Well, not doing them would not have saved Germany. Germany lost the moment they declared war on Russia and the US in a matter of months. If Germany had done everything right they still would have lost.
I remember seeing one of these planes at RAF Cosford when we had a school visit. I remember how small it was in comparison to every other craft and that the tour guide told us that the first thing that melted was the pilots mask. When it finally crashed there was no pilot, just remains. A real death trap. Being a pilot of that craft was akin to going on a suicide mission.
@@KristianWontroba Ikr. Ever seen the WW2 film "The Dam Busters"? The entire run on the first Death star is practically a shot for shot remake of the climactic bombing run from this war film. All the scene cuts from close ups of the aircrews to ariel shots of the attack and even to the people back at home base listening on the radio are 100% synched up with the action in A New Hope. They say amateurs borrow where geniuses steal, lol. It was certainly a genius move by Lucas.
@@Blinkerd00d I forget who did it but there's a split screen comparison to be googled of the two films showing they literally match up, even using most of the same exact dialogue. Fwiw knowing the inspiration for the death star was this "sun gun" going into ep7 makes Star Killer base an homage to SW's backstory. Not to mention it's totally on brand for the Nazis who usually tried to go bigger and more absurd with the same impractical ideas especially after a failure. Just like the Empire.
The space mirror, assuming optimal placement and 100% reflectivity, would reflect 12.25 GW of power to the Earth. Even if we assume half is lost to the atmosphere, the energy reaching the ground would be the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes of TNT exploding every second.
I recall hearing that a good chunk of the Me-262's weren't even deployed for combat but instead to sit back behind conventional fighters for "motivational encouragement".
Like when he tried to pronounce Kriegsmarine. The biggest mistake I saw was when he said that the Bismarck was slapped around by British Lancasters. As many people know, it was the Tirpitz that was sunk by the RAF flying Lancasters and dropping Tallboys. That's an amazing story.
When I lived in Vietnam, there were a couple of English speaking cops who would try to get bribes out of tourists. I learned from a German friend to say to the cop "Sprechen sie Deutsch?" Because they couldn't speak German, they would let you go. As I drove away I would shout "Không gặp lại." Which means No see you again. 😄
@@F1pidis EXACTLY! Iron sky at least was entertaining as heck and left the stoopid zombers out. The second one had me in stitches. Perfect conspiracy nerd movie.
The Komet's story is pretty hilarious in a way. Someone slapped a very volatile rocket to a wooden glider and got it to production. Managed about as many Nazi kills as Allied from how dangerous it was to fly or just to be around in general.
Thats a bit simplified but I understand people like to naturally downrate the nazi designs. The ME163 was not even used for propaganda as wonder weapon but was really a new interceptor design with an extensive development that started in 1938 before the war. It had a liquid fuel rocket engine that could be turned off and on during flight which was quite a revolutionary development. If successful it could have been exactly what the germans had needed - a fast and cheap interceptor that is hard to hit.
Love the content, Simon! Note, "Wunderwaffe" is a singular noun that translates to "wonder weapon" in English. "Wunderwaffen" is the plural form of "Wunderwaffe". When referring to more than one, you should use the plural form.
Man, the brilliance of engineers and scientists during wartime is probably the most impressive part of any war for me. The threat of war motivates soooo many people to think about problems and work together to come up with solutions. The unlimited money and cooperation from governments helps too. People who might never have come up with an idea.. scientists who may never have researched a particular thing.. all motivated towards a common goal of protecting their loved ones. It's just amazing to me.
It wasn't fumes, it was the fuel, and it could turn a person into a puddle of goop in minutes. The T-stoff was made with nearly pure hydrogen peroxide. I used to work for a company that used 50%+ hydrogen peroxide. It didn't bubble on top of the skin. It got under it and would separate the skin from the flesh. It's scary stuff. If the me 163 crashed and the T-Stoff and C-Stoff were still in the tanks it would rupture and get on the pilot. The stories of what ground crews found after a crash were horrible, to say the least.
@@Ulani101 I think you meant to say if it didn't explode when the tanks were fuelled up. Because they are supposed to explode when mixed. That's why they were in separate fuel tanks. They would take the aircraft to one location away from everything, and a truck would add one fuel. Then the aircraft was throughly rinsed and then moved to another location to have the second fuel added. They are both clear liquids so it wasn't easy to detect any spills. You just know they learned this process the hard way.
I like the line from the comic series Atomic Robo. “Ah, the Nazis. Why fully fund a single wunderwaffe when you can partly fund a dozen of them instead?”
Have you guys done an episode on Pervitin yet? If not it would make for a very interesting video. And not just in how the German fascists used it either, but also in how it was utilized across the world would make for an interesting deep dive. Sorry if parts of this comment seem a little cryptic, but youtube just simply automatically deletes comments containing certain words, what can you do.
Funny thing about the use of stimulant drugs during wwii; i read up quite a bit on this during university. There had actually been research done prior to the war that found problems with taking them. Between not having as great of an effect as desired, side effects popping up in certain individuals and addictiveness, several nations simply elected to not use it or just not issue it as much as they couldve like the UK and U.S. I feel like its a common misconception that every army was popping pills like mad.
Foo fighters were seen in the Pacific war too, and by all sides not just the Allies. German pilots saw them and feared it was a new Allied weapon, exactly the same way Allied pilots feared they were a new German weapon.
There was a DOS game called Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe which me and my Dad played back in the day. It featured all the planes mentioned here and a few others. I remember the comet being a nightmare to fly because of its fuel consumption. I think it only had enough fuel for 5 min of powered flight and had to glide the rest of the time. Fun game though.
The Komet actually had its very own aimbot, since the time on target was so short the Germs rigged its guns to a fotocell based auto targeting system, so you just had to line the craft up with the enemy, and the guns would fire on their own.
