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"Virus House"German Nuclear Weapon
Circa 1944-45 by Pat F.

· Suspension Lug (Fin Attachment?) ·

Thisdevice was to use a total of 10 layers of semi-refined U-235/238, alternatingwith Neutron absorbing kerosene. On impact, plungers would crush "Präparat",releasing neutrons, as shear pins broke, allowing the Uranium plates tocome together via inertia and make a supercritical mass. The device wouldthen detonate, or at least melt down, causing massive contamination. Thetarget was to be midtown Manhattan. Two prototypes MAY have been builtin 1945.

Impact Plunger to
Crush "Präparat"

·

· U-235/238(551 kg)

Kerosene

Ballast (Iron?)

Shear Pins

Polonium/Beryllium
"Urchin"(?)

Total Weight:
1000 kg (2205lbs)

· |------ approx.2.2 feet (0.65 m)-----| · P.F - 2000

PART ONE: IN THE BEGINNING....

Over the years,there has been a good deal of speculation on the German'satomic program of W.W.II. By putting together information from anumber of reliable sources (listed at the end of the article), I have endeavoredto give a brief overview of the project, as well as a cutaway drawing ofwhat the finished weapon may have been like, and how it may have been delivered.
In the year 1914, H.G. Wells authored a small book entitled "The WorldSet Free". In it, he described a fictional future war fought with atomicweapons. The book caused a stir in physicists worldwide, and some beganto look into the possibility that the energy that slowly emanated fromradioactive elements could, if released all at once, cause considerabledestruction.
First in Great Britain, and then later in the United States, researchbegan to show that such a weapon stood within the realm of possibility,if certain fundamental problems could be solved:
• Uranium, the most available of the radioactive elements, consisted of twodifferent isotopic forms: U-238, a stable, non-reactive form composed over99% of the metal as found in nature, while U-235, a highly radioactiveform, comprised the tiny remaining proportion. In it's natural form, themetal was not capable of sustaining a nuclear reaction.
• A nuclear reaction required that the neutrons emitted by one decaying atomstrike other atoms in the vicinity to cause them also to decay; but thespeed at which neutrons left a decaying U-235 atom was so high that theywere far more likely to simply pass through other uranium atoms, withouthaving any effect on them. A method would have to be found to slow themdown.
• If a method could be found to refine natural uranium to the point wherethe proportion of U-235 would reach around 3%, then a reactor could bemade. This would allow non-reactive U-238 to be transformed, by bombardmentwith radiation, into a new element-plutonium; with the atomic number of239 which also could be used for weapons.
Realizing that it did not have the resources necessary to conduct sucha monumental effort, as well as living under the threat of invasion, GreatBritain sent it's research on the subject to The United States, and severalyears later the project bore fruit in the skies over Japan.

