How Humans Built The Biggest Warships | Supersized Structures | Spark

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] oh no tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong from the ancient world to the modern history tells the story of our ever-growing need to be ever-growing the story of how some people will go to extraordinary lengths to expand create to advance to push the realm of possibility to prove that size matters this series will explore larger than life creations that have influenced every facet of our society the way we live work and travel [Applause] the way we build empires and the way we dream we look back at the ways we've strived to make the biggest heaviest tallest the best [Music] we hear from experts about the technology that made these feats possible the challenges that were faced and the problems that were solved some of these inventions have changed the world and our way of life others not so much [Music] whether a success or a failure these giants have demonstrated mankind's need to build big for as long as man has been alive he has fought to defend what is rightfully his and fought even harder to take what is not and as he quickly found out the man with the biggest weapon is always at an advantage we look at weapons at the fighting machines that have revolutionized warfare at the planes tanks ships submarines and guns and at how they just keep getting bigger with military weapons the desire to build is meeting a requirement where it was needed whether they guarantee victory or just cost a lot of money one thing's for sure in modern warfare it's all about battling big [Music] we start where war has only recently been waged in the sky in little more than a hundred years fighting aircraft have developed from rickety contraptions of wood wire and canvas to huge hugely complex and hugely lethal machines and if one shape symbolizes the awesome scale of modern air power it is this one the boeing b-52 stratofortress the b-52 nicknamed buff for big ugly fat fellow is a long-range strategic bomber deployed by the united states air force a simply amazing aeroplane if only for the length of time it has been in service already and the length of time it will continue to be in service with the us air force astonishingly it first flew more than half a century ago in 1954 at the height of the cold war it was originally built to carry nuclear bombs but over the decades has been improved and developed in vietnam they did some modifications to it they called it the big belly modification which changed it from being intended to carry nuclear weapons to carrying a large number of conventional bombs the b-52 has an average combat radius of 7 200 kilometers the longest range of any bomber but it can actually fly a lot further with a total range of more than 25 000 kilometers well over halfway around the 40 000 kilometer circumference of the world and it's massive over 12 meters in height with a wingspan of over 56 meters the b-52 has a maximum bomb load of 27 216 kilograms [Music] it's big noisy it is designed for a specific purpose and it performs that purpose very well nothing else looks like it current engineering analyses show that we can expect the iconic b-52 to remain operational beyond the year 2040 almost 90 years since it first took to the skies [Music] it's interesting when you see enthusiasts who come across it for the first time there is definitely an oh wow awesome factor involved in it there because it's so important and so different when the b-52 first appeared it was the jet age successor to an equally feared and famous propeller-driven aircraft even the name evolved the boeing b-52 stratofortress was in direct line of descent from the plane that was when it entered service the largest bomber in the world the boeing b-29 super fortress it was a bit of a technical marvel able to carry quite a large bomb load over a long distance was very very highly advanced for its time the b-29 built from 1944 featured what was at the time cutting-edge technology including a pressurized cabin a fire control system and remote controlled machine gun turrets and the quote was they could put a bomb into a pickle barrel that was so supposedly so accurate the program dwarfs anything before attempted in aviation manufacturing the b-29 was the world's heaviest production plane with a 9072 kilogram bomb load it weighed over 47 627 kilograms 33 800 kilograms unladen compared to the british four engine lancaster at twenty seven thousand four hundred but it had a top speed of 579 compared to the lancaster's 442 and could reach an altitude of 9708 meters [Music] the v29 has longer range than any other bomber in the world boeing built a total of 2766 b-29s but of course its most important thing was the fact that it ended the war by dropping the atomic bomb remotely fired guns speed ceiling and bomb load have made the b-29 the most formidable air weapon known to man pilotless bombs missile systems and more sophisticated weapons have changed the look shape and size of bombers but one still flies that qualifies for the super-sized label the tupolev tu-160 is the heaviest supersonic combat aircraft ever built [Music] i've seen it in the air once it left an indelible impression the main one being how loud it was it was the loudest