Most US ships from destroyers to battleships had aim bots as in analogue computers feed by radars. Then the Iowas was reactivated in the 1980's they found that the 1940 analogue computers was pretty much as good as the new digital who mostly copied them. Yes the digital ones was very cheap but not set up for the 16" guns so they just kept it.
@@magnemoe1... firing tables for the big guns were developed by Admiral Lee. Who was also an expert, and Olympic winning shooter, in both pistol and rifle. A very interesting individual
If it didn't break it's transmission. Germany over engineered everything...to the point that if it broke down only a trained engineer could repair it. US weapons were far simpler and many of the troops had experience either working on the farm and needing to repair broken equipment. Or were auto mechanics and could fix damn near anything
Wunderwaffes definitely made the war easier for the allies, all that time and effort spent trying to make crap that didn't work instead of refining the things that might have.
@@alfnoakes392 Almost everything anybody plays "What If" about with the Nazis wouldn't have mattered much. More tanks and planes would just use more fuel Germany never had enough of. One of very few things that might've significantly changed the timing of the wars end and possibly prevented a total defeat (still pretty unlikely) was the tech included in the type 21 Uboats. Even there they'd probably been better off adapting a lot of the improvements in making them quieter and longer ranged submerged to their more conventional type 7 and 9 boats. Of course no matter how fast and silent they could've made them the Allies were still reading all their mail and knew exactly where to schedule patrols that would "just happen" to come across them. Then there the fact they wouldn't help much at all on the Eastern Front...
One of the big problems with German manufacturing philosophy is the Army told the engineers what they wanted and didn't listen to the engineers when they made suggestions, then they would come back and halt production on what they told the engineers they wanted to make alterations based on combat experience. As opposed to say the US where the engineers were an intrinsic part of the design process from the beginning and if the field forces found something needed to be changed, they'd often build a second production line for the new product while continuing to produce the original until Line 2 was up and running then switch Line 1 over to the new equipment. Wonder Weapons, while they certainly didn't help, were not the big problem with Nazi production philosophies.
I always figured that the real main reason for the Wunderwaffen projects was to intimidate the enemy. They were all so big and austentaitous that rumors of them being developed were guaranteed to spread.
Dora at least got to play a role in Turtledove's World War book series, where it was fired and managed to destroy an alien spacecraft, simply because they didn't expect an object the size of what was fired to be a solid mass instead of some kind of missile they could fire on and destroy before it hit.
In Worldwar, the railway gun was actually used on 2 alien warships. One held much of the aliens' nuclear arsenal, important to take those out of the fight and a special operation to salvage the plutonium jumpstarted human nuclear programs
This is why drugs are bad. One minute you're chilling in your basement, the next you're demanding your failing Riech create whimsical ultra battleships and time travel.
Nuclear Weapons used on the Allied Troop build up in England would have been a better & more serious potential & that could have had a better outcome to save the Third Reich.
I know Google translate is not super accurate but I found this interesting. Wunder translates to wonder and waffe translates to weapon. However, wunderwaffe translates to magic bullet and wunder waffe translates to wonder weapon. Kind of useless trivia but I thought it was interesting.
Surprised you didn’t mention the wasserfall sam project or the actual deployed jet bomber (let alone the possibly… deployed hs162 jet fighter). Cut for time I suppose :)
The US bat bomb is an example Not a totally bad idea, but when they burned down a town near the test station the idea was scraped Also using pigeons as the 'brain' of a smart bomb
There's often a case against innovative weapons; the famous 'Bouncing Bomb' only destroyed 2 German Dams, one of which was peripheral to the effort against Ruhr industry; it was never used against shipping. The 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs both came very late in the war, which severely reduced their impact. The Allies certainly had some pretty crazy ideas too, e.g. the plan to defeat any invasion of the UK from the sea by floating oil on the sea water, then setting it on fire. There's probably a video there about Allied innovative weapons.
0:06: 🔬 Germany's Wonder Weapons during World War II were ambitious projects that were not worth the effort. 2:59: 🛸 Rumors of German experiments with anti-gravity technology and time travel during World War II are unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. 5:46: 🚢 The construction of the German battleships H-class was halted during World War II, and the aircraft carriers Graf Zeppelin and Europa were never completed. 9:01: 🔫 The Gustav and Dora were colossal railway guns designed to destroy fortifications along the French Maginot Line. 11:07: 🚀 The Wonder Weapons of Nazi Germany, including the Maus tank, V2 rocket, Me-262 jet fighter, and Me-163 rocket-powered aircraft, had potential but did not have a significant impact on the outcome of the war. 13:53: 🛩 The German Wonder Weapons, including advanced jets and rockets, were ultimately a distraction and did not contribute to Nazi victory in World War II. Recap by Tammy AI
@joseyhosey If you are so knowledagble, would this plane be detected later by radars than other fighter planes at that time, if it would be than yes it is called stealth technology, just sayin
German Wunderwaffe were an albatross for the German military.. a millstone. The world owes a debt of gratitude to the madmen who actually tried to make them happen.
Of ALL the wonder weapons the Nazis created that actually entered service, my 'favorite' -- if you could call it that -- is the Messerschmitt ME-263 Komet. It is STILL the ONLY manned rocket-propelled interceptor aircraft to be used in combat.
The myth of German advanced technology is a very recent phenomenon. During the War the head of the German air force Goring state that when war ended he was going to buy a British radio because he want something that would work for once.
A lot of their ideas were good on paper. In the real world, not so much. Some, like jets and rockets, fall under the category of "A great idea.....if we started five years ago." By the end of the war they were drafting any man who could walk and factories were turning out rifles that are half a step above zip guns. While still dumping resources into dream weapons that could only work in the minds of their creators.
