HISTORY. "The Wunderwaffe" is the "miracle weapon" of the Third Reich.

The closer Nazi Germany approached at the time of its collapse, the more its leadership hoped for a "miracle weapon" (German Wunderwaffe). But the defeat of the Third Reich threw the "miracle weapon" on the dump of history, making the development of German scientists the property of the winning countries.

It is worth mentioning that it was not just about creating the newest weapons - the Nazi engineers were trying to achieve full technological superiority over the enemy. And Germany has managed to achieve a lot along the way.

Aviation

Perhaps the greatest success the German designers have achieved in the field of aviation. Namely, in terms of jet aircraft. Of course, the first of them were not without shortcomings, but their pluses were on the face. First and foremost, this is greater than that of screw aircraft speed and more powerful armament.

None of the belligerents used in the fighting as many reactive machines as Germany. Here you can recall the first serial fighter Me.262, and the "fighter" He 162, and the world's first jet bomber Ar 234 Blitz. The Germans also had a Me.163 Komet interceptor fighter, which had a liquid rocket engine and was capable of being in the air for no more than eight minutes.

Heinkel He 162 was nicknamed the "national fighter", because it was to become a mass and accessible in the development of a jet engine. He was armed with two 20 mm MG 151 cannons and could reach speeds of up to 800 km / h. Before the end of the war, only 116 He 162 fighters had been built, they were almost never used in battles.

All these planes were built serially and participated in the war. For comparison, of all the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, only Britain during the war was armed with a jet combat aircraft - fighter Gloster Meteor. But the British used it only to intercept German V-1 cruise missiles and did not send them to fight against fighters.

The fighter Me.262 / ©Depositphotos

If we talk about German jet aircraft, then some of them were used more often, others - less often. Missile Me.163 carried out only a few sorties, while Me.262 was widely used on the Western Front and was able to record 150 enemy planes on its account. The common problem of German jet fighters was their underdevelopment. This led to a huge number of accidents and disasters. It was in them that the lion's share of the new Luftwaffe machines was lost. Systematic raids by American and British aircraft led to the fact that by the end of the war the Germans had not even been able to overcome the "childhood illnesses" of Me.262 (and the Nazis had placed great hopes on this fighter).

The Messerschmitt Me.262 fighter carried a truly formidable weapon - four 30 mm MK-108 guns. One volley was enough to send a heavy bomber B-17 to the next world. But with maneuverable screw fighters heavy two-engine Me.262 was difficult to compete (played the role of a small rate of fire MK-108). By the way, the Soviet pilot-ace Ivan Kozhedub recorded one 262nd at his own expense.

The planes, which I mentioned, gained wide popularity, but a number of German aviation projects remained unnoticed. And here you can recall the experimental combat aircraft Horten Ho IX - the world's first jet aircraft, built on the aerodynamic "flying wing". It was created within the framework of the program 1000 * 1000 * 1000 - this means that the speed should reach 1000 km / h, the range - 1000 km, and the bomb load - 1000 kg. Horten Ho IX made several test flights in 1944-1945, but did not take part in the battles.

Fighter Heinkel He 162 / ©Depositphotos

Even less fortunate was the offspring of the famous German aircraft designer Kurt Tank, the Focke-Wulf Ta 183 turbojet fighter. This fighter was not destined to go to heaven at all, but it had a tremendous impact on the development of aviation. The design of the aircraft was revolutionary: Ta 183 had a swept wing and a characteristic air intake. Later, these technological solutions were used in the design of the Soviet MiG-15 fighter and the American F-86 Saber, the cult machines of the post-war era.

Throughout the Second World War, the main weapon of air combat remained guns and machine guns of different calibers. But the Germans were among the leaders in the field of creating air-to-air missiles. One of them - Ruhrstahl X-4 - had a liquid jet engine and could reach speeds of up to 900 km / h. Control after the launch was carried out through two thin copper wires. The missile could be a good weapon for combating the large and unwieldy B-17 and B-24 bombers. However, there is no reliable data on the combat use of this X-4. The pilot was hard at the same time to manage the missile and aircraft, so the co-pilot was required.

