In movies, war is often portrayed as very linear and well-structured, at least in terms of how it is planned and executed. Things get terrifying and tense on the battlefield, but behind the scenes it seems like there is a well-oiled machine that runs the force.
In reality, war is surprisingly unpredictable, and nothing is set in stone. Being smarter than your enemy means thinking outside the box a lot, and that has led to some incredible and almost unbelievable innovations, like these from World War II.
10. Kaiten-class suicide torpedoes
The first successful test of a torpedo dates back to In 1866 , and torpedoes have been a staple of naval warfare ever since. They've gotten smarter and more powerful over the years as technology has advanced, but the basic idea of an underwater missile has remained much the same.
During World War II, the Japanese developed the Kaiten class torpedo, which was radically different from a conventional torpedo in one very important way - they were guided manually .
Essentially a very small submarine piloted by one man, they meant death for that pilot because, well, obviously. The poor sailor was stuck inside the torpedo. Like the more famous kamikaze pilots who sacrificed their lives in the sky, kaiten torpedo pilots were sealed in a tube , and then, as they approached the target, they would surface to adjust direction if necessary.
They could arm their warheads and make a run at an enemy vessel. If successful, the pilot would blow himself up along with the enemy. If not, they could make a second attempt. If that run failed, they could initiate a self-destruct, which would kill them too. Early prototypes had an escape option, but later versions did not. Death was the only outcome.
9. Lifebuoys Retteungsbojen
We've all probably seen a movie about World War II that features a dogfight where a plane gets shot down and then, moments later, the parachute opens and the pilot slowly floats to the ground. In most movies, the action continues and we rarely see what happened. But in real life, if that pilot had been shot down over water, they might have been trying to find the Retteungsboje buoy.
Part of the German war effort, Retteungsbojen were emergency rescue buoys located in the English Channel. If a German pilot was shot down and survived, he could try to reach one of the 50 or so buoys the Luftwaffe had anchored there.
Essentially a life raft anchored in the English Channel, pilots could enter the buoy and find a small living space of about 43 square feet with food, water, blankets and dry clothes. There were even games and a cooking area. The buoy could hold four people at a time, and a radio transmitter allowed them to call for rescue.
The English had similar life buoys , which offered similar amenities to allies awaiting rescue.
8. Camouflage spotters for colorblind people
Natural camouflage has probably been around for as long as hunting. After all, animals use it, and humans have probably figured out that sometimes it’s better to hide than to stand in the open. But military camouflage goes back by 1914 , meaning that by the time World War II began, it was widespread, but still fairly unique to most people who fought in the war. Finding a way to overcome this required some innovative thinking.
People who are colorblind, as it happens, are remarkably good at spotting camouflage. Because they were more likely to focus on the outlines And patterns , which distinguish objects rather than colors, they were used during the war to help spot German positions from spy planes. It has even been suggested that color blindness is not necessarily a handicap, but an evolutionary one. an advantage for hunters since the days when the key to survival was the need to detect both predators and prey in the world.
7. Earthquake Bombs
Every bomb is designed to cause some kind of damage, and the bigger they are, the more destructive they can be. The Tallboy was intended to be the most destructive bomb in the British arsenal, not because it operated above ground, but underground. It was designed as a seismic bomb, a weapon that would literally cause an earthquake and destroy everything around it.
Initial plans called for the bomb to weighed 20,000 pounds , which was heavier than any other bomb, and no aircraft could carry it. It would also have to be dropped from 40,000 feet, which, again, no aircraft could do. The designer changed his methods and came up with a somewhat more reasonable 12,000-pound bomb that would have to be dropped from 18,000 feet.
The bombs were used to destroy underground targets such as railway tunnels, submarine pens and weapons factories. The British dropped 854 of them during the war, including one discovered in 2020, exploded while being recovered from the Baltic Sea in Poland, where it had been dropped on a German ship during a 1945 raid.
6. Black Widow Silk
If you had to come up with a way to make war more terrifying, what would you include? If you suggested spiders, perhaps the infamous black widow spider, you're in luck. They actually made a significant contribution to World War II that most of us never read about in history.
Even if you've never used a firearm, you've probably seen crosshairs in pictures or movies. And while it may seem like crosshairs are just lines painted on the scope, they're not. These scopes were made with crosshairs made from black widow silk.
As early as 1943, the US military was using several spiders that were producing up to 180 feet of thread , which was then used to make scopes. They chose the black widow because, despite its dangerous reputation, it is a very slow spider, making it easier to handle. They are also not as deadly as people think, although you still want to avoid getting bitten.