PART TWO: GERMAN RESEARCH

In Germany, the story was very different - nuclear physics was viewedwith suspicion, due to fact that many physicists were Jewish; and the wholeconcept stood at odds with the party's official view of the cosmos - whichwas very strange indeed.
(See "The Nazis and the Occult" by Dusty Sklar; and remember "Ice isnot frozen water; water is melted ice.")
Besides not devoting enough effort to research, the German's made asimple, profound mistake early on; when they tested graphite as a moderatorto slow the neutrons of a decaying uranium atom down to a speed where theycould be used to cause other atoms to fission - But the graphite they usedwasn't pure; and the impurities absorbed the neutrons, making the researcherswrite it off as a candidate for nuclear research - in reality it was anexcellent moderator, low in cost and easily acquired.
With the apparent failure of graphite, the only other substance thatappeared to hold promise was "Heavy Water" an exotic, and rare form ofordinary water in which deuterium, a form of the hydrogen atom, that isgreater in atomic weight, replaces the ordinary hydrogen in H2O.
With a minuscule budget, and heavy water obtained from separators inhydro-electric dams, the German atomic bomb program got off to a very shakystart.
Working with what little they had, the physicists started trying tobuild a working atomic reactor - and here's where things start to get VERYinteresting - according to the commonly held chain of events, the atomicreactor was a complete flop. It was found at the end of the war, a largecauldron of heavy water with hundreds of cubes of uranium suspended bychains inside it. The whole device looked more like something to be usedin black magic, than serious science, and would have been right at homein a Wagner opera.
But there was another device built earlier; and on June 23, 1942, somethingwent very wrong with it. This "Uranium Machine" as it, and the other testreactors were called, was located at the University of Leipzig, and wasunder the control of Werner Heisenberg, Head of the German atomic program.
The device consisted of two large aluminum hemispheres bolted togetheraround the periphery, and contained a central sphere of heavy water surroundedby powdered uranium; it had been immersed in a pool of ordinary water fortwenty days, when on the 23rd of June, it was noticed that bubbles werebeginning to escape from it.
The sphere was lifted out of the water, and a access hatch on its outsidewas opened to determine what was amiss.
On opening the hatch, a hissing sound, followed by a jet of fire, cameout of the sphere. Thinking that the uranium had somehow ignited, the scientistshosed the sphere down with water, until the fire appeared to be out. Theythen drained the heavy water out of the inner sphere, so that it wouldnot be contaminated, and re-sealed the sphere and lowered it back intothe water tank for safety's sake.
For a few hours all seemed to be well - then the sphere was seen tobe emitting bubbles again, and more disturbingly, the water that it wasimmersed in began to boil, indicating a great deal of heat was being generated.
The scientists gathered around, and began frantically discussing whatto do.... then, in horror, they noticed that the sphere was vibrating,and BEGINNING TO SWELL IN SIZE.
Everyone fled from the room, as a loud explosion, and a hailstorm ofburning uranium, followed.
Fire crews were called and quickly put out the fires in the room; butno amount of water seemed capable of dousing the fire in the sphere, untilit burnt out on its own two days later.
This is a very interesting event. First off - what was the purposethat the sphere was supposed to accomplish? Why put uranium and heavy waterin a sphere made of aluminum and then sit back and wait three weeks?
As we read above, heavy water is a moderator - a substance that slowsdown neutrons, so that they may interact with other atoms.
If natural uranium undergoes nuclear bombardment, some of the U-238will be transmuted into plutonium, while some is transmuted into U-233,another fissionable form. Aluminum, like beryllium, has the property ofemitting neutrons when bombarded by alpha particles such as those generatedby radium or polonium To accomplish a significant amount of transmutationwill take a while, several weeks in fact.
Wanna put one and two together? If this all sounds speculative andfar fetched, you might want to get a copy of the March 1999 "Readers Digest",which reprints an article from "Harpers" magazine about a young man ofseventeen years of age named David Hahn, who in 1994 built a "Uranium Machine"of his own out of aluminum, uranium metal, some thorium from gas lamp mantles,radium paint, and of course duct tape. His contraption worked so well thatthe EPA had to wear full environment suits to haul the end results of hisexperiment to a radioactive disposal site.
Now, he was a Boy Scout - but considering what he had to work with,is it inconceivable that Heisenberg could have accomplished at least asmuch in 1942?
Maybe you don't have to go to all the trouble of enriching the uranium;maybe be you can give it a friendly environment, and some of it will turninto plutonium, with a little help from some radium.
This is admittedly speculation. But something very odd indeed happenedin that laboratory. And the description of the difficulty in putting thefire out sounds a lot like those at Chernobyl.
And from that accident, I think, came the germ of an idea, and thegerm would be nurtured in the "Virus House".

PART THREE: VIRUS HOUSE

Virus House was a code name for German Atomic research, that came fromone of the laboratories being a former medical research building. The Germanresearchers came to the conclusion that building an atomic bomb, whilepossible, would be extremely costly, and time consuming - and it didn'tlook like Germany had the time or resources for the program.... but suddenly,in late 1944, a number of odd events occurred.
• German aircraft designers were told to tender designs for a bomber capableof flying to New York and back, without refueling. The bomb load was tobe 4000 Kilograms; surprisingly light for an attack that could have anyreal effect. The Horton firm was given the assignment, with the beautifulHo XVIII flying wing bomber being the only design that could achieve therequired specifications. They were told to begin construction as soon aspossible.
• Work was restarted on a submarine towed pod, code named 'Test stand XII",to transport and launch the V-2 (A-4) missile. Up to three of these couldbe towed by a Type XXI submarine. The work was given high priority, andone of the pods, minus its internal equipment, was finished by the war'send.
• The German rocket team at Peenemunde were told to dust off the plans forthe A-9/A-10 project, a two stage ICBM capable of reaching New York.This seemed an awfully big project to start this late in the war.
Until I purchased David Myhra's superb book on the Horton brother's flyingwings, I had always thought that these efforts were merely the last, illogical,gasp of a nation that knew it had lost a war that it itself had started.