Calling a full naval group against one Bismarck and one support ship "slapped around" when it was an outrageously lucky torpedo hit that took out Bismarck's ability to turn fully is a bit ludicrous. Even then the Bismarck took out HMS Hood despite being seriously outnumber, outgunned, and outweighed by the total number of ships arrayed against her. Even so it took several days of chasing Bismarck during which she was lost from observation multiple times in fog and the night. That's not what I would call "being slapped around". Yes, she was ultimately sunk, but definitely not without punching way above her weight class.
It makes you wonder how much of these projects and expansion of designs like the h class were malicious compliance to bankrupt or waste resources from within.
Rheinwschestern sometimes Rehintöchter was anit Aircraft Misselsystem that rund by a Radarwagon and the Miselaucher that fired a dadio drictet misel to the radar detet aircraift as i sad it need to much constrution capacity and whetn delet for the much cheaper comet ...
How about an episode on Kurt Diebner, and his supposed atomic bomb? The one that equally supposedly took down telephone systems with EMP, and put several senior SS officers in hospital with terminal radiation poisoning. Interesting story, if true.
The idea that the big parabolic mirror on the proposed Nazi space station designed by Oberth was some kind of solar focusing weapon is a complete myth. For a start, the size of the mirror wasn't anywhere near big enough for that purpose - it would need to be several orders of magnitude larger and the curvature would need to be way more subtle in order for the focal length to hit targets on the ground from low earth orbit. In reality the parabolic mirror wasn't a weapon at all - it was the power source for the space station. Remember that photovoltaics (aka solar panels) didn't exist at the time because semiconductor research hadn't really got going yet. The mirror was actually designed to fire a solar boiler to drive a steam turbine system to generate electricity for the space station. Even that would never have really worked as designed because any thermal power station doesn't just need a heat source: It needs an effective heat sink as well to provide cooling for the condenser side of the turbine. On earth the cooling source is easy enough if you have access to the sea, a large river or lake for cooling water. But in space the only effective cooling is by radiating heat - take a look at the size of the radiator panels on the ISS, they are almost as large as the solar panels and that's just to dump the excess heat from the people and electrical equipment on board. Radiators powerful enough to deal with the excess heat from a steam turbine would need to be impractically large - probably far larger than the entire space station itself. So solar-fired boilers in space are a bit of a non-starter.
The "sungun" idea came from before ww2, and its was way off in its design at the time. It was later thrown around as an idea for the far future by germany. It wasnt like the video suggests
Saying that the Allies "couldn't compete with the Me262 in the sky" is far from accurate. It was the British after all who first theorised the jet engine (Frank Whittle at Cambridge, 1930), as well as built the first functional jet engine. Their own Gloster Meteor jet fighter first flew in 1943 and entered service the same year as the Me262 -- in 1944. Although it was the only Allied jet fighter to see service during the war, it demonstrated that the Allies could indeed keep pace with the often overstated German innovations. After all, the British were neck-and-neck with the Germans in innovation throughout the 30's and 40's, having been the first to split the atom, discover the electron, invent radar, break Enigma, and conceptualise the field of Computer Science while building the world's first computer. And that's just the breakthroughs made at Cambridge. The Brits were arguably even more ahead of their time than the Germans, but their incredible achievements are often overlooked in the amateur-historian gushing over Soviet, American, and German war toys.
Also, tell him that the Bismarck wasn't slapped around by British Lancasters. As many people know, it was the Tirpitz that was sunk by the RAF flying Lancasters and dropping Tallboys. That's an amazing story.
The V1 buzz bomb was extremely effective, the worlds first cruise missile. It was incredibly cheap to manufacture and had huge range and payload - 200 miles and 1 ton. When dropped by airplane the range would increase dramatically. Obviously, launched at night it was very difficult to shoot down with the technology at the day.
the horton 18 desgin would become the base to the american B2 bomber. the Horton 229 was the only working Prototype for the flying wing known to exist and survive the war.
No provable fact but my father a Hungarian soldier said he saw two Me 163s breaking the sound barrier. This was after I showed him a model of one. I have know idea what sound the rocket engine made on ignition, it could be turned off and on in flight. Or possibly it could go supersonic, it was very close and had swept wings?
Saw a TV documentary a couple of days ago where searchers had uncovered a huge tunnel near the German concentration camp in Gusen, Austria. They found high level of radioactivity in the surrounding area and found several reports of several huge explosions with huge clouds of dust in 1945. Also, there were reports of Doctor Werner Von Braun visiting this camp several times which was hundreds of miles from his base of Rocket operations bordering the North Sea. Speculation is that the Germans had exploded a “Dirty Bomb”. Unfortunately for the Germans, their V-1 and V-2 Rockets only had a range of 200 to 300 miles. Hitler had always planned to explode such bombs over New York City and Washington,DC which were 3,000 miles away. So, it was impossible for them to deliver such bombs. To provide some verification to this theory, when contacted, the Austrian Government threw these researchers out of the area, and fenced this area off from further investigations. Add that to the “Wonder Weapons” of the Nazis.
Dirty bomb carrying V1s and V2s launched at Britiain might have made a big difference, especially since, unlike conventional bombs, they wouldn't have actually had to hit cities to have the desired effect. Contaminating farmland and water supplies might have been even better/worse.
@@backcountry164the Nazis were working on "atomic" weapons that's very documented. They had captured a heavy water production facility in Norway I think. The British sent in a team of commandos and they either destroyed the facility or disrupted it in some way. They may have tried tried to detonate a nuclear bomb, and instead of a fission explosion 💥 they got a fizzle. But who knows, I would think that would have made it in the history books somewhere.
@@renaissanceredneck73 That is why FDR and Churchill decided on “The Europe First” strategy in winning the War there first because they knew the rumors of Germany creating an Atomic Bomb first except their Intelligence about it was very sketchy there and after the War, they found that the Germans were not close to completion. “A Dirty Bomb” is easier to make. Of course, there was a second reason. If Stalin went unopposed, his Red Army might have first taken over Western Europe and would never leave.
