Wunderwaffe: Nazi Germany's "Miracle Weapons"

Just before we start today's video, do you want to try something new from me? Well, I have a new podcast called The Casual Criminalists. I cover a lot of criminal stuff and crimes on my various YouTube channels because apparently you guys love the darkest star. well, eat your black hearts because I now have a weekly podcast that's about an hour long covering some of the darkest stuff I could find, from the UK's Doctor Who, the worst serial killer in history, to now where an American socialite supposedly murdered her best friend with her car and got away with it and much more it's pretty laid back it's freer it has the occasional laugh because will it's not a crime funny weekly shows wherever you get your podcasts there are links below From abroad nothing stimulates invention like a good war, we have seen that much in parallel projects is a statement that has been uttered so often that it has almost become a cliché, but this is what is absolutely true: man's desire of dominating and killing leads to great advances in weaponry, but also in areas.

Germany was far ahead of the Allies in the development of rockets, jet engines, tank design, and artillery, such as engineering, aviation, and communications, which often have far-reaching civilian applications. In World War II, the Nazis developed a series of wonder

weapons

designed to turn the tide by offering overwhelming firepower and superior performance and, in some cases, instilling pure fear in both enemy forces and non-combatants alike. beyond the front lines, but as we will see many of them required such massive investments of time and money that they may actually have caused more trouble than they are worth abroad.

German rocket technology of World War II was much more advanced than that of the Allies, although the V1 and V2 are the most notable. The rockets that saw service were the culmination of long development programs aimed at perfecting high-performance unmanned aerial

weapons

capable of devastating cities and fortifications hundreds of miles away. The conventional weapons of the time were terrifying enough that these new wundervatha or wonder weapons also instilled fear in civilians. populations like NEPA before, in 1941, began development of the V1 flying bomb, commonly called by the Allies Buzz bombs or Doodlebugs, just 30 feet long and with an impressive 1,800-pound explosive charge.

V1 led a terror campaign against southern England that began in June 1943 and often included more than 100 individual attacks per day, relying on simple but powerful Pulse Jet engines that gulped air intermittently. The rockets emitted an eerie hum that gave them their name. They could travel almost 150 miles but their maximum speed was less than 400 miles per day. time was a major drawback: it makes them susceptible to ground fire and Spitfires, the latter of which could shoot them down or fly past them and push their wingtips causing them to fall to the ground. What Germany needed was a bigger, faster, more formidable weapon, and they got one.

The V2 was the brainchild of rocket pioneer Verna Von Braun, although development began before the war, the first production V2 was not launched until late 1942. It was nearly 46 feet tall, weighing 27,000 pounds, and with a diameter of 5.5 feet was much larger. As its predecessor, the payload was about the same, but the range was 25 percent greater and with a top speed of nearly 3,600 miles per hour, performance was off the charts thanks to a rocket engine that burned ethanol and liquid oxygen. capable of generating 600,000 pounds of thrust. or about 25 more than both engines in an F-15 V2 combined, were developed and built at Penamunda until 1943, when an RAF air raid destroyed much of the facility, after which production was moved to a factory inside a mountain in Nordharson that employed thousands of concentration camp workers.

Beginning in September 1944, German workers sent thousands of V2s across the sky toward targets in France, Belgium, and England, but despite their state-of-the-art gyroscopic guidance systems, targeting was erratic at Best. In total, more than 5,000 V2s were built and estimates suggest that they took the lives of almost 10,000 people during the war, almost 3,000 in England alone. After the war, countless examples were taken to the United States and the Soviet Union for testing. , as well as the engineers and scientists who developed them. Von Braun was brought to the United States, where he directed a series of military and space programs until his death in 1977.

During World War I, the Germans, corrupt manufacturers, developed the world's largest artillery pieces, such as the famous large Berthas, 420-millimeter monstrosities capable of launching 1,800-pound projectiles almost six miles, their projectiles could easily penetrate even the most formidable reinforced concrete fortifications, but with a weight close to 50 tons and a crew of more than 200, They were expensive, unwieldy, and subject to return artillery fire in ground attacks. They also built the railway-bound Paris cannon, which was even larger and had a cannon. Measuring one hundred feet, it fired 240-millimeter shells up to 75 miles, but when World War II broke out, the Germans took large artillery to a whole new level known as anzio Annie and anzio express by the Allies and simply Robert and Leopold by Germans.

