Were Germany's Giant Railway Guns Actually Effective? | The Machinery Of War | War Stories

this channel is part of the history hit Network historically the biggest Empires always had the biggest navies [Applause] were the biggest armies the most chips the most men or both [Music] and in the Modern Age Science and Industry have repeatedly pushed the limits of men technology and Imagination in the pursuit of that power more often not by creating bigger armies bigger weapons from aircraft that defy gravity tanks to field guns bombers to battleships the destructive capability of the Machinery of War develops with each decade each unique in their own way the machines in this episode share two common traits they are big and they are powerful thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] guns began to assume Monumental proportions Big Bertha the German siegebreaker could hurl an 800 kilogram projectile 13 kilometers and was used to devastating effect in the early stages of World War One but during World War II a class of even larger super cannons emerged and their psychological effect on the men facing them meant that like Bertha they all had personalized names and one of the biggest was called Annie Annie was one of 25 massive Railway guns designed and built by the famous German Krupp steel Works prior to the commencement of World War II designated the K-5 they were developed to deliver shells capable of destroying the French border fortifications known as the Maginot Line the first objective was to deliver a large projectile containing a large amount of explosive to the Target the second objective was to provide range and some of the quarter of a ton projectiles were able to reach 50 kilometers although they never saw servers on the Maginot Line they were involved in a variety of sieges and for Annie that most famously took place during the American invasion of the Italian coastal town of anzio in early 1944. Annie was one of two k-5s moved and hidden in rail tunnels 18 miles above the coastline where the Americans had landed from this vantage point over two months the pair rained down their massive exploding shells on the 70 000 Allied troops trying to break out of the established beachhead it was during this time that the train-like sound the huge shells made as they passed overhead earned the guns the nicknames anzio Annie and the anzio express [Music] and the k5's 288 millimeter caliber Barrel was rifled with 12 seven millimeter grooves making it not just big but extremely accurate K5 Railway battery consisted of two guns each gun had its own train with engine and six rail cars ultimately it was that size that proved her downfall her Railway gun you had to lay tracks to get it to its destination now Not only was that intensive in terms of Manpower but also inadvertently what you did was when you were laying these tracks you were providing a path for the Allied bombers to track where that Railway gun actually was so its survivability was put into question by virtue of the fact of the tracks that it was running on the railway gun's great advantage of being able to use existing infrastructure to besiege armies was paradoxically its Achilles heel [Music] history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout when on January 20th 1953 at the height of the Cold War former World War II General Dwight D Eisenhower became president of the United States his inauguration parade included 65 bands floats from the then 50 states of the Union 22 000 service men and women 350 horses and a gun a brand new 280 millimeter cannon in the early 50s they were exploring how to deliver nuclear payloads and there was a series of tests in Nevada where they tested a variety of different Delivery Systems [Music] of which was the M65 howitzer with missiles capable of delivering Atomic Warheads the most powerful weapons on the planet in the control of the U.S Air Force the U.S army felt it too should have a weapon of similar Force and when in 1949 the U.S atomic energy commission announced the development of a 280 millimeter caliber nuclear projectile the Army set to work developing a mechanism to deliver it [Music] the result was a self-propelled gun with an overall weight of 78 tons a length of 26 meters and a width of 5 meters advances and mechanics meant that once in position atomic Annie could be set up in 15 minutes and in May 1953 in the deserts of Nevada the weapon was tested and they did actually fire an 800 pound nuclear shell for 280 millimeter artillery piece seven miles in the Nevada desert to explode as a nuclear device it's the only time shown in the western world that a nuclear shell had been delivered by a cannon [Music] nine m65s were deployed in Europe to counter the Soviet threat but atomic Annie like anzio Annie was a transportation nightmare on the road it resembled a large fire engine with two prime movers using independent steering systems one