@@CAMacKenzie The U.S. produced 75 percent of the weapons for the Allies. Hitler wanted it knocked out first. He was always anxious in destroying the U.S. Cities as it would “shock” that Nation out of the War. At least, he thought that way.
What people overlook I think with these counter-factual arguments like "What if Germany introduced these advanced weapons like jets earlier, and withhout meddling from up in high command." is the Allies wouldn't just sit there and let this new serious threat ruin their war efforts. Britain also had a fully functional jet programme-- they would be forced to adapt in a new arms race (as is always the way in war), and with the huge resources of America it really wouldn't have been long before Allied jets were rolling off production lines. German jets and rocket weapons were never a real threat, which is why they didn't respond in kind.
unfortunately you got Gustav wrong it was designated "80-cm-Kanone (E)" and Krupp internally called it "Schwerer Gustav" (presumably because Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was in the Advisory Board of Krupp at the time but there is no account for that) the first of the 2 units built was nicknamed "Dora", the second one never got a name and was never used in combat also it is not a railway gun, it is just a huge gun that uses railway tracks a regular railway gun would be the "28-cm-Kanone 5 (E)" (the Krupp K 5)
Gotta give credit to all the wunderwaffen projects that used up tons of Germany’s financial resources while having little if any impact on the war
not to mention gave the meth'd up nazi brass an endless supply of false hope😅
But it had a huge impact in the cold war
Well, not doing them would not have saved Germany. Germany lost the moment they declared war on Russia and the US in a matter of months. If Germany had done everything right they still would have lost.
I doubt all those people murdered by the V2 would agree with you,
@@Lotushead. The most people die in the factory to build them
the Me163 comet also had a bad side effect of liquefying the pilot if the fuel leaked.
Even worse, the pilot was surrounded by the various fuel tanks and the landing gear was a single skid.
I think he did an entire video on that plane on a different channel.
Details, details.
@@burningchrome70yea they had 2 large fuel tanks either side of them, a rectum clenching ride I'm sure.
I remember seeing one of these planes at RAF Cosford when we had a school visit. I remember how small it was in comparison to every other craft and that the tour guide told us that the first thing that melted was the pilots mask. When it finally crashed there was no pilot, just remains. A real death trap. Being a pilot of that craft was akin to going on a suicide mission.
The Sun Gun was the inspiration for Star Wars' Death Stars. Lucas had seen an article about the crazy German concept when he was a kid.
Yes! WWII was a big inspiration for Lucas with Star Wars in many ways. Didn’t know about the sun gun though. 😊
@@KristianWontroba Ikr. Ever seen the WW2 film "The Dam Busters"? The entire run on the first Death star is practically a shot for shot remake of the climactic bombing run from this war film. All the scene cuts from close ups of the aircrews to ariel shots of the attack and even to the people back at home base listening on the radio are 100% synched up with the action in A New Hope. They say amateurs borrow where geniuses steal, lol. It was certainly a genius move by Lucas.
@@johnassal5838holy crap, I thought you were exaggerating, but that was literally a 1:1 copy lol 😆
@@Blinkerd00d I forget who did it but there's a split screen comparison to be googled of the two films showing they literally match up, even using most of the same exact dialogue. Fwiw knowing the inspiration for the death star was this "sun gun" going into ep7 makes Star Killer base an homage to SW's backstory. Not to mention it's totally on brand for the Nazis who usually tried to go bigger and more absurd with the same impractical ideas especially after a failure. Just like the Empire.
@@johnassal5838 yeah, the split screen version was the one I watched lol
The space mirror, assuming optimal placement and 100% reflectivity, would reflect 12.25 GW of power to the Earth. Even if we assume half is lost to the atmosphere, the energy reaching the ground would be the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes of TNT exploding every second.
Or enough energy to get 10 DeLoreans sent back in time
This is the way
@@liamwinter4512 This is the way.
But would it help with a quick tan??
@@stupitdog9686the quickest
1:02 into orbit
4:28 innovative for the high seas
8:38 some really big rides
11:50 need for speed
I recall hearing that a good chunk of the Me-262's weren't even deployed for combat but instead to sit back behind conventional fighters for "motivational encouragement".
Actually their development was stalled because the big guy had some silly idea that they should be used as fighter/bombers.
@@Jonathan.DSet them back a couple years just to carry 500kg bombs
@@y0h0p38 His decision saved thousands of lives. Lives of the allies. 😄
As a German I love it, when English speaking people speak German words.
😂
Like when he tried to pronounce Kriegsmarine. The biggest mistake I saw was when he said that the Bismarck was slapped around by British Lancasters. As many people know, it was the Tirpitz that was sunk by the RAF flying Lancasters and dropping Tallboys. That's an amazing story.
Gesundheit!
(sorry .. that's all I know)
☮
When I lived in Vietnam, there were a couple of English speaking cops who would try to get bribes out of tourists. I learned from a German friend to say to the cop "Sprechen sie Deutsch?" Because they couldn't speak German, they would let you go. As I drove away I would shout "Không gặp lại." Which means No see you again. 😄
Pronounce
"I want sharks with frick'in laser beams attached to their heads!"
Sorry. We only have ill tempered sea bass.
I did Nazi that coming!@@JABoyle3875
Great content and excellent job with the research of the photos and plans!
Man watching this made me want to watch Iron Sky again.
Ikr
I wish there were some proper ww2 scifi movies, it's all zombie nonsense. It feels like there is so much potential...
@@F1pidis EXACTLY! Iron sky at least was entertaining as heck and left the stoopid zombers out. The second one had me in stitches. Perfect conspiracy nerd movie.