The 11-inch K-5 railway guns were best known for pulverizing Allied troops and equipment trapped at the Anzio beachhead in the early months of 1944, although they also bombarded southern England from positions across the Channel. Stain. One of Crook's series K-5s is However, the major drawback was that the lateral travel was limited to only a few degrees, which meant that the railroad tracks on which the gun carriage rested had to point in the direction of the target; if that was not possible, a cumbersome crossing apparatus could be erected which would allow the front bogeys of the carriages to roll from side to side allowing a 360 degree field of fire;

However, despite their limitations, the weapons proved to be deadly effective using several different types of ammunition weighing between 500 and 600 pounds, of which almost 100 pounds were TNT. With muscle velocities exceeding 3,500 feet per second, accuracy was improved by adding rifling to the projectiles that matched the inside of the barrel. Before firing, the two threads were carefully aligned to ensure the proper twist was there to keep the projectile on course. . Rocket-assisted variant that featured an engine that ignited seconds after firing and burned for about 20 seconds, long enough to propel the projectile into the stratosphere, after which it fell, letting the projectile descend toward its target.

These rounds had ranges of over 50 miles. but it carried smaller explosives due to the additional weight of the rocket's miter. Aside from their impressive specifications, weighing over 200 tonnes and having a rate of fire of just 50 rounds per hour, it is generally accepted that the K5 vintage cannons are like many of Germany's most colossal. The weapons systems consumed enormous amounts of materials and labor that could have been better used elsewhere, but be that as it may, Krupp actually built another super cannon called the V3 or London cannon because it was designed to bomb the nation's capital. from almost a hundred miles.

Although smaller in caliber than the K5, the V3 achieved its phenomenal range through the use of projectiles equipped with multi-stage rocket boosters. Construction began in late 1943, but by 1944 British intelligence had learned of its secret underground location in northern France and the Lancaster bombers were destroyed. The installation with foreign-designed six-ton ​​deep-penetrating bombs known as tallboys during the war generally operated under the premise that bigger was generally better, although its senior generals often disagreed with this philosophy. Hitler's pursuit of ever larger war machines fueled an unprecedented push toward massive armored weapons. vehicles such as the nearly 70-ton Elephant Tank Destroyer and the over 70-ton King Tiger, but compared to the Panzer8 mouse, both were relatively light.

The development of the mouse began in the mid-war years, when Dover Mark saw the need for unstoppable advancement. Tank protected by so much armor that it would be almost impervious to the enemy. A full-size wooden model of the tank would be presented to the Führer in May 1943, and by the end of the year several competing prototypes had been built. submitted by several companies when shortly after they began testing the design that ultimately won was by Ferdinand Porsche and weighed a whopping 188 tons. To put that in perspective, the American Sherman weighed around 40. The final prototype of the Mouse was 33 feet long. and 12 feet wide. and was nearly 12 feet tall at the top of its turret and was manned by a crew of six, including a commander, a gunner, two loaders, a driver, and a radio operator.

The Revolutionary tank featured an electromechanical transmission and armor ranging from six inches thick on the sides. Nearly nine inches at the front and almost 10 at the gun mantlet, it was powered by a 12-cylinder Daimler-Benz diesel engine that produced more than 1,200 horsepower, although top land speed was an agonizing 12 miles per mile. hour, but despite carrying more With more than 1,100 gallons of fuel between the internal and external tanks, the mouse could only travel between 40 and 100 miles before needing to refuel and breakdowns were common, but with its incomparable 128 main gun millimeters could destroy any allied Ranger tank that exceeded 3,000. yards, by comparison, the low-velocity 75-millimeter guns of the American Shermans and British Cromwells had little chance of penetrating the mouse's armor even within a hundred yards, although 10 were planned to be built, the project was canceled due to shortages The two prototypes that were built did not see action when the Red Army approached Berlin in the final stages of the war.

Orders were sent to destroy both. The first was damaged beyond repair, but the other was captured by the Soviets and taken away for testing. The fight for the Homeland was a priority for the Allies during the war and bombing of German cities began in mid-1940. At first, Allied fighters did not have the range to escort the heavy bombers to and from their targets, so the losses of the Fw-190 and Me-109 were high, but later, with the arrival of the Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered P-51 Mustangs, the tide began to turn. The Nazis desperately needed a way to decimate the massive formations of B-17s and Lancasters that were relentlessly pounding their industrial centers, oil refineries, and metropolitan area day and night.