airplane i've ever heard in my life once the noise of it had subsided a little we could hear the sound of about 8 million car alarms going off in the car park the tu-160 also known as blackjack is the world's largest operational supersonic bomber with a wingspan of 55.7 meters a height of 13.1 meters and a 267 000 kilograms laden it weighs two and a half times as much as the largest animal ever to have lived the blue whale [Music] the prototype flew in 1981 and the 160 became operational in 1987 production continuing until 1992 when president yeltsin announced that no further strategic bombers would be built it is believed that production totaled no more than 39 blackjacks it was very very powerful swing wings the blackjack is armed with cruise and attack missiles both of which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads and can also carry free-fall bombs in 1989 a tu-160 reached a speed of 2200 kilometers for the first time and in its lifetime the blackjack has set 44 world records and it was quite an animal and there is talk about putting it back into production again weapons development has seen a reduction in the size of bombers and a decline in the role of piloted aircraft but in one area of military aviation size will always matter because the military will always need a rapid lift and deploy capability for troops and their equipment and the an124 can carry a lot of equipment developed in 1979 it has been continually updated over the years the antonov 124 condor was the biggest aircraft in the world but it is still the largest military transport and the second heaviest operating cargo aircraft 36.5 metres long 6.4 meters wide and 4.3 meters high the an124 has a cargo lift capacity of 150 tons the original intention was to build something that could carry things like soviet battle tanks [Music] the an124 aircraft is fitted with a relatively thick swept back supercritical wing to give it the capacity to travel 4500 kilometers at a height of up to 10 000 meters one of the times i saw one was quite exciting can you imagine an airplane that large being taken to beyond the vertical in a bank angle and it just is not natural for an airplane that big to be thrown around the sky the way it was earlier in the history of aviation aircraft like the antonov were not possible and not just because of the technology required to build and power them aircraft development outpaced the global development of airports which is why there was a time when the preferred form for super-sized flying machines was the flying boat there was no limit on the length of water runways and the largest flying boats to enter production was the martin jrm mars [Music] the glenn l martin company founded in 1912 produced the largest allied flying boat of the second world war when it introduced their jrm mars model the jrm mars was commissioned by the united states navy for use as an over water patrol bomber the developmental xpb2m-2 mars's first flight was on june 23 1942 and the aircraft was formally adopted by the united states navy on november 30th 1943. the mars series aircraft had a length of 36 meters twice the length of a bowling lane a windspan of 61 meters and a height of 12 meters it was designed to carry about 130 troops and something like 30 tons of targa or seven light vehicles the 25 ton seaplane sails smoothly and proudly over the bay the biggest plane ever built in the united states but in the end the pacific was a naval war and the mars had a limited combat role only seven of these giant flying boats were built [Music] it continued in its role in the united states navy until 1956 later on became best known as a fire bomber light seaplanes continue to link islands around the world but with the mars the age of the large flying boat came to an end [Music] the sea returned to being the sole domain of fighting ships and there more than anywhere else the race to be the most potent weapon has been won with the race to be the biggest that race the naval arms race helped destabilize international relations through the first half of the 20th century when it was all about battleships but those battleships were made obsolete by the biggest and most lethal ships of all the aircraft carrier at the end of world war ii aircraft carriers grew in size enormously driven by two things one of them was the jet aircraft the other was the development of the atomic bomb the most powerful belong to the american navy and the most potent of these are the nimitz class the 10 nimitz class carriers have up to 18 levels including 8 above the hangar bay and 10 below well they're very big they're nearly a kilometer long and they displace at full load something like a hundred thousand times three and a half times the weight of the statue of liberty the power to push these mighty ships through the water comes from two nuclear reactors the 10 nimitz-class aircraft carriers are each designed for a 50-year service life with one mid-life refueling performance figures are classified but it can achieve in excess of 30 knots and its range is quoted in time not distance it can operate non-stop for between 20 and 25 years their replacements will be the gerald r ford class which boasts more advanced technologies but in terms of size match the nimitz being built substantially on the