I still like how Call of Duty zombies took the idea of the German Wonder Weapons and invented fictional ones like the Wunderwaffe DG-2
Yessir! And the thunder gun
I admire Simon's courage to keep talking when somebody is firing a gun in his general direction.
The Komet's story is pretty hilarious in a way. Someone slapped a very volatile rocket to a wooden glider and got it to production. Managed about as many Nazi kills as Allied from how dangerous it was to fly or just to be around in general.
Thats a bit simplified but I understand people like to naturally downrate the nazi designs. The ME163 was not even used for propaganda as wonder weapon but was really a new interceptor design with an extensive development that started in 1938 before the war. It had a liquid fuel rocket engine that could be turned off and on during flight which was quite a revolutionary development. If successful it could have been exactly what the germans had needed - a fast and cheap interceptor that is hard to hit.
The true purpose of the Wunderwaffen was to keep engineers working on important projects to prevent them from getting drafted
Sources
Pretty sure the government could just exempt anyone they wanted from the draft lol
Some Great Photos in there! Keep it Up! Very interesting info, superb presentation!
Love the content, Simon! Note, "Wunderwaffe" is a singular noun that translates to "wonder weapon" in English. "Wunderwaffen" is the plural form of "Wunderwaffe". When referring to more than one, you should use the plural form.
Thank you... it was bugging me a bit.
Good to know
Wonderwaffles on the other hand, are a great way to start the day, especially when topped with seasonal berries, maple syrup and ice cream.
Don't get started with the wrong caption to "Sonnengewehr" and the botched spelling. I heard Sonn geweh -> Sonnen gehweg -> Sun(ny) pavement
@@malusignatiusi question the man that starts his day with ice cream.
I love your choice of subjects, very interesting approach!
Man, the brilliance of engineers and scientists during wartime is probably the most impressive part of any war for me.
The threat of war motivates soooo many people to think about problems and work together to come up with solutions. The unlimited money and cooperation from governments helps too.
People who might never have come up with an idea.. scientists who may never have researched a particular thing.. all motivated towards a common goal of protecting their loved ones.
It's just amazing to me.
Another downfall of the Me. 163 was that if the fumes of the fuel leaked into the cabin they would literally melt the skin off the pilot.
It wasn't fumes, it was the fuel, and it could turn a person into a puddle of goop in minutes. The T-stoff was made with nearly pure hydrogen peroxide. I used to work for a company that used 50%+ hydrogen peroxide. It didn't bubble on top of the skin. It got under it and would separate the skin from the flesh. It's scary stuff. If the me 163 crashed and the T-Stoff and C-Stoff were still in the tanks it would rupture and get on the pilot. The stories of what ground crews found after a crash were horrible, to say the least.
And that's only if they didn't burn or explode when mixed.
@@Ulani101 I think you meant to say if it didn't explode when the tanks were fuelled up. Because they are supposed to explode when mixed. That's why they were in separate fuel tanks. They would take the aircraft to one location away from everything, and a truck would add one fuel. Then the aircraft was throughly rinsed and then moved to another location to have the second fuel added. They are both clear liquids so it wasn't easy to detect any spills. You just know they learned this process the hard way.
Hmm Simon the real question is why you trying to hide Hitlers flying saucers and time travel machine?? Imm on to you sir
I like the line from the comic series Atomic Robo. “Ah, the Nazis. Why fully fund a single wunderwaffe when you can partly fund a dozen of them instead?”
But which one will work
Wunderwaffe DG2 was amazing at killing zombies.
Its pretty sad you’re the only nazi zombies reference ive seen😢. That DG-2 was a god send from the mystery box
Makes me think of an amazing breakfast food.. Wunderwaffle
Have you guys done an episode on Pervitin yet? If not it would make for a very interesting video. And not just in how the German fascists used it either, but also in how it was utilized across the world would make for an interesting deep dive. Sorry if parts of this comment seem a little cryptic, but youtube just simply automatically deletes comments containing certain words, what can you do.
Funny thing about the use of stimulant drugs during wwii; i read up quite a bit on this during university. There had actually been research done prior to the war that found problems with taking them. Between not having as great of an effect as desired, side effects popping up in certain individuals and addictiveness, several nations simply elected to not use it or just not issue it as much as they couldve like the UK and U.S. I feel like its a common misconception that every army was popping pills like mad.
Foo fighters were seen in the Pacific war too, and by all sides not just the Allies. German pilots saw them and feared it was a new Allied weapon, exactly the same way Allied pilots feared they were a new German weapon.
Dave Grohl had 12 aerial kills in WWII
@@Caleb1874ya The lead singer of the Foo Fighters?! Damn, he looks good for his age!
He was Lead WINGER first
All these crazy never realized projects had one effect: They saved hundreds and thousands of technicians from getting killed at the front lines.
There was a DOS game called Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe which me and my Dad played back in the day. It featured all the planes mentioned here and a few others. I remember the comet being a nightmare to fly because of its fuel consumption. I think it only had enough fuel for 5 min of powered flight and had to glide the rest of the time. Fun game though.
The Komet actually had its very own aimbot, since the time on target was so short the Germs rigged its guns to a fotocell based auto targeting system, so you just had to line the craft up with the enemy, and the guns would fire on their own.
Most US ships from destroyers to battleships had aim bots as in analogue computers feed by radars.
Then the Iowas was reactivated in the 1980's they found that the 1940 analogue computers was pretty much as good as the new digital who mostly copied them.
Yes the digital ones was very cheap but not set up for the 16" guns so they just kept it.
@@magnemoe1... firing tables for the big guns were developed by Admiral Lee. Who was also an expert, and Olympic winning shooter, in both pistol and rifle.
A very interesting individual
Is a photocell am aimbot? All it did was complete a circuit.
Yes been waiting for this one
4:09 How so? There are soldier accounts of seeing strange crafts during and after the war.