PART FOUR: THE GERMAN ATOMIC BOMB

On page 225 of Myhra's book is shown a cutaway of a atomic bomb of Germandesign. The bomb consists of a sphere, approximately 2 1/2 feet in diameter,made up of two hemispheres, bolted together around the periphery (soundfamiliar?). In this case though, the interior is entirely different. Tenlayers of uranium, in the form of circular plates of differing diameter,are stacked inside the top half of the sphere. The plates do not lie ontop of one another, but are spaced apart, so that kerosene (Paraffin, asit's referred to in the cutaway) can flow between them, in alternatinglayers ofuranium- kerosene- uranium- kerosene, etc. Kerosene is an excellentabsorber of neutrons, so that the plates cannot interact in an atomic manner.The diagram states that the total weight of the uranium is 551 kilograms,and it would be fascinating to compare this to the weight of uranium inthe "Little Boy" bomb used on Hiroshima, but I've been unable to find informationon that subject (it may still be classified). A tube runs vertically throughthe bomb's center, and the diagram shows a small, spherical object referredto as a "Paräparat" mounted at the very center of the sphere. "Paräparat"translates as "supplement" or "compound" in English, not terribly helpfulunless you know that our nuclear weapons used a small crushable ball ofberyllium and polonium (called a "Urchin" or "Golf ball") to release aspray of neutrons at the beginning of the fission process. If that's whatthe "Paräparat" is, then its in the exact right place to accomplishthe same purpose. The bottom half of the sphere appears to be a solid massof ballast - judging by the total weight of the sphere (1000 Kilograms),this is too light to be uranium; too heavy to be heavy water; so it's probablysteel or iron. It's there for a very good reason, which we will get toshortly.

PART FIVE: HOW DOES THIS THING WORK?

Okay, lets have a look at this device in action.
It's noon in New York, and millions of people are milling about, intheir happy, non-National Socialist way.
Little do they suspect that only a few miles away, and thirty thousandfeet above them, death awaits like a hovering Teutonic eagle, in the formof a boomerang shaped flying wing. Cunningly the aircraft has entered intoAmerican airspace undetected, its smooth shape and special carbon gluedwooden structure offering little for the defense radars to see. (Yes, theHo XVIII was indeed a stealth bomber.) The bomber's crew are tired andtense - pray to God that the bomb hasn't sprung a leak of some sort...if the kerosene were to get out from between those plates....
The bombardier sights carefully - There's the Empire State building,and that would mean with this wind.... Bomb away! Now bank, hard, and runas fast as you can!
Below the bomber, a twelve foot long, near perfectly streamlined shape,about 2 1/2 feet in diameter, begins to accelerate earthward - its speedclimbs until, like Britain's "Grandslam" bomb, it is moving supersonically.The armored nose cap, for all of it's weight, now performs a vital function.The bomb strikes a twenty story building, and passes though it in a halfsecond, drilling deeply into the ground beneath - the rapid decelerationsnaps the shear pins holding the uranium plates apart, and they crash intoeach other hard as the top half of the sphere disintegrates under the hydraulicpressure of the compressed kerosene, which sprays, ignited by the dieseleffect, in all directions. As the bomb sphere drives itself down onto thearmored nose cap, a plunger crushes the "Paräparat", and neutronsspray into the mass of uranium... and... and...
One of three things happen:
• 1. The building the bomb fell through becomes, for a few seconds,the highest structure in New York, possibly by several thousand feet. NewYork now has, at 500 feet across, and 200 feet deep, the biggest potholein its history. And a hundred alarm fire to put out.
• 2. The uranium begins to undergo a meltdown, deep under the groundof Manhattan, its weight causing the fissioning mass to sink deeper anddeeper until the water table is reached. Then hot, radioactive, steam fillsthe air, and a good sized section of the city is uninhabitable for a decadeor two.
• 3. The people in the building assume that "Those idiots" up on the20th floor were trying to move a safe, and we now finally have the makingsof a elevator shaft, which will beat the hell out of going up all thosestairs.
PART SIX: OF COURSE, IF IT WERE GOING FAST ENOUGH.....

But let's suppose, that instead of dropping it from a plane, we wereto put it into the nose of a V-2 missile, and tow it up near New York,in one of the "Test stand XII" launching containers. The device is smallenough to fit with ease into the warhead compartment, and weighs the sameamount as the V-2's normal warhead - coincidence? Also, the ballast inthe bottom part of the sphere serves as a anvil for the Uranium to smashinto, while drilling into the ground.
Now, interesting possibilities arise - the two halves of the "LittleBoy" atomic bomb's uranium were shot together at around a thousand feetper second; the V-2 hits the ground at over three times that speed, andthe uranium plates would be driven together with enough force to melt themon impact; under these conditions a nuclear event is far more likely -especially when it's considered that three thousand feet per second iswhat our Los Alamos team considered as the speed at which plutonium couldbe made to fission.
Remember the heavy water/uranium ball experiment?

