The Dark History Of The WW2 Wonder Weapons | Secrets Of War | Timeline

hi everybody and welcome to this documentary on timeline my name is dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video [Music] next on secrets of war they were weapon systems that were far beyond anything the allies had or could have imagined in world war ii deployed properly they could have changed the outcome of the war from the world's first ballistic missile and operational jet plane to surface-to-air missiles and guided smart bombs secret weapons of the third reich is next on secrets of war [Music] in early may of 1940 the mighty armored forces of vermont rolled west and swept all before them [Music] in less than three weeks belgium holland and luxembourg all fell victim to the fast-moving nazi blitzkrieg a humble france was forced to surrender just six weeks after the start of the german offensive [Music] the nazi war machine seemed invincible [Music] only a besieged great britain stood between adolf hitler and the total domination of europe the stunning success of the nazi blitzkrieg or lightning war was primarily due to the execution of revolutionary tactics but now there was evidence that the german juggernaut might soon be augmented by an ominous new development secret weapons that seemed so incredible they defied belief there were warnings about giant rockets that could travel into space and rain down on our targets hundreds of miles away there were rumors about electronic beams that could guide bombers to their targets in darkness or in bad weather there was even talk of guided bombs that could be steered directly to their targets below in november 1939 a mysterious package appeared at the office of the british naval attache in oslo norway [Music] no one knew where it came from or who delivered it but it contained information that seemed incredible the package came to be known as the oslo report the oslo report was a gift it was an anonymous document that purported to disclose information about the very latest technology breakthroughs from within germany these were scientific developments with a very strong military application they ranged from a guided weapon right the way through to a proximity fuse the oslo report was passed to mi6 the british secret service in london [Music] its contents were deemed so unbelievable that initially most of the intelligent community thought it to be an elaborate ruse intended to mislead and intimidate an already beleaguered britain the report was then passed on to dr reginald v jones the brilliant scientific advisor to the air ministry when ivy jones was given a copy of the oslo report of course he was vastly excited by this he could see the authenticity of it but he was the only man in all london who did he realize because he had a great goal by him dr jones was a young physicist who'd been asked by the air ministry to help gather and interpret scientific intelligence on german military technology dr jones had an intuitive ability to determine from the least bit of evidence what a new german weapon might be jones believed that the oslo report could be authentic he convinced his boss general sir stuart mengis head of british secret service to authorize the development of counter measures to the secret weapons outlined in the report arby jones proved to be a master at designing countermeasures in particular he's famous for the fact that he bent the beam down which the germ bombers were flying after losing the battle of britain the luftwaffe switched its bombing campaign from daylight to night time raids so they would be less vulnerable to the raf to the surprise of the british the german bombs seemed uncannily accurate for nighttime raids the air ministry found out why after an enemy bomber was shot down [Applause] they discovered evidence in the wreckage of an electronic system designed to guide bombers to their target this had been mentioned in the oslo report and when evidence of it came up uh jones went back to the oslo report saw what was there and then analyzed from the evidence what might be happening and he figured out that the germans weren't using what was called nickbine it was a device by which the german pilot would follow a beam and there would be a second beam that would intersect the first and when the pilot came to it he'd drop his bombs it was pretty accurate dr jones devised an ingenious system in which he could detect the frequency of the beam used to guide the bombers [Music] once this was determined a counter signal was superimposed over the luftwaffe's radio beam [Music] the british signal was more powerful than the german beam and it was undetectable the new signal guided the bombers away from their targets this often resulted in the luftwaffe unwittingly dropping its bombs over empty fields and lakes rv jones was helping britain wage what winston churchill called the wizard war a new type of combat would advanced science and technology were the weapons of choice of course this battle would have been much more difficult without the help of the mysterious oslo report after hitler came to power in 1932 he ordered both the scientific and industrial community within the reich to apply science in the creation of new advanced weapon systems in actual fact what was happening when the germans were developing secret weapons is that they were actually laying the ground rules for warfare in the later years of the 20th century those secret weapons or their direct descendants are all around us now i think there's no doubt at all that what we would today call the smart weapons were really invented operationally anyway by the germans before the war was over german scientists had created the world's first smart bomb the fritz x the world's first cruise missile the v1 [Music] the first operational jet fighter the me-262 [Music] the first wire-guided missile the kramer x4 the first anti-aircraft missile the wasserfall and many other incredible innovations the german scientists had a very good reputation for ingenuity they came up with ideas that nobody else did and they came up with