What they needed was a marvelous device that could climb higher, fly faster and pack a more lethal punch than the new escorts, something like the rocket-powered Messerschmitt ME-163 Comet Interceptor, although it made its debut in the early 1990s. In the 1940s, the Comet had been on the drawing board since the late 1930s, when Luftwaffe top brass became interested in the first rocket planes. The prototype's engine produced less than a thousand pounds of thrust, but later versions received upgrades that increased power to more than three thousand by using two fuel components called C-staff and T-staff that reacted violently when mixed, the aircraft The single-seater was more than 18 feet long, had swept wings that measured 30 feet from tip to tip and had a maximum takeoff weight of just under ten thousand pounds, and to save weight and space it featured eight detachable carriage-type landing gears that could be attached.

They were discarded after takeoff. 163b had two 30-millimeter guns with 60 rounds each and was capable of climbing to almost 40,000 feet in just three and a half minutes. The downside is that he ran out of fuel in just eight minutes, which gave him enough time to make a few passes. bomber formations before gliding back to Earth Comet units first intercepted Allied bombers in August 1944, but it soon became apparent that their limited range, high speed, and slow rate of fire made the weapons unsuitable. depressingly ineffective; Furthermore, American and British pilots began attacking them only after they had run out of fuel because they were totally helpless during their powerless descents, although the Comet's limited fuel and flight time were their biggest drawback.of Achilles, which made them skate at high speed.

Landings directly on its hardened fuselage often cause damage and fires and frequently result in serious back injuries. For the pilots, total production was almost 400 units, but with only nine confirmed kills it was another colossal mistake that measured 823 feet from bow to stern, almost 120 feet from side to side and displaced more than 50,000 tons when rigged for Battle, Tirpitz was 2,000 tons heavier than her better-known sister ship, Bismarck, Leviathan was named after Grand Admiral Alfred Von Tierpitz, the guiding force among the Imperial German Navy in the years before the First War. World and although construction began in a shipyard in Wilhelm Shaven in November 1936 it would not enter service until early 1941.

Combining its boilers and steam turbines, it generated more than 160 thousand horsepower driven by three propellers, which It was enough to propel the ship at about 30 knots, making it significantly faster than similar Allied vessels. Tippets was equipped with a main battery of eight 15-inch guns arranged in four turrets that were among the largest naval artillery guns ever built, each capable of launching 1,100- to 1,800-pound shells between 22 and 34 miles respectively. Haram ranged from just a few centimeters thick on the upper decks to nearly 14 centimeters thick in the waterline and turrets, and was packed with smaller caliber artillery anti-aircraft guns and torpedoes that were added shortly after it entered service.

When fully fueled, the ship had a range of nearly 9,000 nautical miles and carried a complement of more than 2,000 enlisted sailors and more than 100 officers. Tippett's main function was to stop the flow of war material being shipped from the United States and Britain to the Soviets through Northern ports such as the Mamansk Tank trucks. planes and munitions were prolonging the war on two fronts and Hitler thought it was likely that the Tirpitz's threatening presence in the North Atlantic would make it necessary for the Allies to postpone their imminent attack on Nazi-occupied Norway and he was right Churchill saw the Monster Ship as a great threat. to vital supply lines and England's supposed naval dominance, although Tierpitz was responsible for actions against shipping and coastal fortifications, she spent much of her time hiding in remote Norwegian Fords, largely due to fuel shortages. which prevented him from carrying out a mission in a dramatic game of cat. and the mouse was played between the German Navy and British intelligence in the RAF the ship was constantly moved from Ford to Ford and the crew even resorted to camouflaging it with dead trees Huge nets and artificial fog banks created by mixing water and sulfuric acid the first RAF The attack on Tippets took place in early 1942, but damage was minimal and attacks continued throughout the following year.

In fact, air raids with dozens of bombers and fighter escorts were so common and unsuccessful that it seemed like planes couldn't get the job done. They did so in September 1943, small British submersibles discreetly dived beneath the anti-submarine barriers at the Ford, where the ship had taken refuge, and crew members planted explosives in the ship's hull. Although the daring plan worked, the damage was not catastrophic and the level wells were completely repaired within a few months, it would not be until mid-1944, after months of missions against it, that the harried RAF pilots at Lancaster that were flying from bases in Scotland would finally manage to achieve direct hits and the ship Sinking The Mighty claimed the lives of almost a thousand sailors and officers, so I hope you found the video interesting.

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