World War 2 Special Weapons: From Colossal Cannons to Night Vision | Secrets Weapons of WW 2

over the course of the second world war the need to equip each army with a better gun than their adversary led to one technological leap after another at the end of World War II the leaders of the Allied countries really credited their success to Scientific and technological achievement guns developed in secret Labs would emerge on the field of battle at times surprising soldiers on both sides of the fight most people think it's the losing nation that that resorts to the more unorthodox weapon programs in an attempt to kind of turn the war around in their favor as a lastminute desperate Hail Mary pass but the truth of the matter is both the allies and the access pursued some pretty unusual weapon programs from this race of Supremacy came gun technologies that are still in use today but for some the pressure to outdo each invention pushed science into the realm of [Music] fantasy in 1937 Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China this localized War quickly escalated as the US and her allies supported the Chinese fears of an escalating conflict with the US s Japan begin the development of a weapon that would even the playing field the kouo death ray things had been muddling along in North China between the Japanese and the Chinese forces but this time it got away and it turned into the beginning of the second world war in Asia chief of Japan's Naval Air Forces rear Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto tasked the Japanese Naval technology Research Institute with a bold mission to explore fed inventor Nicola Tesla's death ray weapon in the 1930s Tesla was promoting his idea for a beam of metal ions that could be shot through the air at a Target at 435,000 kmph a massively powerful blast of energy 100 billion Watts concentrated within nearly 1 100 millionth of a square cm but but his details on the science behind this device were vague Tesla envisioned basically a particle beam that could knock enemy aircraft out of the sky at a distance of 250 Mi he was thinking of using electricity wirelessly generated but the truth of the matter is no one's ever been able to find Tesla's research to show how this thing would work it was just something that he liked to talk about the cougo research team quickly realized Tesla's concept needed more energy than any power station at the time could output so they were trying to develop better Communications also try to develop more accurate radar get a more accurate radar return so you had to shorten a wavelength for that and I thought if you could shorten a wavelength enough would it generate enough power to be a lethal type of weapon Could you actually knock a plane out of the sky or or hit a soldier who are attacking you on the warfront the magnetrons in radar systems generate short microwaves when electrical energy is run through them this electromagnetic radiation is harmless in small quantities as the microwaves are too long to damage biological tissues but if the microwave length could be shortened prolonged exposure heats the body's tissues causing burning or even [Music] cataracts the cougo research team posited that to create a lethal dose of electromagnetic radiation they would need a new type of powerful magnetron the Japanese hoped that it would be a super weapon that they could use to uh stop uh invading troops and to knock enemy aircraft out of the sky which became a larger issue as the war progressed because eventually Japan lost Air Supremacy over its own country as the US Army aircore and US Naval forces began to dominate the sky in pursuit of this goal Japanese officials invested around half a million Us doar in 1940 approximately 10 and5 million usar today but it would be Years yet before a test could be achieved by 1943 the war in the Pacific was playing out in a series of island hopping campaigns aimed at gaining control of airfields and securing supply lines as these battles raged on the cougo research team tested their first prototype death ray if you can imagine like a satellite dish with a mirror reflector and an antenna array in the center of it this prototype was not very powerful though only about 1 to 2 kilow the Prototype managed to stop an exposed combustion engine but their tests also revealed a significant weakness and what they found was the shielding of just a typical airplane fuselage would provide enough shielding that would negate any impact of the death rate so the death ray wasn't going to bring down an airplane at any altitude then in 1944 as us bombers began filling the Skies over Japan the kouo research team performed their second test this time with a larger 80 cm magnetron they tested it on a rabbit at a distance of somewhere between 100 and 1,000 ft there's conflicting accounts of what the distance was and it did in fact kill the rabbit but the problem was the rabbit had to be in the same place and not move for 5 minutes so clearly the weapon needed more work to be effective fueled by some measure of success the research team made plans for further testing for the following year but it would ultimately come too late Japan surrendered to the Allies on September 2nd 1945 would put an end to development of the new weapon the KGO death ray certainly from a theoretical standpoint uh was a practical idea however it was beyond the capability of mid 20th century technology and in fact we don't even have a death rate today because there are still a number of technical