uh technologies that nobody else did if there's any fault in the german system it didn't lie with the scientists they were doing a pretty good job ironically the man who prevented german scientists from completely overwhelming the british was adolf hitler [Music] in july of 1940 if euro was so confident the war would be over by the end of 1941 that he forbade the development of any defensive weapons or new weapon systems that could not be completed within 12 months now that put a stop to all development of radar it put a stop to all development of guided missiles when it put us up to an awful lot of development german weapons development was also greatly hindered by the absence of any central organization capable of supervising the various projects there were too many people taking decisions there were four or five separate offices each of which claimed to represent adolf hitler there were people investigating the same problem and duplicating efforts all over germany in terms of organizational efficiency it was a complete and utter no hope and consequently at the end of the war there were 53 different anti-aircraft missile projects there were 27 different types of radar set there were something like 35 different proximity fuse ideas all being pursued by different people they didn't talk to each other despite the difficulty of working within nazi germany's tangled and turbulent political environment german scientists envisioned the future of warfare back in 1939 they created the hs-293 and a new type of weapon was born they called it a guided missile secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel [Music] we now return to secrets of war [Music] even before the start of the second world war germany began to develop weapons to make aircraft more effective in attacking armored warships [Music] dive bombing did produce results but the attacking planes were highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire although it was relatively safe to drop bombs from higher altitudes it was nearly impossible to hit a fast-moving ship [Music] in 1939 the henschel aircraft company of germany began to develop a unique solution to the problem it was the hs 293 the world's first guided missile the basic premise was very simple you drop this bomb and the observer in the aircraft steered it onto the target bang mainly for use against ships they sank a battleship with it the germans were the first real developers of standoff and guided weapons they were very close to developing weapons that today we would recognize as being weapons of precision strike in august of 1943 the british corvette egret was sunk in the bay of biscay by an hs-293 no one had ever seen anything quite like it unlike the rocket-powered hs 293 the fritz x was a free-falling anti-shipping gravity bomb with an armor-piercing warhead [Music] it also had wings and a radio-controlled tail that an operator could manipulate with a joystick this enabled the bomb dropper to fly the fritz x right onto the target it was the godfather of the smart bombs used so effectively almost 50 years later in desert storm the awesome potential of the reich's new smart weapon was not lost [Music] and the germans threw a new secret weapon at us a deadly weapon especially designed for use against naval ships the flying bomb it is launched from a mother plane and then guided to its mark by radio control during the battle of anzio the u.s navy employed a new countermeasure against the flying bombs we had jamming gear aboard that would uh take the control away from the uh planes that would drop the bombs we'd pick up the uh frequency run it through an oscilloscope run it through the transmitter and jam that frequency so that the uh transmitter that he had had no effect electronic countermeasures saved many ships during the anzio and salerno landings we counted 40 glide bombs that would have been 40 ships sunk had they gone uh where they were supposed to go to prevent the effects of electronic interference german designers created remote control weapons that could not be jammed the world's first wire guided munitions the kramer x4 wire guided missile paved the way for the development of anti-tank weapons like the tube launched optically aimed wire-guided tow missiles of today one disadvantage of dropping these smart weapons was that the launch platform had to stay above the target while the weapon was guided toward the ship this made the bomber vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and fighter attacks so henshaw came up with the idea of sticking a television camera in the nose of a 293 and it worked but by that time it was march 1945 the war was over so the germans did have a television guided really smart bomb in 1945 but it was just too late not every german secret weapon was a success the one concept that may have looked better on paper than in practice was the peter paul this early 1940s weapon was similar to the skip bombs employed by the raf's famous 617 dambusters squadron peter paul bomb was intended to replace the airdrop's torpedo a rocket-powered version of the weapon was also developed but in tests it couldn't hit a stationary target ship [Music] the henshill company came up with a more effective way to attack a ship by adapting its hs293 guided missile for a new role the wings were grooved and the tail was grooved so that you flew it into the water just in front of the ship or alongside the ship and as it struck the water the wings and tail would shear off and you had a perfectly streamlined shape which went through the water and hit the hole of the ship and blew all in below the waterline what you had left was a torpedo that was as simple as that was a flying torpedo the hs-293 was adapted even further when rockets were detached and it was test fired as an anti-aircraft missile [Music] it was called the schmetterling or butterfly one of the first surface-to-air missiles another early surface-to-air missile was the wasserfall or waterfall it had swept wings and was radio controlled the concept was to fly the rocket into mass bomber formations where