All language subtitles for Modern.Marvels.WWII.S01E01.Super.Weapons.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

They're
the most powerful weapons wielded

in the largest conflict
the world has ever seen.

From flying bombs fired off
steel catapults like pinballs...

These countries weren't
just trying to win battles,

they were trying
to terrify their enemy.

...and giant cannons bigger
than a three-storey building...

It's the largest piece
of artillery that's ever been built.

Nothing like it
has existed before or since.

...to flame-spewing technology

that makes the battlefield
a raging inferno...

It isn't just a tank. It's an
armoured, fire-breathing dragon.

...these are just some
of the revolutionary war machines

built to unleash
maximum destruction.

Having the more powerful gun,
the more powerful ship

and the more powerful bomb
determined who was gonna win.

Now World War II superweapons...

on Modern Marvels.

On a quiet Sunday morning, dozens
gather in the Royal Military Chapel,

not far from Buckingham Palace.

All these people,
they're packed in the church,

and the quiet is disturbed...

by a strange buzzing sound.

As they're contemplating
what that noise is,

this massive explosion
just rips through the chapel...

...and completely obliterates it.

121 people
are instantly killed

and 141 more are gravely wounded.

The cause of this carnage
is Nazi Germany's

most fearsome weapon yet...

The V in V-1
stands for 'Vergeltungswaffen',

or 'vengeance weapon.'

It's the world's first
self-guided missile

that's used in combat.

The V-1 is an advanced technology.

The weapon flies itself
to the target.

It's not under human control.

Prior to the creation of the V-1,
if you were trying to drop a bomb

on a target,
you had to fly the plane.

You're risking having the plane
shot down and losing

all that expensive equipment along
with the lives aboard the plane.

But the V-1 changes all that.

Not only is the V-1
the first weapon of its kind,

it also packs over 1,800lb
of explosives:

about three times greater
than the average bomb.

In terms of impact,

a standard World War II bomb
can wipe out a car.

But a V-1 flying bomb,
it can obliterate an entire house.

Nothing else in the sky
makes a sound

that can compare
to the distinctive buzzing sound

produced by the V-1 flying bomb:
people on the ground hear it coming.

People have, then, this
growing sense of urgency and doom,

because what if it comes down here?

The V-1 has what's known as
a pulse jet engine.

It's burning fuel in these rapid
bursts, which creates propulsion.

And it's doing this
about 50 times a second.

And so those mini explosions create
that distinctive buzzing sound.

But what makes the V-1
truly terrifying...

is the technology that lets it
hit London with lethal accuracy.

The V-1 rocket is the first weapon
with a built-in targeting system.

The thing that makes this
so revolutionary

is that this is long before
there were microchips or GPS.

To get a V-1 flying bomb
into the air,

there's a steam-powered catapult
that launches it off a ramp.

The weapon accelerates
0-200mph in two seconds.

That's faster than
a Formula One race car.

After launch,
the simple, but brilliant,

guidance control takes over.

A small compass inside the nose
detects what direction

the bomb is heading and then sends
signals to the tail rudders

to adjust its path
and keep the weapon on target.

There's also a tiny spinning
propeller on the front tip.

Each rotation measures how far the
bomb has travelled through the air.

When it hits the preset distance
to London,

explosive bolts in the tail section
cut the rudder control lines.

This causes the V-1
to fall into a steep dive

and drop out of the sky
onto its target.

Germany launches
more than 8,000 V-1s at England...

as the Royal Air Force scrambles
to find a way to stop them.

The British build
a ring of balloons around the city,

hoping that the V-1s
will collide with the balloons

and blow up harmlessly
above the population.

Still, even with all of that,

almost 2,500 V-1s make it through
and explode in London.

The British come up with what can
only be described as a...

beyond-insane idea.

Some daredevil RAF pilots are like,
'Let's use our wings

to tip the missile off its course
so it doesn't hit its target.'

The problem with that is that you've
got to be beyond pinpoint accurate

or you risk accidentally
blowing yourself up.