same hull the second of the fourth class has begun she'll be named john f kennedy and these are even mightier ships than the nimitz class the largest western european warship and the only nuclear-powered carrier to be commissioned outside the united states is the french charles de gaulle class launched in may 1994 and commissioned in september 2000. [Music] weighing 38 000 tons and with a 195 meter runway the ship cannot match the nimitz class for sheer presence but it packs a considerable punch the nuclear power gives the ship an ability to steam for some years without refueling the charles de gaulle carries a fleet of up to 40 aircraft the raphael m super attendared combat planes and three e2c hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft that they found that the flight deck was too short for the hawkeye aircraft so the flight deck was actually extended by another three movies it also carries as565 panther or nh-90 helicopters and has the capacity to track up to 2 000 targets the ship is also engineered with eight nexter 20 f2 20 millimeter guns firing shells at 720 rounds per minute up to eight kilometers the costs associated with actually building the ship and also some of the fiscal constraints that france was experiencing meant that only one was actually constructed aircraft carriers project lethal power but in combat situations armed forces still face situations where they need to close with and engage the enemy for such operations where troops need to transfer from ship to shore [Music] amphibious vessels have a vital role so the watts plus are 40 000 tons nearly 260 meters in length so the capacity is 1200 troops they can also have an air wing of about 25 aircraft and their crew is about 1300 superficially resembling aircraft carriers these modern amphibious assault vessels carry everything needed to conduct landing operations on board troops amphibious assault craft transport helicopters and fixed and rotary winged aircraft it also has quite elaborate command control facilities on board the ship which makes the amphibious assault ship the primary warship in an assault-ready group arg a fleet specifically dedicated to coastal operations args can launch an amphibious operation and remain for extended periods of time in support of the landing the wasp class are 25 bigger than any other amphibious ship in the world another part of the story is told below the waves where vessels with astonishing intercontinental firepower in the words of those who sail in them run silent run deep when the world's first nuclear-powered submarine the uss nautilus came into service in 1954 it made possible the sort of endurance that makes the submarine lethal she was the submarine which really opened many people's eyes to the advantage of nuclear power thanks to its nuclear reactor the nautilus could stay submerged at sea for extremely long periods she's capable of a complete round-the-world voyage underwater in its maiden voyage the nautilus traveled underwater for 2500 kilometers from new london connecticut to san juan puerto rico giving it the record at the time for the longest submerged cruise and the highest sustained speed ever recorded nautilus did many interesting things like going under the arctic ice and proving that nuclear submarines could operate under the arctic [Music] 93 of the trip was made submerged and it's reported that she can travel at over 20 knots underwater the potential was seen for making the submarine not simply an anti-ship weapon but a weapons platform [Music] earlier generations of nuclear submarines required refuelling during their lifetime at periodic intervals today nuclear submarines are being built with nuclear reactors which are fueled once and if we measure submarines by their punching power the title supersize belongs to the american built ohio class [Music] the ohio class the us navy's ballistic missile submarines carry more firepower than any other submarine these in terms of the threat posed are the monsters of the deep the 19 000 ton ohio class submarines are about 170 metres long these vessels displace 16 600 tons when surfaced and 18 750 tons when submerged more than one and a half times the length of a football field at 170 meters and with the top speed classified but rated at more than 20 knots the ohio vessels carry in addition to 24 trident nuclear missiles per boat mk-48 torpedoes and in some variants tomahawk cruise missiles remaining undetected is an enormous challenge for any submarine you need to remain as quiet as you possibly can regarded as the quietest submarine in the world the hulls of the ohio are covered with anechoic tiles that eliminate detection by sonar and the endurance of a nuclear-powered submarine is really determined by how much food you can carry for the crew and how long you can lock 120 or so people up inside a long metal tube [Music] the increasing sophistication of and size and power of the weapons used in the air and at sea decisively influence the balance of power but for most of the conflicts in most of the world's trouble spots it continues to be the weapons that do battle on land the decide outcomes [Music] and one class of weapon literally joins the land and the sea in a continuous offensive operation the landing craft air cushion elcak is a high-speed fully