it could be detonated although these weapons showed great promise it was unlikely they would stop the daily bombardment of the right let alone win the war hitler needed a miracle weapon that would force the british to negotiate for peace he thought that he'd found one early in 1943 it was the v2 the world's first ballistic missile once it was launched toward its target it could not be stopped while the army continued to develop the d2 in the early 1940s the luftwaffe began working on a pilotless jet-powered flying bomb i think there's little doubt that uh british intelligence was pretty well uh up to speed with the development of a flying bomb of some sort aerial intelligence had shown uh ramps or a strange type of launch mechanism at bases in the north sea coast of germany over in the pinamonda area [Music] in early 1944 reconnaissance flights detected more launchers resembling ski jumps across the english channel in france upon closer analysis it was discovered that all of them were aimed at london secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel [Music] we now return to secrets of war [Music] after germany's defeat in the first world war the victorious allies hoped to limit future german rearmament through the implementation of the treaty of versailles the treaty had been designed to slow down germany's capacity to develop new weapons but in fact it had the opposite effect on the german military their problem was that they were not allowed to have heavy artillery by the provisions of the versailles treaty so they thought if we can't have heavy artillery what are we going to do and they thought about it for a bit and said oh rocket science fiction films and books sparked the imagination of many young men in germany in the 1920s while still a teenager verna von braun dreamed of building a rocket ship that could go to the moon by the age of 23 he received his doctorate in science and was considered one of the leading rocket experts in germany [Music] von braun was an absolutely amazing rocket designer he had an absolute gift for understanding how you could produce great rockets and that was his driving force von braun and his group had some success launching small liquid-fueled rockets and this attracted the attention of the german army in 1933 the army gave von braun and his associates a choice they could continue their work under military command or they could cease their experiments von braun made a faustian choice to continue his work for the third rank at the age of 25 he was put in charge of the most advanced rocket research program in the world [Music] hitler gave him the opportunity at penemont to develop what was a a very primitive rocket he wasn't interested in military rockets he was interested in rocket tree to verna von braun this was the start you know it's it's the first step for mankind into space one brown and his team set up their rocket research program on a remote slip of land called pinamonde on germany's baltic coast this location ensured the secrecy of their work and provided a safe reentry area for their rockets [Music] they began to master the intricacies of building large liquid-fueled rockets over time various guidance systems fuels and rocket motors were tested and retested [Music] many amazing innovations were created through trial and error [Music] eventually von braun created a masterpiece the world's first ballistic missile [Music] on bronze rocket which had originally been designated the a4 was renamed by hitler as the vergal tungs of aphan or vengeance weapon [Music] it would be forever known as the v2 [Music] v2 was based on one of the best ballistic shapes ever known that's the german army 7.92 millimeter bullet by putting fins on it enlarging it hundreds and hundreds of times they got a perfect ballistic shape for the rocket the v2 was 46 feet tall and weighed over 27 000 pounds including a one-ton warhead after nearly 10 years of development on the 3rd of october 1942 the v2 became the first man-made object to break the sound barrier and leave the earth's atmosphere [Music] the age of the ballistic missile had arrived we got the first information about the v weapons from scientists in occupied countries danes for example and luxembourgers who were in touch with the fact that it was being developed at pennamon at the behest of dr rv jones high-level photo reconnaissance was initiated over the area [Music] and sure enough at pina mundi a part of one showed up on a uh pad and they were able to deduce from it pretty well its size and its shape and what they did about it of course was to send a massive bombing rate on august 17th 1943 to pena monday in which they took out a lot of the area and killed a lot of the scientists it was a very effective bombing raid most bombing raids aren't but this one was extremely effective the pina mundo bombing raid caught the nazis by surprise hitler ordered that further production of the v2 take place underground it was at this time that heinrich himmler head of the ss convinced the fuhrer that control of the production of the v2 should be taken away from the army and placed in the hands of the ss [Music] the new secret v2 assembly plant was placed in a series of large tunnels beneath the hearts mountains near the town of nordhausen the ss also provided the workforce for the new middleware facility they were slave laborers from the nearby dora and buchenwald concentration camps [Music] when von braun expressed his dismay with the ss in their methods himmler had him thrown in jail for a week the fact that von braun was indispensable probably saved his life though von braun's rocket had been in development long before the jet-powered flying bomb the luftwaffe's new secret weapon was operational first as a result hitler made it the first of his vargos tunzuafa for vengeance weapons it soon became known as the v1 it was 25 feet long and packed with nearly a ton of high explosives the v1 itself of course is a very very clever little design the point was to have something you could make quickly that was cheap that was expendable it was