hurdles that we haven't been able to overcome fortunately to invent what could be an incredibly devastating weapon the death ray never fully realized its deadly potential on the battle fields of the second world war and it wasn't the only gun technology devised that would meet this fate another would have a fleeting impact on the battlefields of Europe the successes of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 ground to a halt as the armies of the Third Reich reached the Crimean Peninsula Soviet forces resisted at the heavily fortified and strategic vital Port City of Sylvester Paul in response the Germans Unleashed a new secret weapon for the first time Thea Gustav it is the largest artillery weapon to ever be used in combat at 47.3 M long and 11.6 M High Gustav took a crew of 1720 about 3 weeks to assemble before even firing a shot so one of the reasons you need a large gun and what I mean by a large gun is one with a large large caliber is to get your extended range we find that large projectiles have what we call a high ballistic coefficient and what that means is they have a large amount of inertia which helps them overcome the air resistance at sylas Paul Gustaf proved itself an effective offensive weapon able to help the German Army break through the city's def sensors but the gigantic Siege Cannon had not been designed with this particular Target in mind in 1936 during a tour of the crup Gun Works at Essen Hitler mentioned that he would need a new super Siege Cannon one that could overcome the impressive magino line a series of heavy fortifications that stretched across 450 km primarily along the border between France and Germany an obstacle that required a weapon capable of Smashing through one meter of Steel 6 M of concrete or 30 m of Earth the result was the Sha Gustav designed to fire two types of shells the lighter high explosive shells weighed over 4.7 tons and could be fired up to 46 km the heavier concrete piercing shells weighed 7 tons each and could be fired over a distance of nearly 38 km plans for the gun were drawn up in 1937 and were due to be completed by 1940 but it was difficult to manufacture and by the time the gun was ready to be built the German Army had already bypassed the magino line and conquered France and so really as a as a weapon system it wasn't very effective particularly because of the cost involved to build and operate one of these systems cost roundabout is the same as about 25 tiger tanks and really the the German war machine could do a lot more with 25 tiger tanks that it could do with this huge Railway gun the gusta named after the chairman of the company that built it was not completed until early 1942 by this time there were no more suitable Targets in Western Europe but following the German invasion of the Soviet Union there were plenty on the Eastern Front but getting gustaff to the front lines was a mammoth effort in and of itself not only were five engines and 25 specially designed flatbed rail cars needed to transport the weapon the crew and the supplies to the deployment side but once it arrived it took thousands of workers 3 weeks to construct the twin rail track that would enable the Gustaf to reach the firing position Gustaf arrived near sylas paol in early March 1942 where the crew began the lengthy process of constructing its firing position 16 kilm away from the city by early June almost 3 months after Gustaf had arrived it was ready to fire its first shot logistically this weapon was a nightmare to operate it was a huge weapon that was was run out on Railways and those railway lines were often the Achilles heel of the weapon system because all they did was that they actually provided a path for the Allied bombers to find their way to the weapons and to drop uh bombs and to destroy it its cumbersome design ultimately outweighed its [Music] usefulness so so it very quickly fell out of favor and was superseded by rocketry in July 1942 the gusta had been in action for a little over a month during which time it fired around 48 shots the only times the gustaff was used in Anger during the entire War its cumbersome design ultimately outweighed its usefulness heavy Firepower was not only needed against heavily fortified positions during World War II the rise of armored vehicles created a new problem for infantry they needed a powerful weapon to overcome these moving fortresses [Music] in November 1942 allied forces began a campaign to drive the access powers out of North Africa this was Operation Torch in an attempt to gain the upper hand Allied infantry were armed with a new secret weapon one that was designed to take on the armored might of the German Army M1 bazooka at the beginning of World War II the anti-tank armaments in infantry units were mediocre at best this was a real challenge coming into the second world war armor was improving it was harder it was um thicker and it was often slanted as well which which presents more metal to penetrate if you slope the armor what was needed was something explosive something high explosive in fact the United States Army answered this need with the M1 bazooka the Bazooka is a recoiless weapon system and it uses a solid propellant charge to propel the shape charge Warhead to the Target now being recoiless what that means is is that actually when the the soldier pulls the trigger there isn't a force that's going to push that Soldier back and instead what we do is uh we actually vent some of the propellant gases out of the rear of the of the the tube uh and so