amphibious landing craft that literally beaches itself elcac is one of the largest of the landing craft that are currently in use capable of carrying a 60 to 75 ton payload and able to be launched from wasp and tarawa class vessels elkhacks are used to transport weapon systems equipment cargo and personnel from ship onto the shore [Music] and if required across the beach because it's a cushion craft with big jet fans on it it's able to move very fast up to around 40 knots and get to the shore as quickly as possible with the largest load of troops as possible so that you can build up your force ashore at a very rapid rate only about 15 of the world's coastline is accessible by conventional landing craft el cacs however can reach 70 percent [Music] it's about 190 tons in weight and about 80 feet by about 40 feet a total of 91 elkhacks have been built [Music] and they are also capable of moving one of these the us army's operational tank unit the first armored regiment is equipped with the main battle tank the m1 abrams [Music] it's awesome it was originally designed to take on the soviet main battle tanks the abrams is a giant with a weight of 62 000 kilograms approximately the same as 40 family cars it's a very powerful now very fast well-protected tank with a stabilized turret and computer guided rounds so it can you know move shoot at the same time and its computer guidance is so good that essentially if you can see a target it's you know it's going to hit the target the 120 millimeter main gun on the m1 a1 and m1a2 combined with a 1500 horsepower turbine engine and special armor make it the weapon of choice for attacking or defending against large concentrations of heavy armor on a highly lethal battlefield so it's uh really the state of the art of modern tanks the abrams the ultimate fighting vehicle on land today is the present state of the art in tank development that continued through much of the 20th century its equivalent when america faced german armor in the second world war was the m4 sherman the primary tank of the us army and marine corps in world war ii [Music] it wasn't originally designed to take on another tank but had uh more of a calvary design intent behind it it was designed for speed and maneuverability as opposed to armor and firepower the design never imagined the sherman fighting other tanks that was left to anti-tank guns and tank destroyers shermans were designed to tear through the enemy to make room for infantry but when the us you know entered the second world war and the sherman sought to see action its ability to fight german tanks was uh revealed as being inadequate and so over the course of the war they had upgraded creating jumbo versions of the original sherman but the sherman came into its own in mass attack tactics and thanks to american industry mass is the way the sherman was supersized first operational in 1942 in only three years 48 000 had entered service if you were a tank crew and your sherman got hit and it was disabled you could just get out you know walk to where the tank depot was whether it be hundreds of spare tanks just hop in another one and you know drive back out modern warfare invariably operates on a much smaller scale against guerrilla-style non-state forces such irregular forms of conflict has seen weapons development forced to move away from the traditional and devise the unorthodox mrap mine resistant ambush protective vehicles are an outstanding example [Music] when the enemy started to come up with improvised explosive devices ieds the current design of vehicles for transporting people were very thinly armed and so were highly vulnerable to an explosive charge under a road so that's how this class evolved and typically they have increased armor but the most important designs that come with a v-shaped hull underneath so that if anything detonates underneath the explosive charge is directed outwards unlike previous vehicles which had flat bottoms and so that allowed the blast charge to go carry into the vehicle there are three categories of mrap vehicles weighing about seven tons and capable of carrying six passengers vehicles weighing about 19 tons and capable of carrying 10 passengers and vehicles intending to be used primarily to clear mines and ieds weighing about 22.5 tons and capable of carrying up to 12 passengers if a 5-liter water job filled explosives was to go off you know a humvee which is a lightly armed vehicle would be it would disintegrate but mrap the soldiers would be alive these vehicles have been in use by the us army and u.s marine corps for over a decade as smaller scale military operations against smaller less technically advanced enemies become more common the trend to use smaller multi-capacity self-contained forces with the ability to deploy anywhere in the world at short notice has accelerated their deployment has in turn meant the identification of weapons requirements not met from the traditional armory a rapid response force that could rapidly deploy and effectively operate in all types of military operations required tailor-made transport enter the striker lighter than a tank with more firepower than a humvee or an mrap the striker is a family of eight-wheel drive combat vehicles first built for the us army in 2003 it is lighter smaller and