Strange World War II Weapons from Nazi Germany, the United States, etc.
Latest hand-picked WWII news.
Department MD1: Winston Churchill`s Toyshop: Secret WWII Weapons and Gadgets
Did you know that Winston Churchill had a special chamber designed for air travel? It was a giant metal cocoon on his personal plane, complete with ventilation systems, inside which the great man would kick back and puff on his cigars. However, the pressure chamber pales in comparison to the products that flowed from his "toyshop", a secret division of the Ministry of Defence dedicated to WWII weapon research and development. Department MD1 was nicknamed `Churchill`s Toyshop` because they reported directly to the PM. MD1 were responsible for inventing a swathe of unusual bombs and weaponry, including the PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank), the first magnetic Limpet naval mines, and the Sticky Bomb.
(gizmodo.co.uk)
Allies planned to add female hormones into the fuhrer`s food to turn him into a woman
A new book called "Secret Weapons: Technology, Science And The Race To Win World War II" by Professor Brian Ford reveals strange Allied plans to win the Second World War. Allies thought that by smuggling female sex hormones into the fuhrer's food they could turn him into a woman and curb his aggressive impulses. The plot was just one of a number of schemes: Others included dropping glue on Nazi troops to stick them to the ground, as well as creating bombs made to look like everyday tins of fruit and chocolate. The plots have come to light because of the publication of new documents not previously seen because of their sensitive nature.
(walesonline.co.uk)
Project Habakkuk: Allied plan to build aircraft carriers out of ice and wood pulp
Project Habakkuk was an incredible plan by the Allies in World War II to build an aircraft carrier out of Pykrete (which consists of ice and wood pulp).
It is nice to see a longer article about this topic, since it is usually only briefly mentioned along the other strange WWII-era weapons and inventions. On the other hand, pretty much everything mentioned in the article is available on Wikipedia.
Interestingly, two modern attempts to test Pykrete constructions have resulted in somewhat conflicting data. Mythbusters successfully managed to pilot their Pykrete boat at decent speeds, while the Pykrete boat tested in the "Bang Goes The Theory" series disintegrated in the harbor within an hour.
(montrealgazette.com)
Sack AS-6 : Disc-shaped aircraft may be behind some of Nazi UFO stories
Disc-shaped WWII-era aircraft Sack AS-6, designed by Arthur Sack, may be behind some of Nazi UFO reports.
(luft46.com)
Nazis planned to build space mirror to create death ray
After the Second World War U.S. Army technical experts learned that German scientists had seriously planned to build a "sun gun," a big mirror in space which would focus the sun's rays to a scorching point at the earth's surface to destroy enemy cities.
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10 strange WWII weapons: Me109 fighters without weapons, V3 cannon, BA349 fighter didn't need runways
(10) X-Class Midget Submarines were 15.55 metres (51ft) long with a crew of 4. --- (9) V-3 cannon was supergun using multi-charges to increase velocity. --- (8) Sonderkommando ELBE consisted of Me-109s, stripped of weapons and armor to increase their speed, designed to use their propellers to destroy the bomber's tail. --- (7) Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka (Cherry Blossom) was rocket powered kamikaze attack plane. --- (6) Anti-tank dogs. (5) --- Bachem BA349 was rocket-powered vertical takeoff interceptor aircraft. --- (4) Bat Bombs. --- (3) Pigeon Guided Missile. --- (2) Project Habakkuk aimed to build aicraft carriers from ice. --- (1) Silbervogel (Silver Bird) Bomber was a rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber.
(listverse.com)
10 strange military experiments - Including: seeing infrared, injecting Plutonium shots
The U.S. Navy wanted to improve WWII sailors' night vision. Vitamin A contained part of a light-sensitive molecule in the eye's receptors, so scientists fed volunteers supplements extending their vision into the infrared region. The success had no use because a device to see infrared was developed. Japan fed its pilots a preparation that increased vitamin A absorption, improving their night vision by 100% in some cases. --- American scientists, building atomic bombs, wanted to know more about the dangers of plutonium. Testing began on April 10, 1945 with the injection of plutonium into the victim of a car accident in Oak Ridge.
(livescience.com)
Strange (and worst) WWII weapons: Pigeon-Guided Missiles, Flying Jeep, Ice Ships (Article no longer available from the original source)
(1) American B.F. Skinner thought up the idea for "Project Orcon" - the pigeon-guided missile. The control system had a lens attached to the missile which projected an image of the target to a screen, which was pecked by trained pigeons, determining where the missile hit. (2) In 1940 the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment in UK began on attaching rotor blades to a jeep (Rotabuggy). The project became outdated with the Horsa II and Hamilcar gliders. (5) In 1942, the allies were suffering heavy losses of merchant ships to U-boats. Lord Louis Mountbatten suggested building ice ships.
(uniqueupdates)
Tiny poison dart bombs developed by British scientists during World War II
Britain and Canada developed poison darts, to be dropped in cluster bomb style weapons, during WW2. The scientists asked Singer Sewing Machine Company to provide needles to equip the darts, to be laced with a poison that could cause death "within 30 seconds". Military planners thought mass use (500lb cluster projectile containing 30,000 units) of the 4gram darts could be more effective against troops on open ground or in trenches than bombs. In 1942 bacteriologist Paul Fildes wrote to Singer requesting sewing machine needle samples: "[it is] a little difficult to explain what I want sewing machine needles for... [but] the knife-shaped point is definitely essential."