The V-1 campaign eventually causes

almost 40,000 people
to be killed and wounded

by an entirely autonomous weapon:
this is unprecedented.

The V-1's power to destroy
casts a dark shadow over London.

But an even deadlier German
superweapon will soon emerge...

and it's completely silent.

Nearly three months
after the first V-1 attack,

an early autumn evening is shattered
by a devastating blast...

that arrives without warning.

Eleven houses
are demolished instantly,

and damage ranges
as far as 500ft away.

Because it doesn't
make any noise,

no-one heard it coming,
no-one knows where it came from.

The Government decides they have
to come up with an explanation,

so they get a cover story: they
claim that it was a gas explosion.

The real reason this happens
without any buzzing sound

is because this explosion
isn't caused by a V-1 buzz bomb.

This is the V-2.

What makes the V-2 rocket
so powerful

is that its explosive payload
is enough to level a city block.

The V-2 marks a dramatic
escalation of destructive power,

because it is
the world's first ballistic missile.

What makes a ballistic missile...

different than just a regular
missile is the path of its flight.

A regular missile, when it's fired,

just goes
straight toward its target.

But a ballistic missile gets shot
straight up into the sky

and follows this high-arcing path
that takes it to the edge of space.

When it reaches the top of its arc,
the rocket engines cut off,

and gravity brings the missile back
down to Earth

at incredible rates of speed.

The V-2 rocket will reach
an altitude of around 300,000ft.

To put that into perspective,
the highest-flying planes

of World War II
were only reaching 40,000ft.

So the V-2 rocket
is hitting an altitude

almost eight times higher than that.

General Walter Dornberger,
who controlled

the V-2 development programme, said,
'We have entered the Space Age.'

Because of the fact that a launch
crossed 60 miles above the Earth,

entering outer space
for the first time.

While the V-1 flies at 400mph,

the ballistic arc of the V-2

pushes its speed to nearly...

3,600mph is five times faster
than the speed of sound.

It is physically impossible
to hear it coming.

As a result of V-2 attacks,
the British are dealing with

thousands and thousands of people
who have injuries to their eyes

because the weapon moves so fast,

when the explosion occurs,
you don't even have time to blink.

Between September 1944
and March 1945,

Germany launches nearly 1,500
V-2 rockets at the London area...

...reducing entire city blocks
to smoking rubble.

After the war, the US government
comes into the custody

of surviving examples
of the German V-2,

along with some of
the German scientists

that had developed them
to begin with.

And the V-2 becomes the prototype
that will lead to nuclear missiles,

and eventually,
develop the technology

that will take us to the moon
in 1969.

The entire US space
programme is founded on the V-2.

It's such an irony that this weapon
of war becomes the tool

that then becomes a whole era
of space exploration.

While Germany's V-2
ignites the Space Age,

Russia invents
a radically different rocket weapon.

German forces storm the Soviet Union

in the largest land invasion
in history: Operation Barbarossa.

But the Russians have a deadly
surprise waiting for them.

Russia invents this weapon
called the Katyusha.

It's kind of like
the shotgun of rocket launchers,

because it has 16 tubes

that can fire 16 rockets
in a massive barrage.

Katyusha rockets are as fast as
a Boeing 737 jet at full throttle.

They're going...

And they're screaming down
in large numbers.

So in less than a minute,
a barrage of Katyusha rockets

can absolutely devastate an area
the size of a football field.

Just three weeks after
the start of Operation Barbarossa,

Russia unleashes the Katyusha
on the Nazis for the first time.

A Katyusha attack
is not a surgical affair.

You pick an area downrange,

bombard that area
and fill it with exploding rockets.

The Germans have nothing
that they can do to stop it.

Almost as terrifying to the German
troops as the explosions themselves

is the unholy noise of
the Katyusha rockets

as it rained fire on their position.

The Katyusha produces
an ear-splitting

screeching sound
on the way to the target.

Just imagine dozens and dozens
of rockets howling down at you

with that screeching noise:
it was terrifying.