more readily deployable than any other army combat vehicle in the united states field of these vehicles with the intention to be able to project power rapidly where it was needed the vehicle weighs approximately 19 tons and can reach speeds of 100 kilometers per hour stryker's armor provides integral all-round 14.5 millimeter protection against machine gun rounds water and artillery fragments [Music] in iraq in january 2004 striker vehicles were outfitted with a cage of armor as protection against rocket-propelled grenades it's armed with 120 millimeter canyons which can engage other armored vehicles to anti-personnel weapons 50-caliber machine guns 40-millimeter grenade launches the striker combines speed and devastating weaponry with the ability to transport people to remote locations so you can't fly an abrams tank but it basically maxes out a heavy transport aircraft but instead you put several strikers in the same cargo hold aircraft ships and land combat are all critical components of warfare but there is one aspect of war that has always existed and evolved it is what makes the warship the warplane and the soldier on the ground into a lethal force it's the weapons [Music] nuclear bombs including atomic hydrogen and neutron get their explosive force through nuclear reactions that occur when atoms are rapidly split apart fission or when atomic nuclei are forcibly joined to form a heavier nucleus fusion [Music] international treaties have identified atomic bombs as weapons of mass destruction the first nuclear test occurred on july 16 1945 near alamogordo new mexico no one knew what would happen [Music] people a hundred miles away say it looked like the sun rising suddenly at night it was the first man-made explosion of atomic energy it was produced by the manhattan project now about 20 billion dollars budget and it was specifically designed to destroy cities so all the infrastructure and the living inhabitants oppenheimer expressed his feelings in part by quoting a verse from the hindu scripture now i am become death he said the destroyer of worlds the atomic bomb has been used twice both times against japan the first bomb named little boy was dropped on hiroshima on august 6 1945 the b-29 dropped its load of atomic death which exploded with a force equal to 20 000 tons of tnt only approximately 1.38 of the highly enriched uranium fuel actually fissioned when the japanese government did not respond a second bomb was dropped on nagasaki on august 9. fat man an implosion type bomb with just over six kilograms of plutonium fuel approximately the size of a football was ten times more efficient than the little boy it produced an enormous fireball and an enormous shock wave so you have one to two kilometers of all living things all infrastructure completely flattened all of you who see this picture can judge for yourselves the extent of the menace to civilization of this new weapon the japanese government capitulated shortly afterwards and the second world war was over nuclear bombs were symbolic of a kind of heliocentrism which was to capture the idea that you could control the energy of the sun weapons development has looked at the tremendous power of nuclear energy and not restricted it to devastating bombs the development of tactical nuclear weapons sometimes called mini nukes predominantly occurred at the height of the cold war the first nuclear artillery shell developed by the united states was fired on may 25th 1953 at the nevada test site out of an m-65 cannon nicknamed atomic annie [Music] now when we say a small nuclear bomb we have to understand that you know we're looking at something that still had considerably more destructive power than the bombs that were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki it produced a yield estimated at 15 kilotons [Applause] atomic annie was an early cold war improvisation using one of the oldest weapons an artillery piece to deliver the newest a nuclear device the big gun provides more accurate and damaging support to ground troops than any other gun in the recorded history of warfare if you were to use it against advancing soviet division of you know 15 20 000 soldiers you would annihilate that formation and leave a radioactive wasteland behind it the design was suggested by railway guns that had featured in both world wars the length of 26 meters was nearly all barrel and the range was 30 kilometers the kenworth motor truck company designed and built special tractor trucks to move the m65 a puller and a pusher the cannon weighs 42 and a half thousand kilograms and the complete rig on the trucks more than 78 000 which is more than the space shuttle twenty m-65s were deployed in europe and korea unfortunately it was never used it was tested and it worked but as we all know the cold war never turned hot and so their time had passed no matter how potent weapons become the individual in the helmet carrying their weapon will always be the foundation of a nation's armed services and here too weapons designers have labored to build bigger and better amongst handheld weapons today that probably means the barrett anti-material rifle the barrett in the range designated m82 m107 was first designated an anti-material weapon they're called anti-material weapons because their function is to