Nazi Nuclear particle accelerator

[Simon_G]

Intrigued by the fabled Nazi Bell I have read carefully for clues whether there was such an authentic device. For those unaware said to be a contrarotating centrifuge housed under a bell shaped ceramic hood which glowed pale blue. My investigation uncovered some interesting corroboration for it's existence.

My meandering research led me to an interview in 1983 with a leading Soviet physicist G.N. Flyrov, who noted that in 1945 post hostilities Professor Manfrd von Ardenne led him to the Wenceslas mine near what was then Ludwigsdorf, Silesia, now of course Ludwicowicz, Poland. Ardenee told Flyrov that he had personally installed one of two cyclotron devices inside the mine whilst it was under heavy SS guard.

Further reading disclosed that ALSOS combat engineers encounterd stiff resistance in late April 1945 about the vicinity of Bisingen. There they discovered a particle accelerator which they left dismantled for the French occupation forces.

From the Woods memorandum to Secretary of state Cordell Hull, a key OSS informant advised in 1943 that this was the focus of Forschungsstelle D's activities to create fissile matrial for an atomic bomb using Uranium derived" from Thorium (ref: Dr Ernst Nagelstein). The OSS were aware from their informant that Heisenberg met with the leader of Forschungsstelle D every Wednesday morning to plot progress developing a "superklystron" an advanced type of plasma cyclotron. (NA RG69 & RG87)

This device was based loosely on the primative pre war Cockroft Walton plasma machine which Nazi scientists helped develop. The device at Bisingen was developed by Swiss firm Brown Boverie und Cie (BBC) under contract to German firm AEG and was the subject of several wartime German patents and some postwar Swiss patents. In Germany the device was constructed at Dessau by the firm by BAMAG Meguin, sub contracted to Berlin firm Julius Pinch AG.

Whilst the fabled Nazi Bell or Die Glocke attracts a huge lunatic fringe with ridiculous theories, there does seem a solid base of truth behind existence of the Nazi Bell or Die Glocke as it is also termed.

The path to creating Uranium from Thorium is via transmutation of Thorium 232 into Protactinium 233, which then naturally Beta decays after 27 days into pure bomb grade Uranium 233. This co-incidentally was one of three paths to the Atomic Bomb proposed by Heisenberg at the Harnack Haus conferences in 1942 to an audience of fellow scientists, millitary leaders and the armaments ministry. Heisenberg agaiun alluded to harvesting protactinium for an Atomic weapon in a secretly recorded conversation at Farm Hall with Karl Wirtz in August 1945.

Uranium 233 is a far simpler fissile material to use than Uranium 235 which involves considerable enrichment and the accumulation of about 60kg of material. Crittical mass for Uranium 233 is far lower at just 11kg and can be reduced to just 4kg with an appropriate tamper. The Nazis were familiar with the concept of using a tamper to contain and boost an embryonic nuclear explosion.

I for one do not find the existence of the Nazi Bell alluded to by SS Lt Gen Jakob Sporrenberg to his postwar Polish interregators to be so implausible... Only the attempts by others to smother the truth with false assertions about it's purpose are implausible.