Many of the Germans,
upon seeing this on the battlefield

for the first time,
give it the nickname Stalin's organ,

and that's because the launchers
have a little bit of a resemblance

to a pipe organ, but then also,

like a pipe organ,
they make a tremendous sound.

Beyond its overwhelming
firepower and chilling shriek,

what makes the Katyusha
truly effective

is its ability to strike...
and then vanish.

The Katyusha is immune
to counter battery fire,

cos they're usually
mounted on trucks.

They launch their rockets,
and they just scoot somewhere else.

They eventually even put
Katyusha launch rails

on Studebaker trucks
from the United States.

So you get the strange irony of
this terrifying Soviet weapon

that has been driven
to the battlefield by a truck

that was made in Detroit, Michigan.

The Katyusha rocket
is such an effective weapon,

the Russians continue to use it
throughout the war,

driving the Germans from Russia
all the way back to Germany.

Coming up...
America's B-29 Superfortress

dominates the skies.

This was the plane
that changed everything,

and only the US had it.

This technology
seems like it's something out of

a contemporary
video game, but it's from the 1940s.

And later,
the British army builds

the most terrifying tank of the war.

The Germans watch
helplessly as the tank hurls flames

burning at more than 2,000F.

Despite years of heavy
losses, Japan refuses to surrender.

Under cover of darkness, a massive
fleet of American bombers

descends on the Japanese capital...

...dropping tons of explosives
that reduce the city...

to smouldering ruins.

The air raid over Tokyo
is even more deadly

than the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This is all the handiwork
of 279 B-29 bombers,

...the most advanced bomber
of the Second World War.

From wingtip to wingtip,
the B-29 is 140ft long,

which is a massive wingspan.

It's nearly half the size
of a football field.

Even the price
of the B-29 bomber is huge...

It is the single-most expensive
weapons programme of the entire war,

even more expensive
than the Manhattan Project.

The B-29 is so enormous,

it's nicknamed the Superfortress.

The plane is engineered
from the ground up

to fly higher and farther
than any other bomber of the war.

The problem the B-29 is intended
to solve is the problem of distance.

How are you going to carry
a whole load of bombs

all the way across the vast
distances of the Pacific to Japan

and make it all the way back
without refuelling?

The B-29 had a tremendous range.

It could fly up to 4,000 miles
on a single tank of fuel,

which is double the distance
of the B-17's range.

The reason the B-29 can fly
all the way to Japan and back,

which no other bomber
could do at the time,

is because it's built
so it can fly at 30,000ft.

When you're flying at 30,000ft,
the air is thinner,

so you can go much farther
cos you're using less fuel.

While modern jets
routinely fly above 30,000ft,

the B-29 is the first large plane
to do so.

The secret is a key innovation
that allows its engines

to operate at higher altitudes.

The engines on a regular
World War II bomber

need to burn a lot of fuel
to drive its propellers.

But at high altitude,
there isn't enough oxygen

to burn fuel efficiently
because the air is so thin.

So as a result,
the engines lose power.

And before you know it, the plane
starts to fall out of the sky.

What's different about the B-29
is that its engines are equipped

with devices called turbo
superchargers,

which suck in air,
run it through a compressor,

and then they squeeze the air
to make it more dense.

This process
boosts oxygen levels enough

so that the engines can continue
to burn fuel at a high altitude

and maintain full power.

The B-29 doesn't just fly
higher than any other plane:

it also incorporates revolutionary
technology in its weapons systems.

We think of
the World War II bombers

of having gunners standing there
shooting out the sides,

or out the back, but that's not how
it works on a B-29.

General Electric builds this
groundbreaking analogue computer,

which is designed to both aim
and fire the B-29's gun turrets.

This is easily
one of the most advanced

pieces of technology
of the entire war.

Each of the five
machine gun turrets on the B-29

is controlled by this revolutionary
computer technology.

The whole thing works like an
early computer-guided aiming system.