Does anyone have a clue which music is playing between 4:33 and 8:35 ?
Yes, you heard correctly: "Foo Fighter" was WW2 slang for a UFO. The band is named after the slang term.
Even the Tiger Tank was a expensive, over engineered and resources draining project. It was still effective in certain aspects.
If it didn't break it's transmission.
Germany over engineered everything...to the point that if it broke down only a trained engineer could repair it.
US weapons were far simpler and many of the troops had experience either working on the farm and needing to repair broken equipment.
Or were auto mechanics and could fix damn near anything
@philgiglio7922 Actually their Wonder Weapons helped us more than Germany. Especially after the war.
@@kevinchristensen880operation paperclip went brrrr
@@philgiglio7922Simplicity is key in the art of early war.
I would also name the submarine type XXI, which had no effect on the war but highly influenced many submarines after the war
Wunderwaffes definitely made the war easier for the allies, all that time and effort spent trying to make crap that didn't work instead of refining the things that might have.
Very true, enormous resources frittered away rather than being used to make more of the tanks/aircraft etc that had already proven effective.
Makes you wonder how many U-boats they could have built with all the tome and effort wasted on those big battleships.
@@angrydoggy9170 From '44 on the more Uboats they'd make the more the Allies would've sunk. Trained crews were a bigger bottleneck than hulls.
@@alfnoakes392 Almost everything anybody plays "What If" about with the Nazis wouldn't have mattered much. More tanks and planes would just use more fuel Germany never had enough of. One of very few things that might've significantly changed the timing of the wars end and possibly prevented a total defeat (still pretty unlikely) was the tech included in the type 21 Uboats. Even there they'd probably been better off adapting a lot of the improvements in making them quieter and longer ranged submerged to their more conventional type 7 and 9 boats. Of course no matter how fast and silent they could've made them the Allies were still reading all their mail and knew exactly where to schedule patrols that would "just happen" to come across them. Then there the fact they wouldn't help much at all on the Eastern Front...
One of the big problems with German manufacturing philosophy is the Army told the engineers what they wanted and didn't listen to the engineers when they made suggestions, then they would come back and halt production on what they told the engineers they wanted to make alterations based on combat experience.
As opposed to say the US where the engineers were an intrinsic part of the design process from the beginning and if the field forces found something needed to be changed, they'd often build a second production line for the new product while continuing to produce the original until Line 2 was up and running then switch Line 1 over to the new equipment.
Wonder Weapons, while they certainly didn't help, were not the big problem with Nazi production philosophies.
this guy is like the Johnny Sins for dokumentaries, he really does everything
I always figured that the real main reason for the Wunderwaffen projects was to intimidate the enemy. They were all so big and austentaitous that rumors of them being developed were guaranteed to spread.
Like your videos Simon!
They should have invested more on the Donier Do 335 which was relatively cheap while was the fastest piston powered fighter plane
The P-51H Mustang was faster, cheaper, lighter ... and actually managed to get into serial production.
@@53kenner It was cheeper than Me-262 .
And I see I was wrong about the speed.
Dora at least got to play a role in Turtledove's World War book series, where it was fired and managed to destroy an alien spacecraft, simply because they didn't expect an object the size of what was fired to be a solid mass instead of some kind of missile they could fire on and destroy before it hit.
In Worldwar, the railway gun was actually used on 2 alien warships. One held much of the aliens' nuclear arsenal, important to take those out of the fight and a special operation to salvage the plutonium jumpstarted human nuclear programs
@@KingAlanI true, I thought that was pretty amusing.
15:15 What is this aircraft design?
Interesting, the photo from Trondheim Norway, I believe Trondheim is where the Tesseract was found by Red Skull in the first Thor movie
You forgot the V3... the pumped cannon that Gerald Bull later tried to make for Saddam Hussein
This is why drugs are bad. One minute you're chilling in your basement, the next you're demanding your failing Riech create whimsical ultra battleships and time travel.
I heard that burp when you were talking about the Gustav lol
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their Wunderwaffen into Wunderwaffles "
Nuclear Weapons used on the Allied Troop build up in England would have been a better & more serious potential & that could have had a better outcome to save the Third Reich.
12:44 fun side note, the bat bomb might have actually been more destructive than the nukes at the time
Another Fat Electrician fan!
“D@m it Richthofen, I thought we were trough with this” Dempsey
I know Google translate is not super accurate but I found this interesting. Wunder translates to wonder and waffe translates to weapon. However, wunderwaffe translates to magic bullet and wunder waffe translates to wonder weapon. Kind of useless trivia but I thought it was interesting.
09:03 - HOLY SH*T, those are massive! 😮
So Gustav could effectively keep shooting a tank at you
Well, shouldn't we agree that he meant "kg" ?
Surprised you didn’t mention the wasserfall sam project or the actual deployed jet bomber (let alone the possibly… deployed hs162 jet fighter). Cut for time I suppose :)
The Ar 234 you mean?
@@johnassal5838 i actually meant the hs162, but i forgot the name of the ar234 so I didn't also mention it :)
Let's not forget Red Riding Hood and Butterfly. Those Germans had a twisted sense of humour, with their weapon names.
These seem like they're only things that Wolfenstein could come up with.
Slight problem with the sun gun. How do you "turn it off"?
What was the last plane shown, the green one.
Well , everyone else had crazy odd programs too. The only difference was they didn't rely on these to save their ass
The US bat bomb is an example
Not a totally bad idea, but when they burned down a town near the test station the idea was scraped
Also using pigeons as the 'brain' of a smart bomb
There's often a case against innovative weapons; the famous 'Bouncing Bomb' only destroyed 2 German Dams, one of which was peripheral to the effort against Ruhr industry; it was never used against shipping. The 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs both came very late in the war, which severely reduced their impact. The Allies certainly had some pretty crazy ideas too, e.g. the plan to defeat any invasion of the UK from the sea by floating oil on the sea water, then setting it on fire. There's probably a video there about Allied innovative weapons.