it means that it's it's actually relatively easy to fire the secret to the bazooka's armor penetration capability was in the unique design of its Warhead a process which had begun years earlier while German forces were successfully cutting a path through Europe the US Army procured a design for a shaped charge rifle grenade the simple yet Innovative design featured a hollow cone-shaped tip lined with a thin piece of metal so this harnesses something called the Monroe effect which is pretty comp complicated physics but in basic terms it's a high explosive charge and it turns a conical liner just a bit of sheet metal copper usually it converts that under tremendous heat and pressure into a jet of particles that punch through the armor it doesn't melt it doesn't burn not significantly it punches through and that means it can almost literally punch above its weight a small bomb or I can defeat quite a lot of armor unlike conventional anti- armor weapons the shaped charge design meant it could Pierce heavy armor at relatively low speeds but reports of the increased thickness of armor on German tanks meant the 30 mm Warhead would need to double in size The increased size presented a new problem the massive recoil from this larger grenade would break the rifle firing it in 1942 second Lieutenant Edward G was tasked with creating a delivery system for the new explosive one that would make use of another new technology rocketry [Music] after attaching a small rocket motor to the grenade he built a prototype weapon out of a scrap metal tube and retrofitted gun parts and the M1 bazooka was born really simple stuff basic electrical circuit just a tube to hold the um the munition the rocket itself and to direct it On Target so the weapon itself is much less significant than the Warhead than the munition that flies out of the front and does the damage the M10 60 mm Warhead fired by the Bazooka contained around 225 g of pentalite explosive at an effective range of 60 M it could break through 12.5 cm of armor the simple design of the M1 bazooka made it fast and cheap to manufacture and it was rushed into production before being Battlefield tested when it finally made it into the field it didn't quite live up to its promise when the M1 bazooka was shipped out to infantry for the first time it was almost as much of a surprise to the Allies as it was to their enemy the weapon and its ammunition were sent to US troops without manuals or training in how to use it or any strategy for when to use it the theory was very sound and the shape charge could penetrate significant amounts of armor and kill a tank and then the other side of the equation is The Human Side you have to have the training and the experience and the skill to land that Warhead onto the armor at the right angle at the right distance and with no guidance at all and this inexperience would prove costly demon rating the difficulties of Keeping a Secret Weapon secret once it hits the [Music] battlefield in 1943 following the capture of a quantity of the M1 Bazookas the Germans immediately saw the benefit of its design the tank Bane or Panza Shrek would improve upon the Bazooka in almost all metrics it was more reliable had almost three times the effective range and a shaped charge Warhead that was half again as large as the Bazookas allowing for greater armor penetration rushed into production the paner Shrek began hitting the battlefields of Europe In late 1943 it was the first of a long line of copycats inspire ired by the M1 bazooka the Bazooka left quite an extensive Legacy CU ever since the the Bazooka there's been a whole range of weapon systems that have been developed rocket based anti-tank systems and we absolutely still have shaped charge Warheads that's the standard way to kill a tank right now the Bazooka wasn't the only gun created in the Second World War that would leave a long Legacy for infantry in Wars to [Music] come by late 1942 Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union had led to a series of hardfought and bloody battles the Germans were far out numbered by the Soviets they needed a new weapon that would help even the playing field the or stg44 there's a very common term today um assault rifle we hear it all the time and that goes back to this system um it's it's the translation in English from the German St storm rifle or but storm in the meaning of to storm the castle so assault rifle that's where we get the term from in the early years of the war German infantry mainly relied on bolt action rifles like the carabina 98k it was Dependable accurate and fired a 7.92 by 57 mm round effectively at ranges of over 1,000 M but it was relatively expensive to produce and too slow to fire which meant it wasn't ideal for storming enemy positions German infantry squads were also using the fully automatic MP 40 submachine gun it fired a 9x19 MM round at a rate of 550 rounds per minute but this speed came at the expense of range and accuracy but in 1942 there's a new idea and this is essentially to combine the advantages of a traditional rifle range accuracy power penetration wounding effect with the rapid fire of Handy automatic weapon at close range so you can fight in trenches you can fight in buildings you can also fight out to 300 400 500 M why wouldn't you do that the stg44 is capable of firing a 7.9 2x 33 mm intermediate round at 500 rounds per minute it could be fired on single shot or full automatic modes and had a maximum effective range of 600 M and yet it almost never came into being