Essentially, a crewman follows
the target through their sight,

and then the computer
instantly calculates the distance,

angle, and speed to that target,

and it starts firing the bullets
not where the target is...

but where it's gonna be
when the bullets arrive.

The computer
made it possible for aerial gunnery

to be vastly more effective

than when it was
just in the hands of a gunner.

This technology seems like
it's something out of

a contemporary video game,
but it's from the 1940s.

Without the B-29,

we couldn't have attacked Japan
in the way that we did.

This was the plane that changed
everything, and only the US had it.

While the Americans build
World War II's most advanced bomber,

their British allies
invent game-changing bombs.

By the middle of World War II,
the Nazis have built these...

fortifications that have these
ridiculously strong defences,

with 20ft-thick reinforced concrete.

So the bombs would come down
and not even make a dent.

This is a huge problem
for the Allies.

A British engineer named Barnes
Wallis comes up with a solution

on how to bust through
20ft of concrete.

He calls it...

The Grand Slam is
the largest conventional bomb

of World War II,
and it's not even close.

It's literally the size
of a school bus.

The average bomb is, like, 500lb.

Then you get to
the Grand Slam bunker buster...

Forty times the size of an average
aerial bomb dropped in World War II.

The unmatched size
of the Grand Slam

delivers earth-shattering explosions.

The Grand Slam is designed
to penetrate solid concrete.

And that's because of its shape.
It's sort of like a bullet.

It's very streamlined.
It comes to a point.

So when it hits that concrete,
it's just spreading it open,

slicing like a knife through butter.

Just one Grand Slam bomb

took out one of Germany's main rail
lines in March of 1945:

this concrete bridge called...

...that had survived 54 previous
bombings by regular bombs.

The Grand Slam is so effective,

it even penetrates
the Nazis' notoriously thick

and well-defended U-boat pens,

taking down reinforced concrete
walls 20ft thick.

Despite the Grand Slam's
immense destructive power,

it's not suited for every mission.

To destroy three heavily defended
hydroelectric dams

in Germany's Ruhr Valley,

the British must develop
a radically different kind of bomb.

The Ruhr Valley
is an industrial area.

And so the idea they have is that
they can destroy dams that are

providing power and stop all that
manufacturing in the Ruhr Valley.

The problem is these dams
are virtually impossible to bomb.

The big challenge is
you got to apply explosive force

at the base of the dam
below the waterline,

but the Germans have installed
netting that protects the dam,

so you can't carry out
a standard torpedo attack.

How do you design a bomb that can
take out a dam from the bottom up?

Well, you turn to the same genius
that invented the Grand Slam...

Barnes Wallace
designs an ingenious weapon,

codenamed 'Upkeep',
better known by its nickname...

Just like the name says,
the bouncing bomb has one job,

and one job only, to literally
bounce across the surface

of the water and skip over
the defensive netting

that protects the dam
and then detonate against the wall.

Here is how
the bouncing bomb works:

when it's dropped
from a fast-moving plane,

there is a motor that makes it spin
in the backwards direction,

and then it goes down
and it hits the water surface.

On the one hand, it still has that
forward momentum from the aeroplane.

And because it's spinning backwards
every time it hits the water,

it doesn't submerge, and that way,

it could bounce its way to the
target and hopefully eliminate it.

Once they have
their bouncing bomb,

they launch an operation:
it's called Operation Chastise.

And that comes to be called
the Dambuster Raid.

The bombers swoop in one by one,
release their bouncing bombs

spinning at 500 revolutions
per minute.

The spin allows them
to skip over the water,

and therefore,
over the defensive torpedo netting.

They hit the side of the dam wall.

The spinning bomb hugs the wall,

sinks to depth, and then... boom!

By releasing this very specialised
bomb in a special kind of attack,

it causes widespread flooding
and knocks out

the industrial productive capacity
of an entire region.

No other weapon could have
successfully completed

this mission the way
that the bouncing bomb did.

Coming up...
Germany builds a massive gun

that delivers destruction
on an unprecedented scale.