positioned at either end of the gun carriage its propensity to tip over earned it another less favorable nickname the Widowmaker [Music] Evolution sometimes heads in a direction that doesn't quite work a nuclear technology did not find a natural place fired from a gun as the end of 1962 approached the idea of the stately and visible progress of an atomic Cannon moving across the world as a crucial influence had passed new weapons had been developed and the atomic Annies joined their cousins the k-5s in retirement all were withdrawn from service along with their 80 odd shells construct Ed for them what history has shown us is that power is not always about sheer size the punch of a behemoth doesn't necessarily have to come from a behemoth and in the case of the M triple seven while it is still a large weapon 155 millimeter in caliber and with an overall length of 10 meters the focus of its development was on reducing its weight which makes it extremely powerful [Music] seven could be transported enough helicopters than its previous counterpart and so in that regard it can be a much more deadly weapon because the military can get it to where it needs to be quickly the M triple seven tips the scales at just over four tons to achieve this low weight it applies the latest advances in metallurgical science and its construction makes extensive use of a rare metal that has found numerous applications in the modern machinery of War titanium now titanium has a density which is about half that of Steel but it's a very strong material so it means that you can reduce the weight of your structure but at the same time maintain strength that you need when you're dealing with the high shock forces when the gun fires project on everything about the M77 is a stark example of More For Less it's operated by a crew of five and zioni had a crew of 82. the m-77 can rapid fire five rounds per minute Annie fired one every five minutes and while Annie was accurate modern shells like the Excalibur take accuracy to a new level City Excalibur is a shell which has a little sort of motor that kind of deploys fins on firing and can actually use these fins to intelligently guide the shell to its Target a lightweight Behemoth with incredible power and accuracy one of the few things the M77 can't do is move itself at a barrage is of little use if you can't press your advantage to do that you need to get up close [Music] necessity they say is the mother of invention the massive wire mud trenches and modern Weaponry on the Western Front during World War One had led to an appallingly costly stalemate where success was measured not in kilometers gained but mere meters but on the 8th of August 1918 at the Battle of Amion on a single day the Allied Forces moved 13 kilometers across german-held territory and on that day the battlefield hummed with the sound of over 550 of what would prove to be perhaps the defining weapon of the war tanks when the British were designing the tank in 1915 1916 though aware of the nature of trench warfare on the Western Front and the reason for this large track design in that Lawson shape of the first tanks was to give the tank Mobility so if it came to the trench lines if I were able to break through is that they'll be able to cross them without falling into a trench and getting irrevocably bald 28-ton rhomboid shaped Mark 1 tank first Saw Service on the psalm on the 15th of September 1916 and was not a huge success mechanical problems from what proved to be an underpowered and unreliable 78 kilowatt engine and Crews inexperienced in handling the new weapon compromised the performance of the few that made it to the battlefield and they were slow [Music] it actually was slower than an infantryman walking which meant that rather than being the tanks advancing in the troops coming behind the tanks it often meant that the troops went far in advance to the tank which found it hard to keep up noise inside the tank made it difficult to communicate and as a result some became hopelessly lost others ground to a halt their Crews rendered unconscious by the fumes of the engine which sat in the middle of the fighting compartment without any cover or Muffler and they were prone to bogging in the muddy morass that was the Western Front but development persisted adjustments to each variation were made based on combat experience in the mark IV power was up to 15 kilowatts weight was down to 25 tons speed increased to 6.5 kilometers an hour continuous improvements that by 1918 saw the tank entrenched as a vital Cog in the Machinery of War [Applause] you think of the emergence of the tank on the battlefield in the first world war um it's clunky it's unreliable the arm is perhaps penetrated by by rifle or machine gun fire but nonetheless it's this lumbering terrifying Beast of War you've never seen before it has an immense psychological impact comes tactically very significant as a soft