let's say penetrate or hit the engine block of a vehicle and wreck the engine block and in many armed forces it can be found in use as a long-range sniper weapon it fires a very hard slug or 50 caliber round which is essentially the largest bullet that's available the barrett has an effective range depending on variant of up to seven kilometers depending on the model it weighs in at around 14 kilograms substantially more than the standard british lee enfield of the first and much of the second world war [Music] but then the barrett does substantially more which is why versions of it are in service with the armed forces of more than 50 countries so this weapon gives a soldier the ability to fire at a long distance a round that could bring a vehicle to a halt [Music] but targets are not always small they are not always close at hand most of all they are not always slow moving or static weapons designers found the answer to building something bigger that could shoot something large further away and perhaps closing fast in a very different sort of gun the gau-8 known as the avenger is a gun of a very different type the avenger is a tank killer [Music] and it could take out an entire column of vehicles it is huge and extremely lethal six meters long and weighing a hefty 280 kilograms plus this gatling gun type weapon is clearly not meant to be carried by hand into battle it was designed to be mounted on the a-10 close air support jet fighter and is one of the most powerful aircraft cannons ever built aircraft can be quite delicate and you don't want them to be knocked out of the sky by the weapon that it's firing and when a projectile goes that way there's an equal force going that way and so the a-10 has to be specifically designed to withstand that force it fires large depleted uranium armor-piercing shells and it can kill anything from battlefield tanks to other aircraft its potency owes everything to the combination of quantity and accuracy the gau-8 fires 30 millimeter caliber ammunition at a dizzying 4 200 rounds per minute over a three and a half kilometer range and at a muzzle velocity well in excess of three and a half thousand kilometers an hour combine this with pinpoint accuracy and you have an incredibly devastating weapon so if you're on the ground receiving this fire it is one of the most terrifying weapons that you could be attacked by because it will almost act like a street sweeper and clean up anything that's exposed weapons that have a lethal capability on the battlefield like the gau seem insignificant compared to those that can travel halfway across the world to deliver complete destruction if nuclear weapons offer ultimate devastation the capacity to detonate them a continent away is the ultimate threat it is the threat of the intercontinental ballistic missile first deployed by the united states and the soviet union in 1959 icbms are capable of delivering large nuclear warheads 1 000 kiloton or more at supersonic speeds striking targets at over 10 000 kilometers away in about 30 minutes from launch the icbm is the most advanced intricate and complicated weapon system ever devised icbms can be launched from stationary or mobile platforms on land from aircraft surface ships and from submarines [Music] first deployed in september 1959 the atlas sm-65 was the united states first operational intercontinental ballistic missile we had a complimentary weapon to be used against any target which we could foresee in potentially hostile nations no matter how far distant so all the major populations in the soviet union could have been targeted by it the atlas was approximately 26 meters high and weighed 118 tons at liftoff the rocket developed 1 300 kilonewtons of thrust and carried a warhead that packed 100 times the destructive power of fat man the nagasaki bomb the explosive force of just one of these weapons in tnt equivalents was roughly even more than the entire explosive devices used in the second world war at the height of the cold war the united states and the soviet union had so many icbms in their arsenal that the two nations had reached what was called the mad level mutually assured destruction so the old saying that we had more than enough to destroy the planet several times over is quite true in the relentless effort to be more powerful faster harder hitting bigger than the weapons you face a weapons race has been part of the human condition since man first picked up a club there's a fascination to make a statement um by having something that's large and size is a measure of the use of that product and the giants of the air sea and land have meant the difference between victory and defeat as life continues who can doubt that we will create bigger faster better ways to fight super-sized weaponry that can bring peace or destroy it you

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Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, science mom, space documentary black holes, documentary space, warships season 10, warships season 8, warships season 9, warships in south china sea, mega mechanics channel 10, how do ships sail inot the wind, Canadian navy, Navy ships, ship science, hms ocean, spark documentary

Id: 8pRC9zlGeGM

Length: 51min 49sec (3109 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021