(telegraph.co.uk)
Radio-controlled and remote-controlled WWI, WWII weapons
OQ-2 Radioplane aka "Dennymite" (1935). WWI hero Reginald Denny opened a hobby shop in the 1930s, and when the WWII loomed, he introduced army personnel to their first target drone, the RP-1. (And it was at Denny's factory in 1944 that an army photographer spotted a super hot Rosie the Riveter, who went platinum blonde and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe) --- Fritz X guided bomb (1939) was German air-launched anti-ship missile, with radio-controlled fins. AKA: Ruhrstahl SD 1400 X, Kramer X-1, PC 1400X or FX 1400. --- Goliath remote-controlled tank buster (1940) was a small tank-killing and demolition vehicle, also known as Goliath tracked mine or beetle tank.
(gizmodo.com)
Weird Weapons: The Axis -- WWII documentary
1939-1945 the world was locked in a fierce military struggle. When the smoke of World War Two cleared, off-the-wall stories of extraordinary armaments began to emerge. This WWII documentary reveals far fetched weaponry dreamed up by Allied and Axis scientists. From a battleship made of ice, to a fleet of pigeon-guided missiles, film examines the weird weapons of World War II. In an even stranger attempt at animal-based warfare, the "bat bomb" (to be released over Japanese industrial targets) - a project endorsed by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt – was orchestrated by an American dentist.
(thehistorychannel.co.uk)
Flying Jeep - Rotabuggy by Raoul Hafner
The work of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment at Ringway on the Rotachute from 1940 onwards led to the suggestion that the free-wheeling autogyro principles could also be applied to larger loads. Raoul Hafner suggested the Rotabuggy, a Jeep ("Blitz Buggy") with rotors, and the Rotatank (modified Valentine tank). Preliminary tests involved loading a Jeep with concrete and dropping it from 7 ft., proving that the vehicle could survive intact from impacts of up to 11g. The Rotabuggy, camouflaged, carrying RAF roundels and a prototype "P", was tow tested and reached gliding speeds of up to 65 mph.
(unrealaircraft)
9 insane weapons of war, many developed during World War II
Bat bombs were tiny incendiary bombs bound to bats, developed by the U.S. with the hope of attacking Japan. The bats would disperse, then at dawn they would hide in buildings and timers would ignite the bombs. The bat bomb idea, by Lytle S. Adams, was approved by Roosevelt. --- "Who Me?" was a top secret sulfurous stench weapon by the American OSS to be used by the French Resistance. It was meant to be sprayed on a German officer, humiliating him. --- Soviet Anti-tank dogs were hungry dogs with explosives tied to their backs and trained to seek food under battle tanks. By doing so, a detonator would go off, triggering the explosives and damaging the military vehicle.
(oddee)
A huge Nazi gun filled 16 rail cars (Article no longer available from the original source)
Ed Smith and his buddies weren`t the ones who stopped a huge Nazi railway gun that could have wiped out London, but they recognized history when they saw it. Soldiers in the Army`s "C" Battery, 182nd Field Artillery Battalion, came upon the behemoth — so large it filled 16 rail cars — in Northern France, after an Allied air attack had stopped it in its tracks. If it had been installed as planned on the French seacoast and aimed at England, its 50-mile range could have destroyed that city.
(shelbystar)
Mines in the sky and other wartime oddities - A Summer Bright And Terrible (Article no longer available from the original source)
Hitler's Luftwaffe was supposed to reduce Britain to rubble that summer. Everyone knew it could. The German bombers were too fast, too high and too strong for the English fighters' puny machine guns. But by 1940, Air Marshall Hugh Dowding could see them coming, thanks to radar. During the Battle of Britain, Dowding began having encounters with the ghosts of the pilots he lost. Eventually, he went the whole psychic route, worked with a medium, made contact with pilots who had passed beyond and passed along their messages to their widows. The science adviser Lindemann got the idea of seeding the sky with aerial mines on parachutes in front of the German bomber formations.
(palmbeachpost)
Improbable but true - Allied top secret project to build ice ships
In 1942 the Allies were developing plans for the re-occupation of Europe, and Winston Churchill favoured large floating platforms to support the landings. In addition the allies had heavy merchant shipping losses from German U-boats, due to "mid Atlantic Air Gap." Churchill welcomed the idea of building large ships made of ice as presented to him by Lord Louis Mountbatten - Chief of Combined Operations, which developed equipment for offensive operations. One of his advisers presented the idea of constructing "berg-ships", up to 4,000 feet long, that could be made from ice. The ships would be insulated and cooled, made practically immune to bombs or torpedoes.
(combinedops)
Project Habakkuk - Building an aircraft carrier out of Ice
Project Habakkuk was a WWII plan to build an aircraft carrier out of Pykrete (wood pulp and ice), for use against Nazi U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. Geoffrey Pyke conceived the idea while organizing the production of M29 Weasels for Project Plough. Steel and aluminium were in short supply, and he realized that the answer was ice, which could be manufactured for only 1% of the energy needed to make the same mass of steel and suggested that an iceberg be levelled to provide a runway and hollowed out to shelter aircraft. Naval architects had created 3 versions of Pyke's original idea, which were discussed at a meeting with the Chiefs of Staff in August 1943...
(wikipedia.org)