at least it wouldn't have if Hitler's orders had been followed [Music] the Germans were ultimately secretive about everything the great battle that went on within the Nazi establishment was trying to get Hitler to agree to things his problem was that he wanted personal control of everything he didn't listen to adice Hitler originally put a stop to development of the STG 44s precursor known as the mkb42 but instead Armament Minister Albert Shar and others renamed the program as a continuation of an existing submachine gun and so the weapons de velopment was Kept Secret both from the allies and from Hitler himself by late 1944 the gun had been renamed the stormg 44 and production was accelerated to get it into the hands of German infantry Al's Gambit paid off distribution of the stg44 came too late to have a greater impact on the war but where it was used its impact was felt in the depths of Winter the Germans Unleashed their last major offensive on the Western Front a final bid to drive the Allied Forces back that would become known as the Battle of the Bulge so put yourself in the boots of a soldier at the time he's probably got an oldfashioned like 19th century technology-wise bolt action rifle suddenly someone hands you a shorter more compact early assault rifle you're not loading rounds in the top of the G anymore you are slapping in a magazine of 30 rounds it's a submachine gun but with nearly all the advantages of a rifle despite arriving in the later years of the war the stg44 has had a profound effect on weapons development since its Inception by far the most common type of rifle in military service service is an assault rifle it's the perfect modern combat rifle and the first of those was the Strone G the most significant Legacy is probably the Kalashnikov the AK-47 they didn't copy those by any means but they created their own very similar equivalent and that's now the most common type of rifle in the world by far [Music] now they didn't stop with the assault rifle you might think that's enough you know we've invented a new type of weapon here this is going to be the future combat rifle for the world nope that's not enough for the German [Music] engineers in June of 1944 the Soviet Union launched operation bagration an attack along a front of over 1,000 kilm stretching from Estonia in the north to Romania in the South desperately falling back in front of the onslaught the German Army would suffer their largest defeats of the war as they were driven back to the border of Poland eing out as much utility from the newly arrived stg44 is possible the Germans developed unique and in at least one case groundbreaking attachments to help stall the Soviet Advance one of these was nicknamed by the Americans the around the corner gun a reflection of its unusual design the other was the world's first night vision scope the HLF was designed to be attached to the barrel of the stg44 and shoot at an angle from the line of sight its purpose was as a weapon against Soviet anti-tank teams armored vehicle operators could shoot through the Tank's pistol ports at enemies climbing on top without having to open the hatch the first demonstration of the device took place in July [Applause] 1944 this version was built with a 90° angle which would allow the gun to be mounted in the tank in a vertical position the curve Barrel allowed for troops to fire at the enemy from cover now I use the word shoot Loosely because very often what would happen is that the projectile would shatter mainly because of the huge bending stresses that would be placed on a projectile that would be traveling at twice the speed of sound around a curved radius this meant the KL was most effective at close range perhaps a more enduring device created for the stg44 was Sila 1229 vampir one of the first night vision weapon Scopes ever used the vampir consisted of an infrared Spotlight above an infrared receiver scope it was powered by a battery unit carried in a pack which had a life of about 3 to 5 hours when you're looking at these devices they're very large they're very bulky they're incredibly heavy uh the vampire set as a whole combined with the stone rifle all comes together you're getting on for about 20 kilos so this is a really heavy piece of equipment the spotlight worked by shining a light source into a filter that only allowed infrared light to pass through the scope was designed to be sensitive to infrared light which would show anything in the spotlight field of view all while being invisible to the human eye apparently there was a bit of hesitation on the uh on the Western Front because the West were supposedly using the same kind of equipment and so there was a concern about them getting into the enemy's hands despite any concerns over secrecy around 310 units were sent out to troops and the vampir was in use in 1945 on the Eastern front its Legacy though is not in the effect it had on any particular battle in World War II but rather its broader influence as a revolutionary new type of gun scope while the emergence of infrared scopes allowed infantry to reveal hidden enemies in the dark a more bizarre weapon was being designed for another hidden Target an enemy that came from [Music] above in early 1942 the Allies intensified bombing of German targets including area bombing over for towns and cities the goal was the destruction of Germany's War Industries and the morale of its people with this increasing escalation of the threat from the skies came a need for greater and at times more outlandish