really just a bomb with little stubby wings it couldn't control its direction of flight but the the engine on the back was the neatest engine you could ever imagine it was called a pulse jet the pulse jet was a simple tube into which fuel was sprayed and ignited there were no complicated rotor blades to turn like those in a traditional jet engine the v1 was either dropped from a plane or launched by a steam-powered catapult once it was airborne the veins in the front of the tube allowed air to flow in when the air mixed with the fuel in the combustion chamber it exploded this snapped the veins in the front shot and sent the thrust out of the rear of the tube propelling the v1 forward so that you have a series of explosions perhaps um 40 50 60 a second and so this thing is making a rumbling unmistakable unforgettable droning sound as it moves through the air on the front of the v1 was a small propeller connected to an odometer that was set for a certain distance when a propeller turned a predetermined number of revolutions the fuel supply was cut off and the v1 fell toward its target [Music] the v1 was not a sophisticated or very accurate weapon but it didn't have to be it was effective you were all right and you knew you were all right as long as you have pop pop pop pop one in the sky above as long as you could hear it the moment the pup putt stopped the bomb was coming on its way in and that was the moment you hit the deck as far as the v1 was concerned it was a very unpleasant shock not just because of its tactical impact but it was a terror weapon it was a morale weapon it was intended to undermine a population and of course it was indiscriminate [Music] despite the effectiveness of the v1 as a terror weapon even hitler soon realized it was not going to win the war a single thousand plane bomber raid by the allies dropped more high explosives in one mission than all of the v1 attacks combined the v2 also had little strategic impact on the outcome of the war in real terms it wasn't a successful killer of people thank god it's often been said that more people died during its construction than ever died as a result of its use of the 60 000 slave laborers who worked in the v weapon factory in middlewerk over 20 000 died from starvation or abuse suffered at the hand of the barbaric ss after the war von braun and his best men were brought to america to continue their groundbreaking work for the us army von braun became a u.s citizen and led america's missile program [Music] in 1958 his redstone rocket launched america's first satellite into earth orbit eventually von braun became the head of nasa in 1969 he realized his lifelong dream when his giant saturn v rocket brought man to the moon other experimental german weapons programs were just as far-reaching as von braun's rockets in early 1944 the most extraordinary aircraft of the war burst upon the scene in the skies above germany [Music] much to the shock of allied bomber crews the jet age had arrived secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel we now return to secrets of war some of the most secret projects in nazi germany revolved around the creation of revolutionary new aircraft which were powered by jet engines or rockets the first evidence of these projects came to light after a helpful hint from the raf's own secret development facility at boscom down british intelligence knew that the germans were developing either jet or rocket-propelled fighters because photo reconnaissance uh at penemont had shown these strange black streaks on the runways which had everyone baffled to start off with and then someone from raf boss come down said well you know we're experimenting with jets and they leave the same sort of streaks on the ground so around about march 1943 we knew that the germans were experimenting with with jet this stunning intelligence discovery confirmed reports from sympathetic foreign workers about strange-looking propellerless planes this had an immediate impact on the raf really what it meant was that the british accelerated into service their twin jet fighter the meteor it came into operational service in july 1944 by the end of the war there were 200 of them and there were jet on jet engagements the first of these in 1945 over germany [Music] the luftwaffe's high command was present when ernst heinkel's experimental jet plane the he-178 made history on the 27th of august 1939. on that day it became the first jet plane ever to fly you can imagine everybody in the luftwaffe saying this is a wonderful development go ahead my boy but did they of course not it was an illogical decision-making process that cost germany her jets for key years during the second world war the luftwaffe was quite content with its standard fighter the measurement or me109 the high command was not interested in a jet engine despite the fact that it could provide a dramatic improvement in the performance and speed of a fighter plane to make matters worse when these projects were halted many of the scientists and engineers who worked on them ended up in the army and were sent to the russian front it was not until 1943 that the development ban was lifted first of all they had to go and find all those scientists who were hiding in trenches in russia hadn't been shot and bring them all back again and then start getting all these programs running again those two years were critical if they hadn't had that ban well goodness knows what could have happened one of the weapons programs that had been significantly delayed was the me262 jet fighter a top speed of more than 125 miles an hour faster than the best allied fighter it could have been a deciding factor in the war if it had been deployed early enough i think there's no doubt that had a jet-powered aircraft been deployed in the battle of britain they could have wiped out the royal air force and the invasion would have been so much simpler in fact the invasion would have happened [Music] with the production ban lifted the german aircraft industry tried to make up for the lost time however the reich was now under an