The fighter Ho IX / ©Depositphotos

They created the Nazis and controlled air-to-surface weapons. Here it is worth remembering the radio-guided planning bomb FX-1400 Fritz X, which was used in the second half of the war against the ships of the Allies. But the effectiveness of this weapon was ambiguous, and as the Allies gained superiority in the air, strikes against ground targets withdrew to the second plan for the Luftwaffe.

All these developments, of course, were ahead of their time, but they did not go to any comparison with Silbervogel. "Silver Bird" has become the most ambitious military project of the Third Reich in all its years of existence. The project was a partially-orbital bomber-space shuttle, designed to strike on the territory of the USSR and the United States. The concept was proposed by the Austrian scientist Eugen Sänger. The bomber could take on board up to 30 thousand kg of bomb load, if it was about striking the US territory - the load was reduced to 6 thousand kg. The weight of the aircraft itself was 10 tons, and its length reached 28 meters. In the tail section of the fuselage was located a liquid rocket engine with thrust up to 100 tons, on the sides there were two auxiliary rocket engines.

Fighter Focke Wulf Ta-183 «Huckebein» / ©Depositphotos

To launch the bomber, Zenger proposed the creation of a track about 3 km long. The aircraft was placed on a special sled, additional accelerators could also be attached to them. Due to this, the device had to accelerate on the track to 500 m / s, and then gain altitude already with the help of its own engines. The "ceiling" that could reach the Silbervogel was 260 km, which actually made it a spacecraft.

There were several options for the combat use of Silbervogel, but all of them were associated with a number of risks (loss of the pilot and aircraft) and technical problems, which at that time were impossible to resolve. This was the reason that in 1941 the project was abandoned. By that time he was at the stage of paper drawings. At the very end of the war, however, the German leadership was once again interested in the project, but then no one believed in its implementation. After the war, the scientists carried out calculations and found out that the device designed by Zengrer would have collapsed immediately after entering the atmosphere. At the same time, one can not but mention the audacity of German engineers, because the concept itself has outstripped the time for many decades.

Partial-orbital bomber-spacecraft Silbervogel / ©Depositphotos

Tanks

The first association at the word "Wehrmacht" is the clash of steel caterpillars and the thunder of gunfire. It was the tanks assigned the main role in the implementation of the lightning war - a blitzkrieg. Today we will not define the best tank of the Second World War, leaving aside such outstanding creations as Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger I or Panzerkampfwagen V Panther. It's about those German tanks that were not destined to go into battle.

In the second half of the war, the Nazi leadership (and first of all Hitler himself) was subject to unjustified gigantomanias (that is, the desire to implement something in an unjustifiably large scale), and this was especially noticeable in the case of tanks. If the already mentioned "Tiger I" weighed 54-56 tons, then his brother - "Tiger II" had a mass of 68 tons. On this the Nazis did not stop. At the end of the war, the gloomy genius of the German tank building gave rise to formidable, frightening and completely absurd projects.

For example, the Maus super-heavy tank is the most famous of all the little-known tanks of the Second World War. The development was led by the famous designer Ferdinand Porsche (Ferdinand Porsche), although the father of super heavy tanks can be considered the very Fuhrer. At a monstrous weight of 188 tons, the Maus was more like a mobile dot than a full-fledged combat vehicle. The tank had a 128-mm KwK-44 L / 55 weapon, and its frontal armor reached 240 mm. With an engine power of 1250 liters. from. The tank developed speed along the highway to 20 km / h. The crew of the car consisted of six people. At the end of the war, two Maus tanks were produced, but they did not manage to take part in the battles.

Super Heavy Tank E-100 / ©Depositphotos

Maus could have a kind of analogue. There was a so-called E-series - a series of maximally unified and technologically advanced combat vehicles. There were several projects of the E-series tanks, and the most unusual of them was the super-heavy Panzerkampfwagen E-100. It was created as an alternative to Maus-u and had a weight of 140 tons. The designers have created several variants of the towers of this tank. Various weapons and different variants of the power plant were also suggested. With a huge tank weight, the E-100 speed was to reach 40 km / h, but the Germans did not have time to check the technical specifications, since the unfinished prototype fell into the hands of the allied forces.