0:06: 🔬 Germany's Wonder Weapons during World War II were ambitious projects that were not worth the effort.
2:59: 🛸 Rumors of German experiments with anti-gravity technology and time travel during World War II are unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
5:46: 🚢 The construction of the German battleships H-class was halted during World War II, and the aircraft carriers Graf Zeppelin and Europa were never completed.
9:01: 🔫 The Gustav and Dora were colossal railway guns designed to destroy fortifications along the French Maginot Line.
11:07: 🚀 The Wonder Weapons of Nazi Germany, including the Maus tank, V2 rocket, Me-262 jet fighter, and Me-163 rocket-powered aircraft, had potential but did not have a significant impact on the outcome of the war.
13:53: 🛩 The German Wonder Weapons, including advanced jets and rockets, were ultimately a distraction and did not contribute to Nazi victory in World War II.
Recap by Tammy AI
Everybody knows vampires conspired to sabotage attempts to develop the sun gun.
Hey Simon, should do something with minuteman, I reckon you guys would be fun to watch.
*Sees the P1500*
Ordinatus Oberon has awoken
These Weapons came too late to make any difference .
What is missed is Horten HO229 which design features were later used in USA stealth fighter program and actual replica was created to test it
@joseyhosey If you are so knowledagble, would this plane be detected later by radars than other fighter planes at that time, if it would be than yes it is called stealth technology, just sayin
You forgot one of the most popular wunderwaffe. The ray gun! Especially after pack-a-punching it. Thing cleared zombies like nobody’s business.
It's wunderwaffle ffs.. they keep saying it wrong haha
lol
10:17 was it not used to destroy a giant deep underwater bunker owned by Belgium?
German Wunderwaffe were an albatross for the German military.. a millstone. The world owes a debt of gratitude to the madmen who actually tried to make them happen.
Of ALL the wonder weapons the Nazis created that actually entered service, my 'favorite' -- if you could call it that -- is the Messerschmitt ME-263 Komet.
It is STILL the ONLY manned rocket-propelled interceptor aircraft to be used in combat.
The myth of German advanced technology is a very recent phenomenon. During the War the head of the German air force Goring state that when war ended he was going to buy a British radio because he want something that would work for once.
A lot of their ideas were good on paper. In the real world, not so much. Some, like jets and rockets, fall under the category of "A great idea.....if we started five years ago."
By the end of the war they were drafting any man who could walk and factories were turning out rifles that are half a step above zip guns. While still dumping resources into dream weapons that could only work in the minds of their creators.
The Gustav was insane 😅
Calling a full naval group against one Bismarck and one support ship "slapped around" when it was an outrageously lucky torpedo hit that took out Bismarck's ability to turn fully is a bit ludicrous.
Even then the Bismarck took out HMS Hood despite being seriously outnumber, outgunned, and outweighed by the total number of ships arrayed against her. Even so it took several days of chasing Bismarck during which she was lost from observation multiple times in fog and the night. That's not what I would call "being slapped around". Yes, she was ultimately sunk, but definitely not without punching way above her weight class.
The audio is slightly less similar, yet now I can gear the room modes in the voicectrack.
It makes you wonder how much of these projects and expansion of designs like the h class were malicious compliance to bankrupt or waste resources from within.
And then the giant artillery cannons on trains became the concept of a YuGiOh deck.
So _that's_ where the "wonderwaffle" came from. Got it.
Rheinwschestern sometimes Rehintöchter was anit Aircraft Misselsystem that rund by a Radarwagon and the Miselaucher that fired a dadio drictet misel to the radar detet aircraift as i sad it need to much constrution capacity and whetn delet for the much cheaper comet ...
They did make the wonderwaffle - it can kill zombies at and round😋
1:07 This is literally the first time I'm hearing about this...
Editing of this video really caught me off guard lol
Someone's been watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
why didnt you include the DG-2?
How about an episode on Kurt Diebner, and his supposed atomic bomb? The one that equally supposedly took down telephone systems with EMP, and put several senior SS officers in hospital with terminal radiation poisoning.
Interesting story, if true.
The idea that the big parabolic mirror on the proposed Nazi space station designed by Oberth was some kind of solar focusing weapon is a complete myth. For a start, the size of the mirror wasn't anywhere near big enough for that purpose - it would need to be several orders of magnitude larger and the curvature would need to be way more subtle in order for the focal length to hit targets on the ground from low earth orbit.
In reality the parabolic mirror wasn't a weapon at all - it was the power source for the space station. Remember that photovoltaics (aka solar panels) didn't exist at the time because semiconductor research hadn't really got going yet. The mirror was actually designed to fire a solar boiler to drive a steam turbine system to generate electricity for the space station. Even that would never have really worked as designed because any thermal power station doesn't just need a heat source: It needs an effective heat sink as well to provide cooling for the condenser side of the turbine. On earth the cooling source is easy enough if you have access to the sea, a large river or lake for cooling water. But in space the only effective cooling is by radiating heat - take a look at the size of the radiator panels on the ISS, they are almost as large as the solar panels and that's just to dump the excess heat from the people and electrical equipment on board. Radiators powerful enough to deal with the excess heat from a steam turbine would need to be impractically large - probably far larger than the entire space station itself. So solar-fired boilers in space are a bit of a non-starter.