Spider thread was the ideal material because its diameter was about one-fifth that of a human hair, yet it was extremely strong and difficult to break. Its elasticity ensured that stretching it for use in crosshairs worked like a charm. The army actually took over the job of silk collection , and for some people it became a side hustle long before anyone used the term.
5. Remote controlled tanks
Remote-controlled war machines are something we are all too familiar with in today's world, with drones proliferating more than anything else. But unmanned vehicles aren't as new as you might think, and the Soviets actually had unmanned tanks back in the 1930s.
The Soviets were inspired by a 1915 French project that envisioned a sort of unmanned tank that could carry a 200-kilogram or 441-pound payload of explosives to a target. In the early 1930s, the Soviets rolled out their first teletanks , made from a modernized T-18 tank that could be controlled by radio, although it proved painfully slow with a top speed of less than three miles per hour. It could move forward, backward, left and right. But it proved to be the basis for later models that could go faster and do more.
In combat, another tank controlled the teletank from behind. But a remote-controlled tank must be very well armed and is capable of using flamethrowers, smoke grenades and even time bombs.
4. Anise Balls Candy Mine Timers
The concept of a time bomb is pretty simple. You have a charge of explosive that is set to go off on a timer, set to go off after a certain amount of time. Mine with saucers was such a device, and its design was legendary. After all, who needs an electronic chronometer when a lollipop will do?
The idea behind the mines was that they could be easily attached to the hull of an enemy ship by a diver in the water. They had to go off after a certain amount of time had passed, allowing the diver to escape. And they had to be safe to use in the water.
The idea of a spring-loaded trigger was devised, and a water-soluble pellet would be used to hold the spring. It turned out that anise pellets were hard enough to hold the spring, but would dissolve like a watch in just a few minutes. 30 minutes .
3. Glider Rescue Mission in New Guinea
Rescue missions are often delicate and precarious at the best of times. When a plane crashed in New Guinea in 1945, efforts to recover survivors had to go into unknown territory, literally and metaphorically, to bring them back.
At that time, most of New Guinea was unexplored by anyone from outside. The native population was very primitive and isolated by Western standards, the way of life, and access to the unknown jungle from the outside was literally impossible.
The three survivors reached a clearing where they were found by rescue planes and local residents. Believing the locals to be cannibals, the survivors of the plane crash found themselves in a dangerous place. Until they met the local tribal leader, smiled at each other and, despite the obvious language barrier, became friends.
The paratroopers and the documentary filmmaker parachuted into the air, although there was still no escape route, and it was decided that gliders would be the best and only solution to the problem. The planes would drop small gliders that the survivors could strap themselves to, and then they would latch onto other planes that were making low passes, pulling them all to safety. And, amazingly, it worked.
2. Jetpacks
Few things signify the future as easily as a jetpack. They’ve been a staple of science fiction for years, with tales like The Rocketeer and even Iron Man essentially using jetpacks to fly. A personal flying machine that doesn’t require a large machine or wings has the tantalizing quality of science conquering nature. But the reality has also proven far more elusive. Managing fuel, propulsion, lift, navigation—there are a host of factors that, until recently, made jetpacks largely impractical. Or so it seemed.
Turns out the Nazis had jetpacks. Or at least one jetpack. Known as Himmelstürmer , it used a pulse jet engine and was designed to allow Nazi soldiers to overcome enemy defenses such as minefields or fences. The soldier could jump onto distance 180 feet from a height of 50 feet. However, it was never intended for long-term flight.
The device was never used on the battlefield, as the war had already ended by that time.
1. Stinking War
Not all weapons are meant to kill, and sometimes a non-lethal weapon can cleanse an enemy even more effectively than a lethal one. This is part of the thinking behind psychological warfare, using tools to break the enemy's spirit and, in one case, cause them to flee in a desperate panic to escape the worst of the smell.
In 1943, chemists were recruited to develop something that would later be called " "Who, me?" It would be a stench so foul it could cleanse buildings and make people sick. But ideally it would sap the enemy's morale, turning them into stinking lechers shunned by their non-smelly peers, and causing terrible embarrassment Based on these clues alone, it's pretty clear that the goal was to create a weapon that would convince people that the enemy had lost control of their intestines and was carrying a stench with them. But the reality was even worse.
The team came up with a concoction that smelled like "vomit, rancid butter, urine, rotten eggs, foot odor, and excrement." Alas, the war ended before it could be deployed on the battlefield, so we'll never know how effective it might have been.
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