squishy infantryman with a rifle you are absolutely outclassed by this giant land ship and that remains true for decades and within just two of those decades tank warfare reached its Zenith with the outbreak of World War II and the famous German Blitzkrieg tactics of 1939. a highly mobile and destructive all-arms method of fighting led by the famous Panzer tanks [Music] Blitzkrieg reshaped the battlefield where previously emphasis had been on a smattering of light tanks in infantry support roles the Allies now desperately needed medium tanks that could compete with and defeat the German panzers but in tank design the British had fallen well behind the game the British in 1918 it can fairly be said were probably the leaders in tank design however the belief that tanks would be useful in European War but probably not in the colonial Warfare which the the British find themselves doing in the interwar period meant that they did not spend as much time looking at tank design as they did until probably late in the 1930s outclassed and with limited time and limited resources they turned to the Americans for salvation they responded with the M4 Sherman the most widely used tank by the Western allies during the war the design brief was simple a medium tank with a 75 millimeter main gun mounted in a full Traverse turret just enough to keep Pace with the German tanks with good all-round visibility and improved armor allocation and it was needed almost immediately to save time the Americans Incorporated the engine transmission tracks and suspension systems of the M3 Lee medium tank on that existing chassis they put an all-new body with frontal armor that was not a patchwork of riveted plates but a solid piece of cast homogeneous steel 50 millimeters thick to overcome the strength disadvantage of cast armor the front armor plate was cleverly sloped to 56 degrees creating a surface that would cause some incoming rounds to glance off but more importantly it increased the effective thickness of the armor on the horizontal plane to 91 millimeters almost doubling protection even so against the heaviest of Tanks the Sherman was vulnerable foreign Cruise putting extra track on the front of the vehicles they're putting extra sandbags on the front of the vehicles and this is trying to [ __ ] any incoming armor piercing round sometimes not to great effect weighing close to 30 tons the Sherman had a top speed of 40 kilometers per hour meaning it could keep Pace with its principal foam the Panzer and armed with a medium velocity 75 millimeter main gun two anti-infantry machine guns at a 50 caliber Browning anti-aircraft gun they had the Panzer covered but the Sherman's greatest strengths were its reliability and its numbers nearly 5 000 were produced built by the Giants of the American Motor industry Ford Chrysler and General Motors the whole Henry Ford type thing with the production line of cars now applies to making a tank the Sherman's life was extended seeing combat in numerous Cold War conflicts but his anti-tank Weaponry improved and the speed of warfare increased the need arose for Battlefield behemoths that were simply bigger and faster and there are none bigger than the tank they call Whispering Death the Cold War fueled an environment which led to the development of some of the most advanced weapon systems on the planet and when in the 1970s the U.S army decided they needed a faster tank with exceptional Firepower and unprecedented levels of crew protection they took the best of the world's available military technology and created the M1 Abrams learning lessons from a variety of conflicts they designed a tank that despite weighing up to 70 tons in some variants has a deceptively low profile standing less than three meters tall the low height makes the Abrams a less obvious and less available Target for enemy fire significant work has also been done to reduce the thermal signature of the tank making it harder to detect but if it is hit it is constructed using the most advanced armor available M1A Rams is fairly Superior compared to a lot of main battle tanks and certain variants of the M1A Brands actually use the police uranium in the terrainium is a very dense material and that means it's able to provide Superior levels of protection against a whole range of weapon systems it was also the first tank to use the British developed chobam armor a complex laminate structure that combines an arrangement of ceramic blocks metal plates Kevlar and open space to achieve a near Perfect Blend of anti-penetration surfaces in battle the Abrams 120 millimeter Smooth Bore main gun has been found to outrange any other tank and current service and connected to the world's most advanced tank-based targeting system that monitors the Tank's tilt motion and even the wind it allows the Abrams to fire on multiple targets with accuracy while on the move [Music] but what truly sets the Abrams apart is