with the scientific brain drain due to Nazi persection of jews and dissidents of all stripes
My point was precisely about that brain drain, in particular the dismissal of "Jewish Physics" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik), which drove the atomic physicists right into America's open arms
So to watch the US destroy its seed corn with its own xenophobic brain drain is particularly ironic
I did some minimal searching for Seattle and explosions in 2020 and I found plenty of sources reporting on different supposed explosions, at different times and places (within Seattle). Seems perfectly plausible to me.
None of those sources detail anything that I would describe as “two large bombs”.
And I can’t find a 72 hour power outage in Seattle in 2020.
Can you help me out?
mrangle also later said [0] they live “in a major city between Boston and DC”. So they aren’t describing Seattle. (Or actually any city in the US based on what they have shared so far)
For the reader curious why the woman in [0] didn't get permanent residency via marriage:
> Milne was divorced from the nonimmigrant student she married prior to 1983. She then married a U.S. citizen but we found, in our above-said unpublished opinion, that she had admitted that it was a marriage of convenience. After another divorce, she married her current husband, a marriage that is uncontested as "bona fide." Her request for legal permanent resident status based on this marriage was denied under INA § 204(c) which precludes approval based on even an admittedly good-faith union if the petitioner had previously contracted an improper marriage.
Suppose you actually had some data to back up your comments, and you made a graph for "blindness caused by measles" over time. Do you have any reason to believe it wouldn't look just like the mortality rate graph linked above?
Some number of years ago, I looked at the map on this page and tried to find the eruv on the west side, near 14th St and a few streets below.
My conclusion was the eruv wasn't there (despite the green checkmark on the website), making this whole thing even more fun than people find it here! :)
I'm not in the city at the moment to check but they seem to take it down or shift it when there's going to be construction in an area. With the Gansevoort Pier rebuild and Little Island it wouldn't surprise me if they shifted where the wire crossed West St further South to avoid the construction.
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