German super heavy tanks, in particular the Maus tank, have been actively popularized in mass culture in recent years. First of all in online games. It is not necessary, however, to take the "game" characteristics of these machines seriously. In the battle, such tanks were not used, which means that it is impossible to simulate their behavior. It should also be taken into account that there is very little documented information about these tanks.

Even more impressive in size, the tank was designed by designer Edward Grote. The project was named Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte, within the framework of which they wanted to create a tank weighing up to 1 thousand tons. The length of the land cruiser was 39, width - 14 m. The main weapon was to be two twin 283-mm cannons SKC / 34. The tank also wanted to supply anti-aircraft artillery - up to eight anti-aircraft guns caliber of 20 mm.

It is noteworthy that even this giant is inferior in its dimensions to another, even more incredible project - Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster. This "monster" was a super-heavy tank built on the basis of the giant railway artillery "Dora". The main difference of P. 1500 was that he had to move not by rail. There is almost no reliable information about this grand machine: it is believed that the length of the hull could be 42 m, while the armor in some places would reach 350 mm., P. 1500 could use a long-range weapon of the caliber of 807 mm, for servicing which it was intended to use the crew in 100 people. Strictly speaking, the tank was a mobile long-range artillery and could not be used on a par with other heavy or even super heavy tanks. Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster, like Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte was never produced, even prototypes of these machines did not exist.

Call all of these developments "miracle weapons" can only be in quotes. It is not clear in principle, for what super heavy tanks were created, and what function they were supposed to perform. Machines weighing more than 100 tons were almost impossible to transport. Their weight could not stand the bridges, and the tanks themselves easily sucked in mud or swamp. Moreover, despite its armor, the super heavy tanks were surprisingly vulnerable. They would be completely defenseless against Allied aviation. The hit of one bomb turned even the most protected tank into a heap of scrap metal. This despite the fact that the dimensions of these machines did not allow them to hide from air raids.

Rockets

Everyone must have heard of the German V-1 and V-2 rockets. The first of them was a plane-projectile, and the second was the world's first ballistic missile. These missiles were used in the war, but from the military-strategic point of view the result of their use was negligible. But the "Fau" rockets were a source of great problems for the inhabitants of London, which often became their target.

V-2 / ©Depositphotos

But there was also a more original project of "weapon of retaliation" - "V-3". Despite the similar names, the latter had little in common with the "V-1" and "V-2". It was a huge multi-chamber gun, also called the "High-Pressure Pump". The project was developed under the guidance of the designer August Cenders. The length of the gun was 130 m, it consisted of 32 sections - each of them had side chambers. The gun was to use special sweep projectiles, 3.2 meters long. The maximum distance of fire was 165 kilometers, but the weight of the explosive charge was not more than 25 kilograms. At the same time the gun could do up to 300 rounds per hour.

Position for such guns wanted to equip near the coast of the English Channel. They were located only 95 miles from the British capital, and the destruction of London could be serious. Despite the fact that the guns were in special protective galleries, they were completely destroyed during the air raid on July 6, 1944. As a result, the original "V-3" never took part in the war. But its reduced counterpart was luckier - LRK 15F58 was used twice for bombarding Luxembourg in the winter of 1944-1945. The maximum distance of fire for this artillery system was 50 km, the weight of the projectile was 97 kg.

The Germans were the first to create controlled anti-tank missiles. The first of these was the Ruhrstahl X-7, which existed in aircraft and land modifications. The missile control was carried out by means of two isolated wires - it was necessary to control the X-7 visually, using a special joystick. In military operations the missile was used sporadically, and the beginning of mass production prevented the end of the war.

A much more ambitious Nazi development was A-9 / A-10 Amerika-Racket. As is clear from the title, the missile was aimed at the US, so the A-9 / A-10 could become the first intercontinental rocket in the world. There is almost no reliable information about it either. In addition, after the war, the rocket was surrounded by a range of mystifications. A number of sources state that by the end of the war the rocket was "almost ready". This could hardly be true. It is doubtful that such a missile could ever be used for military purposes, it is probable that by the end of the war the Amerika-Racket project remained on paper.