The "sungun" idea came from before ww2, and its was way off in its design at the time. It was later thrown around as an idea for the far future by germany. It wasnt like the video suggests
Saying that the Allies "couldn't compete with the Me262 in the sky" is far from accurate. It was the British after all who first theorised the jet engine (Frank Whittle at Cambridge, 1930), as well as built the first functional jet engine. Their own Gloster Meteor jet fighter first flew in 1943 and entered service the same year as the Me262 -- in 1944. Although it was the only Allied jet fighter to see service during the war, it demonstrated that the Allies could indeed keep pace with the often overstated German innovations. After all, the British were neck-and-neck with the Germans in innovation throughout the 30's and 40's, having been the first to split the atom, discover the electron, invent radar, break Enigma, and conceptualise the field of Computer Science while building the world's first computer. And that's just the breakthroughs made at Cambridge. The Brits were arguably even more ahead of their time than the Germans, but their incredible achievements are often overlooked in the amateur-historian gushing over Soviet, American, and German war toys.
5:04 - Quadruple turret, viz a turret for the King George V class.
The ME262 wasn't the first operational jet. That was the Gloster Meteor.
Are the sound effects abnormally loud or is it just me?
Correction~! US Battlewagons are measured in feet, pounds and inches! The USS North Carolina has 16 INCH guns! :)
“Hail Hydra”…
( 😆!…)
Well to be fair, they DID create a lot more super science weapons that actually worked. Not to mention the first Cosmic Cube.
Slava urine.
@@Reddotzebra
Actually-they didn’t “create” the cube, they _found_ it.
Someone needs to tell Simon that "Marine" as in, "Kriegsmarine" is pronounced the same in English and German.
Also, tell him that the Bismarck wasn't slapped around by British Lancasters. As many people know, it was the Tirpitz that was sunk by the RAF flying Lancasters and dropping Tallboys. That's an amazing story.
@@Jonathan.D*fixed*
@@Sharky762 Thank you sir!👍
I was watching this in landscape mode on my phone and the border changed color! How'd you do that?
Achja the Wunderwaffen, a bit of genius, some voodoo and a loooot of megalomania.
This mirror idea was revived again in Vietnam. USAF conceived a mirror to light up the jungles at night
And after all, you're my Wunderwaffe.
The V1 buzz bomb was extremely effective, the worlds first cruise missile. It was incredibly cheap to manufacture and had huge range and payload - 200 miles and 1 ton. When dropped by airplane the range would increase dramatically. Obviously, launched at night it was very difficult to shoot down with the technology at the day.
the horton 18 desgin would become the base to the american B2 bomber. the Horton 229 was the only working Prototype for the flying wing known to exist and survive the war.
No provable fact but my father a Hungarian soldier said he saw two Me 163s breaking the sound barrier. This was after I showed him a model of one. I have know idea what sound the rocket engine made on ignition, it could be turned off and on in flight. Or possibly it could go supersonic, it was very close and had swept wings?
Saw a TV documentary a couple of days ago where searchers had uncovered a huge tunnel near the German concentration camp in Gusen, Austria.
They found high level of radioactivity in the surrounding area and found several reports of several huge explosions with huge clouds of dust in 1945.
Also, there were reports of Doctor Werner Von Braun visiting this camp several times which was hundreds of miles from his base of Rocket operations bordering the North Sea.
Speculation is that the Germans had exploded a “Dirty Bomb”.
Unfortunately for the Germans, their V-1 and V-2 Rockets only had a range of 200 to 300 miles. Hitler had always planned to explode such bombs over New York City and Washington,DC which were 3,000 miles away. So, it was impossible for them to deliver such bombs.
To provide some verification to this theory, when contacted, the Austrian Government threw these researchers out of the area, and fenced this area off from further investigations.
Add that to the “Wonder Weapons” of the Nazis.
Dirty bomb carrying V1s and V2s launched at Britiain might have made a big difference, especially since, unlike conventional bombs, they wouldn't have actually had to hit cities to have the desired effect. Contaminating farmland and water supplies might have been even better/worse.
That wasn't a documentary. It was a "documentary." Similiar to "documentaries" about things like Big Foot or the dyatlov pass incident...
@@backcountry164the Nazis were working on "atomic" weapons that's very documented. They had captured a heavy water production facility in Norway I think. The British sent in a team of commandos and they either destroyed the facility or disrupted it in some way. They may have tried tried to detonate a nuclear bomb, and instead of a fission explosion 💥 they got a fizzle. But who knows, I would think that would have made it in the history books somewhere.
@@renaissanceredneck73
That is why FDR and Churchill decided on “The Europe First” strategy in winning the War there first because they knew the rumors of Germany creating an Atomic Bomb first except their Intelligence about it was very sketchy there and after the War, they found that the Germans were not close to completion. “A Dirty Bomb” is easier to make.
Of course, there was a second reason. If Stalin went unopposed, his Red Army might have first taken over Western Europe and would never leave.
@@CAMacKenzie
The U.S. produced 75 percent of the weapons for the Allies. Hitler wanted it knocked out first. He was always anxious in destroying the U.S. Cities as it would “shock” that Nation out of the War. At least, he thought that way.
Britain had the best navy for a reason. The sun never set on the British empire at one point.
Not anymore that is for sure
What people overlook I think with these counter-factual arguments like "What if Germany introduced these advanced weapons like jets earlier, and withhout meddling from up in high command." is the Allies wouldn't just sit there and let this new serious threat ruin their war efforts. Britain also had a fully functional jet programme-- they would be forced to adapt in a new arms race (as is always the way in war), and with the huge resources of America it really wouldn't have been long before Allied jets were rolling off production lines. German jets and rocket weapons were never a real threat, which is why they didn't respond in kind.
unfortunately you got Gustav wrong
it was designated "80-cm-Kanone (E)" and Krupp internally called it "Schwerer Gustav" (presumably because Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was in the Advisory Board of Krupp at the time but there is no account for that)
the first of the 2 units built was nicknamed "Dora", the second one never got a name and was never used in combat
also it is not a railway gun, it is just a huge gun that uses railway tracks
a regular railway gun would be the "28-cm-Kanone 5 (E)" (the Krupp K 5)