The barrel of this gun
is 106ft long:

that's a bigger gun than had ever
been deployed anywhere in the world.

Three years
before the start of World War II,

the Nazis are already plotting
how to bring Europe to its knees.

Hitler orders the creation
of a massive super-cannon

designed to inflict
earth-shattering destruction.

It's called the...

'Schwerer' is the German word
for heavy,

and 'Gustav' is
the weapons designer Gustav Krupp,

who manufactured
this incredibly large gun.

Schwerer Gustav is like

the Mount Everest
of artillery pieces: it's massive.

It's the size of a four-storey
building laid on its side.

This gun weighs 1,350 tons,

more than three fully loaded
747 jumbo jets.

That's a bigger gun than had ever
been deployed anywhere in the world.

The Gustav gun is a great example
of what Hitler calls Wunderwaffen,

or wonder weapons, weapons that
are so big, they are so powerful,

it's not just that they do damage,

it is a massive way
to project power.

When the Gustav gun
makes its debut in combat,

it delivers a shocking display
of raw firepower.

The first use is against
the Soviet Union in July of 1942,

when they're trying to take
the critical naval base

in Port of Sebastopol in the Crimea.

The first shot...

...is so deafening
that it shatters windows...

...for miles around.

The Schwerer Gustav fires

the heaviest artillery shells
in history.

They weigh over seven tons,

which is more than
two full-sized pickup trucks.

They're so big that engineers
designed the Gustav with elevators

to hoist these shells
onto the firing platform,

where they're shoved into the barrel
using a plunger.

Once it's ready to fire, aiming
this huge gun is another ordeal,

because its enormous barrel
only tilts up and down.

So crews have to lay a curved
stretch of reinforced train track

and slide the entire gun along it
to aim the barrel left or right.

And when it fires, the Gustav
can hurl a shell more than 20 miles.

Schwerer Gustav
is a force to be reckoned with.

At Sebastopol, it knocks out
four Soviet fortifications...

...and then devastates an underground
ammunition storage facility

that's 100ft deep -
that's 10 storeys.

Hitler loves the weapon

and wants to introduce it
into the Battle of Leningrad.

But moving Schwerer Gustav
from point A to point B

is a massive undertaking.

This thing is so heavy, it
has to be moved on railway tracks.

It takes a crew of 2,000 men

to get the gun into position
for firing.

Because of all the difficulties
of moving the Gustav gun,

the Germans can't even get it to
Leningrad to join the siege there.

So it's transported back to Germany
and then scrapped,

because Hitler can't let
the largest artillery weapon

ever built fall into enemy hands.

Because the Schwerer
Gustav can only travel by rail,

Germany also develops
a more mobile mega-cannon...

...called the...

The Karl-Gerat siege mortar,

it's like the little brother
to the Schwerer Gustav,

except in this case, little is the
size of a two-storey house.

What makes
the Karl-Gerat incredible

is that it's mounted
on these huge tank tracks.

So, an operator can drive it
around the battlefield.

The shell that the Karl-Gerat fires
weighs more than...

By contrast, a regular mortar shell
weighs only...

So we're talking
orders of magnitude difference.

The recoil is so strong

that it actually had to sit on its
own cradle to absorb that shock,

otherwise it would
just break itself.

The Karl-Gerat's cradle
is attached to rails,

which act like shock absorbers,
allowing the barrel

to slam backwards safely
after each shot.

Engineers also designed the mortar's
wheels to be lifted so that

the entire machine could be lowered
flat on the ground before firing.

This allowed leftover recoil force
to be dispersed into the earth.

While the Karl-Gerat unleashes

massive amounts of firepower...

Germany also produces
an enormous tank

built to dominate the battlefield.

To build this incredible new tank
that will be bigger,

and more powerful,
than any tank ever built,

Hitler enlists the services
of Ferdinand Porsche.

Instead of building
yet another sports car,

Porsche designs the...

But it's obvious
that the name is ironic,

because the Panzer Maus
is the largest tank...

ever built in world history.