its speed which can exceed 70 kilometers per hour to achieve this it uses a distinctive power source use of the gas turbine engine in the M1A Brands is fairly unique to main battle tanks and the reason why they use a gas turbine is simply to reduce the noise and to give it the power it needs to accelerate such a heavy vehicle this vehicle weighs up to 70 tons in certain variants and so it's a very heavy piece of military equipment and you need a substantial means of driving that forward it is the whisper quiet gas turbine that is given the M1 its nickname a power source that is normally associated with a very different kind of Battlefield behemoth aircraft [Music] on the 6th of August 1945 an event took place that would change the world forever the heaviest bomber of World War II delivered a device that would create the biggest explosion mankind had ever experienced less than 30 years previously heavier than aircraft had been little more than Curiosities but the aircraft that carried that fateful payload in August 1945. it was a far cry from the Timber and fabric of World War One it was a heavy bomber that revolutionized military and civilian Aviation [Music] militaries always want aircraft with increased speed and payload but in World War II what the Americans desperately needed was one with greater range to deal with the huge distances covered in the war in the Pacific to achieve a lethal combination of speed payload and range they based their designs on an aircraft that was already the Supreme bomber of World War II the B-17 Flying Fortress and built the largest most complex aircraft that had ever gone into production the Flying Fortress was a very capable airplane but it was firmly rooted in the 30s and it had been developed as far as it could realistically go with the B-29 they designed it to do everything a flying fortress could do and do it all better the B-29 was a combination of Cutting Edge technology and devastating Firepower wrapped in a massive package fitted with four of the largest radial engines manufactured in the United States The Supercharged 18-cylinder right r-3350 the super Fortress had a top speed of over 550 kilometers per hour at a combat range of 5220 kilometers double that of the B-17 and it was designed for sustained flight at what was then dangerously high altitude as you ascend temperature drops one degree per 300 meters without Heating and oxygen anoxia can result in death within 10 minutes at altitudes over 7500 meters to overcome this the B-29 became the first production aircraft to feature a fully sealed and pressurized cabin it'll add them to fly routinely over 35 000 feet where the air is thinner and therefore you can fly faster without putting as much strain on the engines to maintain the speed the B-29 was in every way a technological Marvel a systems driven aircraft with over 10 kilometers of electrical cabling part of which fed a state-of-the-art analog firing system that remotely trained the aircraft's five gun turrets on incoming targets compensating for Speed gravity and atmospheric pressure InterContinental range payload and versatility made the B-29 a game changer that not only helped end the war but paved the way for both the Americans and the Soviets to pursue even grander designs designs that would allow them to deploy greater payloads to war zones with unparalleled speed it started a game of brinkmanship a race to be the biggest a race the Soviets would ultimately win [Music] during the latter stages of the Cold War when the Americans unveiled the massive C5 Galaxy transport the Soviets immediately countered and produced an aircraft That Remains the largest Airborne military transport vehicle in the world today known by NATO as the Condor it is the Antonov an124 big machines need a big aircraft to lift them designed to carry the largest Soviet tanks troops and support equipment and deliver them to a hot spot quickly the an-124 has a maximum takeoff weight of 405 tons with a payload of 150 tons to put those weights into perspective it can carry two fully loaded b-29s throw in a fully loaded B-17 for good measure and still have room to spare the design of large Transport Aircraft require the the right combination of the design of a fuselage that can accommodate the potential payloads that may be required during its operation included in that is the access to the payload with a fuselage close to 70 meters in length and 21 meters in height creating a cargo space 36 meters long and 6.4 meters wide comparable in size to a Bowling Green the sheer size of the aircraft presents a unique design challenge audio fuselage will affect the aerodynamics of the aircraft it will increase the drag of the aircraft and so you have to balance that with wings that are large enough to generate enough lift and also quite principally the engines that the develop enough thrust to lift these aircraft to generate that required lift the an124 