anti-aircraft weapons enter the wind cannon the concept of manipulating the weather was not a new one first Vortex Cannon ever constructed was a a thin trumpet like a a narrow ice cream cone invented in the 1890s the idea was that you'd let off a little explosion of gas in the air and an invisible Vortex or smoke ring if you like come up and could disrupt hailstones during the second world war German weapons researchers wondered if they could weaponize this idea and designed two different weapons The Vortex Cannon and the wind cannon the German off office of Aeronautics decided they would develop a wind cannon to bring down aircraft it was in the form of a a right angled tube powered with a mixture of air and acetylene the wind cannon would fire a ball of densely compressed air in the hopes it would destabilize enemy aircraft when demonstrated it could crack a 2 and 1/2 CM wooden board that was placed 200 M away the vortex cannon on the other hand was essentially a large mortar buried in the ground it shot a special projectile made of powdered coal with an explosive core into the air the core would detonate dispersing the coal and generating an artificial vortex similar to a small [Music] tornado there would be an enormous bang an invisible Vortex would fly out disrupts the aerodynamics of the enemy aircraft and bring it crashing down well it might have worked but as is always true with Hitler it was developed too late although early tests of the vortex Cannon showed promise a battlefield version was never built a wind cannon on the other hand was built in stutgart but it never saw action against an enemy Target did they test successfully did they work all right and would they have been useful well all of them were tested all of them worked all of them produced a plug of Vortex of air that ascended up towards the clouds but they have worked in practice I doubt it very much the wind cannon may have been fanciful and unproven on the battlefield but it certainly wasn't the most bizarre concept to pass across the desks of Germany's weapon scientists another would literally shoot for the stars in the early months of 1945 the Allies continued to push German forces back to their own borders as the walls closed in on the German Reich weapons projects being developed in secret in a last attempt at Supremacy had to be abandoned perhaps the most high concept and elaborate of these weapons was designed to harness the very power of the sun the sun gun the sun gun was the brainchild of physicist Herman Obert one of the fathers of modern rocketry who wrote of the concept in the 1920s in spite of its name it's not actually a gun it was basically a large mirror which was designed mind to concentrate the Rays of the sun Obert described this mirror and the man space station it would be mounted on in his 1929 publication ways to space flight the idea was that the concave shape of the mirror would focus the sun's Rays much like a magnifying glass into a small point if built on the scale Obert had planned the amount of concentrated solar energy would have been immense now Obert actually saw it in 1929 which of course Germany was still the viar Republic then as means of achieving solar energy to help the German position but after the Nazis came to power of course everything suddenly moved focus and uh oberth was asked to design this thing as a working milit prototype expanding on ober's original concept Nazi scientists proposed using modified V2 Rockets to Ferry prefabricated mirror panels into orbit once constructed the 3 Square kilm concave mirror would orbit 88,200 km above the Earth the Sun gun would be operated by a crew who could use rocket thrusters to shift the mirror into any position needed to Target their enemies concentrating the sun's Rays into a beam so intense it would hypothe aesthetically incinerate cities but in spite of the impracticability of the thing particularly in Wartime with all the demands on gas materials and priority resources and so on they still spent 3 million marks on trying to develop this project but the effort and the powerful potential of the end product would never be tested in reality the gun's development was cut short by Germany's surrender the sun gun may have never been but similar technologies that harness and concentrate the sun's Rays to generate power have found peacetime applications 1961 uh many years later Obert came up again and said hey this is a great idea but this time we can use it for peaceful energy like I originally thought and many of the principles of the sun gun a man space station orbiting the Earth powered by the Sun and resupplied by periodic missions have survived in a peaceful context through the international space station that orbits 400 km above us today from practical upgrades to existing weapons technology to outlandish flights of Pure Imagination each new invention that emerged from World War II strove for size precision and force the development of each of these weapons had the same underlying need to put the strongest fir power the greatest advantage and the best chance of success into the hands of those who were on the ground standing against a nation's enemy and necessity that drove weapons Engineers to make huge advances in gun design fabrication and use in the field some have faded with time but others endure to this day each reflecting the vision and the inventive Spirit of those who contributed to the great technological Leap Forward that the world made during the War years and it's alth [Music] [Music]