The Maus weighs 200 tons,
give or take:

by comparison, your average American
main battle tank is roughly 30 tons.

When it comes to the gun
on the Maus, they design a turret

that can mount the very powerful...

...which is almost twice as big...

as the 75mm main gun
on the American M4 Sherman tank.

After the Allies
invade Normandy,

only two Panzer Maus tanks
are ever built.

But beyond its record-breaking
size, the Maus is also remembered

for its revolutionary
hybrid-electric engine.

The Maus has a gasoline engine
that powers a generator

that then turns the electric motor.

That gives it enough torque to move
its 200 tons across the battlefield.

People are often surprised
to learn that as we drive around

our city streets
with hybrid electric vehicles today,

the development of this technology
dates all the way back to the 1940s.

More than 28,000 British
soldiers land at Sword Beach,

where they face heavy machine-gun
fire from German defenders...

until the Allies deploy
a devastating new superweapon.

Suddenly, a British tank clatters
off a landing craft onto the beach,

and instead of shooting a cannon,

it spews raging streams of fire.

For the Germans,
it's nothing short of terrifying.

The Germans watch helplessly
as the tank hurls flames

and causes
unimaginable destruction and chaos.

This fearsome weapon
is a specially modified British tank

known as the...

The Germans
had seen flamethrowers before.

They'd just not seen one mounted
inside an armoured fighting vehicle

that's capable of spraying the flame
out to 150 yards.

That's a football field and a half.

The secret
to the Crocodile's incredible range

is the unique fuel
that creates its flames.

Before the Crocodile, many earlier
flamethrowers used regular gasoline.

But gasoline is a thin liquid,

so it can't travel very far
when it's shot out of a nozzle,

because it immediately disperses
into a mist,

so the flame loses momentum.

So to solve this problem, British
engineers add a special chemical

that's created by mixing fuel
with aluminium stearate,

which is this white waxy powder
to make gasoline thicker.

So instead of scattering,
it holds together

in this heavy stream of fire
with far greater range.

German troops have no
protection from the vicious flames

unleashed by the Crocodile.

During the battle
in Northern France,

the Crocodile becomes very important
because there's a lot of

heavily fortified concrete bunkers.

But the Crocodile can roll up
and shoot flame inside.

There's an argument
that the Churchill Crocodile

saved more lives than it took,

because the intimidating qualities
of that flame compelled

a large number of Germans to throw
down their weapons and surrender.

Despite the Crocodile's incredible range

and devastating firepower,

it's not designed
for every battlefield.

To fight the Japanese
in the dense jungles of the Pacific,

the United States unleashes...

the...

The Mark 2-2 flamethrower is the
individually portable flamethrower

that's being used by
the American military after 1944.

It's 70lb: it's about like
carrying a keg on your back,

except that its contents
are vastly more flammable than beer.

The United States uses this
flamethrower to attack hard-to-reach

Japanese positions that are hidden
in caves and foxholes.

It's the most destructive
handheld weapon

wielded in the Pacific Theater,

and it's a major upgrade
over earlier flamethrowers.

Early flamethrowers used a tiny...

pilot flame at the tip of the nozzle
to ignite their fuel.

But those open flames
could blow out in the wind,

leaving the operator with nothing
but a stream of unlit gasoline.

The Mark 2-2 fixes that

with a built-in ignition system
on the nozzle.

Each time the trigger is pulled,
a small charge fires,

creating a spark
right at the nozzle

and igniting the fuel instantly
shot after shot.

The Japanese clearly understood
what a unique danger

was represented by the Mark 2-2
flamethrower system.

And so that means that the
individual carrying the flamethrower

is going to draw automatic weapons
fire from multiple sources.

Because they know this is
the only guy that can destroy us.

But both the Mark 2-2
and the Crocodile pale in comparison

to the most lethal new fire
weapon of the war...

We're all familiar with napalm
firebombs from the Vietnam War,

and the destruction
that they can cause,

but what you might not know
is that napalm was actually created

back in 1942 by Harvard scientists
for the US military.