around-the-clock strategic bombing campaign by the u.s 8th air force in the raf [Music] in this chaotic environment messerschmitt was still able to create the world's first operational rocket-powered airplane the me163 comet [Music] it's 600 plus mile per hour speed stunned the b-17 crews who saw it for the first time i think uh 163 was was effective initially it was a very much a a weapon of almost of terror of morale sapping capability when they first appeared um against the daylight streams of b-17 bombers i think there was a a real feeling amongst the allies that here was a weapon they couldn't contend with they couldn't intercept it with cannons or rockets firing the me163 would dive through b-17 formations often breaking them up in the process it would then glide down to its airstrip refuel [Music] then fly back up to fight again [Music] in reality the comet was not a practical weapon it was especially vulnerable to allied fighters when it glided back to its base [Music] but its appearance was so unexpected that it shook the confidence of the man who confronted it the bomber crews hadn't been warned about the rocket-powered plane because the allies knew almost nothing about it german designers also created many other advanced secret aircraft heinkel's he 162 showed great promise and boasted the world's first ejection seat arado's 234 blitz jet-powered reconnaissance bomber could fly higher and faster than the best allied fighters [Music] [Applause] but like so many other german secret weapons it came too late to have any impact like the luftwaffe and the army the german navy also created its share of secret weapons in 1943 they presented the furore with an exciting plan to use submarine-launched v2 missiles against the united states hitler loved the scheme their first target would be new york city [Music] secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel we now return to secrets of war [Music] many of adolf hitler's military views were shaped by his experience as an infantryman in the first world war [Music] his reluctance to build defensive weapons stemmed from his belief that the best defense there's a good offense and he loved the power of the artillery [Applause] that's why he sanctioned the construction of the world's biggest gun the super-secret hdp or high pressure pump hitler was so excited about the project that he gave it his highest honor he named it the vargal tung vaphedrai or vengeance weapon three it was also referred to as the london gun or the v3 still others in the reich called it ridiculous the concept required a shell to be fired up through the 150 yard long barrel additional charges would then be set off behind the passing shell to boost its speed this built up the velocity but it also caused waves of high pressure where there was a new blast coming in from a side chamber meeting a blast coming from the previous chamber and this would certainly build up what we call sporadic high pressure and the gun would burst although never tested construction for the v3 began in an underground complex in memiacs france across the channel from england [Music] in 1944 the allies initiated a bombing campaign to destroy b2 and v-1 launch sites in france when they discovered railroad tracks leading into an underground facility they bombed it [Music] damage was so severe at the site that the project was halted the v3 never fired a single shot allied intelligence had no knowledge of the v3 or the london gun until the wrecked construction site was inspected after the invasion in the ponticale area in northeast france the german navy also had some very big plans including one called the la thorens project the proposal was to tow um v2 rockets in ballasted containers behind a u-boat and when they got to within some convenient distance of new york city or washington or something like that they would flood the tanks until the cylinders stood on end and fire the v2s this plan was more than just fanciful dreaming in the part of the navy they actually tested the concept to see if it was feasible the middle of 1942 u-511 fired three v2 missiles from under the water that was the first time it was ever done though the project was abandoned the concept of submarine-launched ballistic missiles was not lost on the victorious allies [Music] today the most powerful capital ships in the us and russian navy are the submarines that carry intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads the third reich also attempted to develop the most ominous of all secret weapons the atomic bomb they couldn't put their resources to their existing programs let alone these experimental programs and particularly as as the axis territory started to shrink they really didn't have the fuels the materials and they didn't have the ability um to be able to put these into these systems into into operation the whole of the german secret weapon program can be summed up by saying too late not necessarily too little but too late it was hitler's ban on development that put germany two years behind in every field of endeavor and they just could not catch up i'm not saying we might not have won the war but i am saying we would have had a hell of a more trouble doing it because we would have been confronted with a very formidable armory of weapons by 1944 which would have taken some very very brilliant thinking on our part to counter [Music] nazi germany's scientists couldn't win the war for adolf hitler but they did change the world in a way that few could have imagined their v2 rocket led to the development of the icbms that form the nuclear backbone of today's superpowers ironically these weapons are so incredibly destructive that they have made world war unthinkable this too is the legacy of the men who built the secret weapons of the third reich [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, v2 rocket, ballistic missiles, german technology, third reich weapons, ww2 documentary, history of missiles, secrets weapons, nazi science

Id: R7_DMz5xtMg

Length: 46min 7sec (2767 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021