has a wingspan of 73 meters and with an upper deck that can accommodate 88 fully equipped soldiers it can deploy a small army at over a thousand kilometers per hour an124 is big and fast but on its own not lethal the tupolev tu-160 on the other hand is all three [Music] known by the NATO code name blackjack or the white swan in Russia the tu-160 was the last farmer aircraft produced by the Soviet Union before its collapse and is the largest jet-powered swing Wing combat aircraft ever to enter service an aircraft again born of the military Tit for Tat that was the Cold War when the Americans began developing a similar aircraft the B1 the Americans were developing a supersonic swing Wing bomber that could quickly penetrate Soviet airspace during that development interestingly the Americans actually decided perhaps that need wasn't there and so the Americans actually canceled the b1a program the Russians however continued with the Blackjack and developed that aircraft into a very capable very high-speed penetrating bomber all supersonic aircraft have swept wings put simply the faster you go the less Wing area you need to generate lift but at low speeds that lift is greatly reduced the engineering challenge was to produce an aircraft with enough lift to raise a serious payload but one which could also reach speeds comparable to a modern fighter jet and one solution for that is so-called swing wings during low speed operation at takeoff and when you return for landing the wings are swept forward so that they are what we call very high aspect ratio wings and that configuration of wing is optimized to generate lift very efficiently especially at low speeds the variable geometry outer tapered wings of the white swan are able to be swept back from 20 degrees to 65 degrees providing high performance flight characteristics at both Supersonic and subsonic speeds and the tail surfaces horizontal and vertical are one piece and all moving for improved low speed control equipped with four of the most powerful engines ever fitted to an aircraft the tu-160 which weighs 275 tons fully loaded manages an extraordinary top speed of 2 200 kilometers per hour and climbs at a rate of 70 meters per second to a service ceiling of 16 000 meters [Music] while a behemoth in the air or on the land can be measured in terms of Bowling Greens at Sea the word behemoth takes on a whole other meaning [Music] for centuries a nation's Naval strength determined its place in the world and as the centuries passed ships slowly increased in size but the industrial revolutions sped that growth engines created a new source of power power gave rise to bigger ships with heavier guns and heavier guns led to heavier armor and in the early 1900s a naval arms race led to the creation of ocean-going behemoths of such size that they defied imagination battleships [Music] the battleship really I suppose you could say reached its Zenith during World War One it was a large steel ship heavily armored fitted with Big Guns which could sling tons of shells towards an enemy battleship since then battleships continued to be used through the second world war but more as large gun platforms than the traditional engagement between two battlefleets steaming in parallel endeavoring to sink each other and in the second world war one of the biggest of those gun platforms was the American Iowa class World War II saw a shift in the shape of Naval Warfare the Americans new and fast Essex class aircraft carriers had stolen the battleship's mantle as the capital ships of the fleet but they needed vessels that could protect them at speeds in excess of 30 knots the design challenge was to develop a battleship fast enough to keep Pace while also providing the Firepower to combat the heavy Japanese vessels already constructed at over 270 meters in length and with a beam of 33 meters everything about the Iowa class was Big Eight water tube boilers feeding four Advanced steam turbines gave the Iowa a top speed of over 33 knots and to guard against Torpedoes the Iowa class had a hull design that included an internal bulge consisting of four longitudinal bokeheads behind the outer hole plating with a depth of five and a half meters designed to absorb the energy of a torpedo Warhead protecting the superstructure [Music] but a battleship is nothing without big guns and the Iowa class carried nine massive Mark VII main guns each with a caliber of 410 millimeters perhaps the most well-known of the Iowa class was the USS Missouri with the Japanese famously signing the surrender ending World War II on her deck on the 2nd of September 1945. decommissioned a number of times before being brought back into Service First in Korea in the 1950s and again in the 60s where her massive guns provided extra Firepower in Vietnam the Missouri was finally decommissioned in 1992 after being resurrected yet again during the first Gulf War but not all battleships