PART SEVEN: SO HOW FAR DID THEY GET?

At the end of the war two of the prototype bomb spheres MAY HAVE beenfound, south of Stuttgart, also found there was the uranium cauldron thatI mentioned earlier. The two prototype bombs were supposedly found submergedin water by forces of the French Army, who supposedly destroyed them, alongwith the lab they were in, by explosives. The fact that they were beingstored under water makes it sound like they may well have been ready fortesting, and it would be interesting to know if the supposed site is stillcontaminated.

PART EIGHT: "VENGEANCE"

I couldn't let this article be complete without putting one pieceof balderdash to rest.
A book has been written by a Mr. Philip Henshall, in which he contendsthat the Germans were designing a modified V-2 to carry atomic materials,he has a set of intricate drawings in his book, which purport to show adevice called a "Korsett" which he contends is a strengthening structureto allow a V-2 to carry a payload between it's motor and fuel tanks. Hetreats this as a great discovery of a Nazi rocket secret.
In an odd way, this is correct - here's the true story of the "korsett",and why German rocket scientists wouldn't talk about it, from G. HarryStine's book "ICBM", page 65 (Stine is quoting Konrad K. Dannenberg) "Thefirst A-4 missile was a hand-made job. Motor tests preceding the a firsttest flight were to be carried out in a huge, mobile test stand which heldthe entire missile. However, this first A-4 never flew. It found it's endin that test stand. In order to clamp the missile into the stand withoutattaching the thrust mounts to the missile structure, a large steel corsetwas built. Unfortunately, the builders of this corset did not take intoaccount the shrinkage of the missile components when the frigid liquidoxygen was pumped aboard. The first A-4 shrank, dropped out of the corset,and was a total wash-out."
As one can well imagine, the Peenemunde team were not eager for thisstory to gain wide distribution - It doesn't take a rocket scientist toremember that cold causes things to shrink.
Other "interesting" ideas in Henshall's book include how the V-2 issupposed to fly to a greater range, while carrying half the fuel, and luggingthe terribly unstreamlined "Korsett" along for the ride. And best of all,how it's to fly at all with the center of gravity moved back, due to thelack of a nose warhead. Flights of captured V-2s at White Sands after thewar had to have ballast put into the nose if the experiments weren't heavyenough, or the rocket would go out of control.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

THE HORTON BROTHERS and Their All-Wing Aircraft. David Myhra,Schiffer books, 1998- THE book on the Hortons, and their beautiful aircraft!They look futuristic even now. Main source of information for this article.
HEISENBERG'S WAR. Thomas Powers, Knopf, 1993- Mainly about interactionof German and Allied physicists, before and during war, has the explosionof the test sphere described in detail.
U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Chuck Hanson, Orion books, 1988 - everythingabout everything atomic.
THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB. Richard Rhodes, Simon and Schuster,1986- find out why polonium is the weirdest stuff around....
ICBM. G.Harry Stine, Orion Books, 1991- Stine knows his stuff- discussion of missiles by an old missile hand. Great stories of the goodol' days at White Sands. He almost ended up owning a V-2!
V MISSILES OF THE THIRD REICH. Dieter Holsken, Monogram books,1994- Typically top shelf Monogram production. Everything about everything- you may be able to build a buzz bomb by the time you finish the book,and you'll even know how to camouflage it.
THE NAZIS AND THE OCCULT. Dusty Sklar, Dorset Press. 1977- Betyou didn't know that there's a wall of ice up in the sky. Or that V-2'smight knock holes in it, and flood the world. That's the normal part ofNazi cosmology - wait to you read the strange stuff.
VENGEANCE, Philip Henshall, Alan Sutton Publishing, 1995- Well,it may all make sense to him, but it's complete hogwash as far as I'm concerned.
READERS DIGEST, MARCH 1999, pages 87-92 "Tale of the RadioactiveBoy Scout" If you ever wanted to be a Mad Scientist when you wereyoung, prepare to meet someone who really is DEXTER CLASS!

OKAY, SO I'M SPECULATING..... BUT ONLY A LITTLE...

If you've got a better interpretation of this data, get in touch withme at flanner@daktel.com
(And anyone who start's talking about South Polar Openings, AtomicFlying Saucers, or Little Panzer Grays coming down from the skies, is introuble!)

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