The first stage of the rocket was to be the A-10 launch accelerator, which provided vertical launch and was to be separated at an altitude of 24 km. Then the second stage entered the case, which was a missile A-9 equipped with wings. It dispersed the Amerika-Racket to 10 thousand km / h and raised it to a height of 350 km. In the case of the A-9, the main problem could be a sustained aerodynamic supersonic flight, which was impossible in those years. Theoretically, the missile could fly from German territory to the US coast in about 35 minutes. The charge of the explosive was 1000 kg, and the missile was to be guided by the radio beacon installed in the Empire State Building (for installation, the Nazis wanted to use their agents). Allegedly, for guidance, a pilot could also be used, which was in an airtight cabin. After correcting the flight A-9, he had to catapult from a height of 45 km.

"V-2" was created by the outstanding German designer Wernher von Braun. The baptism of the rocket took place on September 8, 1944, and a total of 3,225 combat launches took place. The range of the V-2 flight was 320 km. This was enough to defeat the cities of Great Britain. Victims of missile attacks were mainly civilians - hits "Vau-2" cost a life of 2.7 thousand people. "V-2" had a liquid rocket engine, which allowed to develop a speed of up to 6,120 km / h.

Nuclear program

The Nazi nuclear program is a separate topic for research, and we will not delve into its essence. We only note that although the Nazi scientists made some progress, by 1945 they were far from creating nuclear weapons. One of the reasons for this is that the Germans chose a concept using the so-called "heavy water" (also called deuterium oxide, usually used to refer to heavy water, which has the same chemical formula as ordinary water, but instead of two atoms of the ordinary light isotope of hydrogen contains two atoms of the heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, and its oxygen, according to the isotope composition, corresponds to the oxygen of the air. The most important property of heavy water is that it practically does not absorb neutrons therefore, it is used in nuclear reactors for neutron deceleration and as coolant-NS). This concept was not the best, if we talk about the speed of achieving the nuclear chain reactions needed to create nuclear weapons. The heavy water plant itself was located in the Norwegian administrative center of Rjukan. In 1943, the Allies carried out the Gunnerside operation, as a result of which the saboteurs destroyed the enterprise. The Nazis did not begin to rebuild the plant, and the rest of the heavy water was sent to Germany.

There is an opinion that the Western allies after the war were very surprised to learn how far the Nazis were from the creation of nuclear weapons. So it or not, we, apparently, will never know. In favor of this hypothesis is the fact that Germany spent about 200 times less on the creation of nuclear weapons than the US needed to implement the Manhattan Project. Recall, the nuclear weapons development program cost the Americans $ 2 billion, by the standards of that time, the amount is huge (if you transfer it to the modern dollar, you will get about 26 billion).

Sometimes German submarines such as XXI and type XXIII are credited to the number of "miracle weapon" samples. They became the first in the world submarines, capable of constantly being under water. Boats were built at the very end of the war and almost did not take part in the hostilities. Strictly speaking, the war in the Atlantic was for Germany lost in 1943, and the fleet gradually lost its former importance to the Nazi leadership.

Opinion

The main question can be formulated as follows: could the German "miracle weapon" have a significant impact on the course of the war and tilt the hour of the scales toward the Third Reich? The well-known historian, the author of many works on the theme of the First and Second World War, Yuri Bakhurin answered us:

"Miracle weapons" could hardly change the course of World War II, and that's why. Due to the complexity of the construction of most similar projects, in conditions of limited resources, Hitler's Germany did not have the opportunity to establish a serial production of a "weapon of retaliation". In any case, its individual samples would be powerless against the combined might of the Red Army and the Allied forces. Not to mention the fact that many Wunderwaffe projects were technologically dead-end. Among armored vehicles, the most expressive examples are the super-heavy "rodents" - the tanks "Mouse" and "Rat". The first, after the incarnation in the metal, the Germans could not even evacuate when the Red Army arrived. The second, with the projected mass of up to 1000 tons, and was completely stillborn - it did not come to assembling the prototype. The search for a "Wunderwaffe" was for Germany a kind of military-technical escapism. Accordingly, withdraw the losing war of the Reich from the crisis at the front, in the industry, he could not.