Patton pushes on (what if)

[Seamus Fermanagh]

While we're at it, maybe some of you more military inclined guys could tell me - would it be practically possible for Americans to drop nuclear bombs on Russia in 1945 (and several subsequent years)?

From what I've been able to get, atomic bombs were still very bulky, heavy, crude and demanded total air superiority to be dropped efficiently. In case of bombing Russia, bombers would have to fly from West Germany or France across several thousands km evading Russian fighters and AA guns to get to Russian population centers. It would have been probably been possible to drop it on Russian army in Germany and Poland, but that would likely turn the population of those countries against the Allies. Rocketry technology still wasn't advanced enough to mount nuclear bombs on rockets. Also, how safe were the bombs? If a bomber flies from France and is taken down over Germany, is there a chance that the bomb would explode? It seems to me that technology still wasn't advanced enough at that time to be effectively used against Russia. Am I right here?

The atomic bombs were "dumb" bombs using standard gravity drop for deployment. They were delivered to their target area by B-29 "superfortresses." These bombers had a combat range of more than 5,000 km (standard there-and-back sortie). They had good speed (topping 350mph unloaded)and a service ceiling in excess of 10km. Thus, the B-29 could have delivered the atomic bomb to the USSR, penetrating past Moscow from bases in occupied Germany (and possibly reaching some of the Ural factories?). Soviet fighters would have been hard-pressed to stop them, at least at first, since most of their fighters did not operate at their best at such altitudes and Soviet air doctrine emphasized the low-level and the tactical. How rapidly the Yak's could have been re-worked or new designs deployed as a counter is questionable. We would have been capable of producing roughly 1 a-bomb a month From October 1945 through the end of 1946 (and possibly more as they got better at generating fissionable material).

The early a-weapons might be triggered accidently by impact, so they were armed in flight. Prior to arming, any aircraft shot down or brought down by an accident could do no more than scatter some radioactive material over a fairly small area. Once armed however.....