were survivors Hitler at one time referred to the first world war German Fleet as a romantic plaything a parade piece if Germany were to fight again under Hitler they would have a Navy to be reckoned with and by 1939 Germany boasted a modern Fleet of Staggering proportions and the centerpiece of that Fleet were two fifty thousand ton battleships the Bismarck and the trivets foreign the largest Battleship class in Europe these 250 meter long behemoths had a top speed of 30 knots and a range in excess of 16 430 kilometers [Music] in the Battle of Denmark Strait on the 24th of May 1941. the Bismarck and the prince Eugen engaged the British battleships the Prince of Wales and the hood after only eight minutes of firing the hood took a hit in her rear ammunition magazine and 100 tons of cordite exploded breaking the ship's back she quickly sunk taking all but three of her crew of 1419 men with her [Music] of Wales was also damaged and laid a smoke screen to cover her withdrawal those eight minutes Bismarck had fired 93 armor-piercing shells and had been hit by three shells in return one had struck the Foxhole and two thousand tons of water flooded the ship contaminating fuel oil stored in the bow forced to change course to seek repairs the Bismarck was pursued by the Royal Navy over the ensuing two days the German vessel took a surprising number of hits and still managed to evade her pursuers and it was armor that was the key to the bismarck's survival nearly half of the vessel's overall weight constituted protection to vital areas at the Beltline it reached 320 millimeters thick on the decks 120 millimeters and the main gun turrets were shrouded by Steel 360 millimeters thick what did it for her in the end were the machines that spelled the end of the battleship as a machine of War aircraft 26th of May a flight of 15 swordfish torpedo bombers launched an attack within just hours the pride of the German fleet was sunny what's really fascinating about the action against the Bismarck was that the aircraft the Swordfish the most basic simple little aircraft with Torpedoes underneath operating from an aircraft carrier I mean the aircraft were technologically ancient the ship that launched those aircraft was one of a new type of Warship that would hold sway for decades as one of the most powerful of all the Machinery of war and one of the biggest [Music] the aircraft carrier [Music] the British began using ships to carry aircraft in World War One the first was the HMS Arc Royal a heavily modified merchant ship that transported float planes in her home which were slung over the side using cranes despite not being a carrier as we know them she introduced a number of features which are typical of aircraft carriers today an enclosed hanger which contains the aircraft a clear deck Ford so that you could launch aircraft from there and workshops to provide all the means of supporting those aircraft the ship unfortunately only had a speed of about 10 knots so she was not very capable of high-speed operations or real uses in aircraft carrier those real purpose-built aircraft carriers emerged in the 1930s and in the early days of 1941 among the ships which gave Chase to the Bismarck was one of them also named Arc Royal and launched in 1938 [Music] far from being a converted merchant ship HMS Arc Royal displayed the two most distinctive features of a modern aircraft carrier a flat 240 meter flight deck that overhung the stern 20 meters above the water line and the familiar control tower Island positioned on the starboard side with armored hangers extending three stories below the 50 aircraft that made up her Strike weapons were raised to the deck by hydraulic lifts with the now famous arrester cables to catch the aircraft on Landing The Arc Royal used the latest Steam catapult system to assist them at takeoff those aircraft comprising The Arc Royal's Primary Weapons she was lightly armed but with a top speed in excess of 30 knots Britain's military planners believed they would be able to outrun most enemy ships if attacked this thinking also led to the arc Royal being relatively lightly armored cost her November 1941 while sailing toward Gibraltar The Arc Royal fell victim to the German U-boat u81 [Music] sunk by Torpedoes just as the Bismarck had been only months earlier but where aircraft carriers really came into their own was in the vastness of the Pacific and their experiences would change the face of warfare forever one of the early lessons of the second world war was that the rapid advances in aircraft performance and capabilities during the interwar years meant that command of the air became a prerequisite to success in land or sea engagements Superior range flexibility and effectiveness of carrier-launched aircraft was no more ably demonstrated than on the morning of the 7th of December 1941 Japanese task force that included six aircraft carriers attacked Pearl Harbor and in a little over two hours decimated the American Pacific Fleet the U.S immediately responded by declaring war on Japan and began planning a reprisal [Applause] the Americans wished to do was attack the Japanese where they least expected it on their own soil and to do that they drew on a growing understanding of the aircraft carrier's potential you can approach fuel enemy territory and exercise your influence by means of force with your aircraft from your ship you don't need a land base you don't need somebody else's territory to operate from you can operate from your own ship in international waters reprisal attack became known as the Doolittle Raid and it was carried out using one of the new Yorktown class aircraft carriers the USS Hornet The Hornet had a wartime complement of close to three thousand and was capable of carrying a mix of 90 aircraft including torpedo bombers Fighters and dive bombers giving her an unmatched ability to respond to all manner of situations foreign and in April 1942 she steamed towards Japan carrying a special unit of 16 highly modified B-25 Mitchell medium bombers under the command of Colonel James Doolittle although none of the B-25 Pilots including Doolittle had ever taken off from a carrier on the morning of the 18th of April in a heavy Gale all 16 aircraft launched safely and from a distance of over a thousand kilometers began their Journey towards Japan the aircraft began arriving over Japanese cities at about noon six hours after takeoff an attacked military and Industrial Targets in Tokyo Yokohama and Osaka none were shot down with Landing medium bombers on The Hornet's 245 meter Flight Deck would be impossible for the aircraft which were deliberately ditched over China following the raid all of the aircraft were lost but all bar 11 crewmen emerged unscathed foreign was the first American attack on the Japanese Homeland and not only bolstered morale at home but in demonstrating the reach of American Naval and air power it had a deep psychological effect on the enemy it also marked the emergence of the aircraft carrier as the dominant force in the war in the Pacific as aircraft grew in size and power they also grew in consumption and the Cold War prompted a desire for warships that could operate without restriction now of course in the aircraft carrier if you can provide the propulsive power without needing all fuel you've got an advantage and the nuclear reactor provides that Advantage you don't need to fuel the aircraft carrier for our own propulsion and you can use the space which is freed up to carry fuel for the aircraft the first American nuclear carrier was the Enterprise class which saw a service for 50 years it was followed by the Nimitz the Nimitz class is over 330 meters in length displaces one hundred thousand tons and can carry its cargo of 90 aircraft which are launched from a flight deck with a total area of over 18 000 square meters that sits 20 stories above the surrounding sea and it cruises at 32 knots a speed it can maintain for 25 years a warship does all its work at Sea in any conditions under warship has to take the crew and the weapon systems to see keep the crew fed fit and working under any conditions and to be able to fight under those conditions this imposes considerable challenges on the way you design a warship and their survivability at sea survivability was Central to the Nimitz design and being powered by two modern and relatively small Westinghouse nuclear reactors allows a lot of Hull space to be dedicated to that survivability [Music] as such over 14 million liters of aviation fuel is stored on board added to that is the capacity to Stow over 3 000 tons of Ordnance the Nimitz carries the latest in passive and active defense systems however the U.S Navy still Bears the scars of World War II as a consequence the aircraft hangers on board are divided into three Firebase on each level by thick steel doors that are designed to restrict the spread of fire a feature present on all U.S aircraft carriers since the devastating fires caused by kamikaze attacks over 70 years ago [Music] 10 nimitz-class aircraft carriers once the largest warships on the planet are one of the most devastating of all the Machinery of War now however their mantle is the largest falls to the Gerald R Ford class designed like the Nimitz with a lifespan of 50 years history suggests that her replacement will be even bigger foreign

Channel: War Stories

Views: 204,655

Keywords: Krupp, Nazi war effort, War Stories, World War II, aerial warfare, air superiority, armored vehicles, artillery tactics, destructive weapons, historic weaponry, historical conflicts, massive guns, military aircrafts, military artifacts, military engineering feats, military innovations, military vessels, war weapons., warfare advancements, weapon development, weapon systems

Id: JwHgJRTT46I

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023