Napalm is essentially made
by mixing gasoline

with naphthenic and palmitic acid.

Naphthenic, palmitic: napalm.

Napalm's burning power
comes from the fact

that it's like
a sticky gasoline gel.

In fact, we call it jelly gasoline.

And in this form,
it burns far longer than raw fuel.

Imagine a substance
that's very sticky,

but it burns at 2,300 degrees:

the same temperature as molten lava.

And once it sticks to something,

it will burn
until everything is reduced to ash.

When napalm is first deployed in
France, the effects are devastating.

A single cluster of napalm bombs

is able to completely obliterate
an area

the size of a football field
in minutes.

One of the most dramatic uses
of napalm

comes during the Allied bombing

of the small town
of Saint-Lo in France.

Thousands of bombs are dropped,

and the devastation is so complete

that the entire town centre
burnt to the ground.

The survivors say it felt like
the Earth itself was aflame.

Just a few decades later,

we're going to use napalm
on a mass scale in Vietnam,

and it's just another example
of how these weapons

developed in World War II
become the blueprint

for the militaries of the future.

Coming up...
an experimental Nazi jet

that slips past radar.

Did the Germans
actually invent stealth design

without even realising it?

An American bomber group
is on a mission

to destroy a German arms factory.

But as they near their target,

they encounter an aircraft
that appears to be...

out of this world.

The crew spots a plane
they assume is Allied,

but something seems wrong:
the mystery plane has no propeller.

That's not possible. There are
no Allied planes without propellers.

Not only that, it's travelling
at unfathomable speed.

It streaks past like a comet.

When the Allies
first spot the plane,

they have no idea what it is.

We now know
that it's the Nazi ME-262,

the world's first
operational jet fighter.

Prior to the arrival
of this Nazi jet,

combat aircraft relied on propellers
to provide thrust.

But Germany's ME-262
is a quantum leap

over the United States'
most advanced fighter, the...

The fundamental limitation
of the P-51

is that they struggle
to maintain speed at high altitudes.

The reason is because the air there
is so thin,

the blades don't have anything
to grab onto.

But a jet engine takes in that air,

compresses it, ignites it,
and then shoots it out of the back.

This means that it has
far more thrust than the P-51,

allowing it to climb faster,
fly quicker...

and reach higher altitudes.

But jet engines
are not the only innovation

that gives the ME-262
an advantage over normal fighters.

Unlike other World War II
fighter aircraft,

the ME-262 has a swept-wing design

that makes the airframe
more aerodynamic

and makes it capable of
reaching 540mph maximum air speed,

which is easily 100mph faster
than Allied fighters.

And the ME-262
is armed to the teeth,

more than your average fighter:
it has four...

And it's got...

That's an innovation that, nowadays,
we take for granted:

the Sidewinder missile,
and more advanced variants,

hitting enemy fighters,
but the Germans introduced this

in World War II on the ME-262.

Towards the end of the war,
the ME-262 is going to destroy

some 500 Allied aircraft...

...but they only lose
about 100 ME-262s.

That's a 5-to-1 kill ratio...

...better than any other aircraft
of the war.

The ME-262 is truly

an unstoppable force
in the skies over Europe.

But Germany is not able to produce
the jets in large numbers

because of a bizarre decision
made by Adolf Hitler.

The ME-262 was originally
conceived as a fighter aeroplane,

but Hitler is convinced
that it should work as a bomber.

The ME-262 is incredibly fast,

and so loading it with bombs
defeats the purpose of its design,

which was fast bomber interception.

Hitler's idea
to turn the plane into a bomber

actually slows down
the production of the 262.

By the time the Nazi generals
are able to talk him out of it,

the window for this jet to change
the course of the war has closed.

The Germans produce 1,400 ME-262s:

out of that 1,400,
300 of them see combat.

But those 300 examples
are a force to be reckoned with,

and change aviation history forever.

The Messerschmitt ME-262

proves that jets
are the future of air combat.

But next, Germany designs an even
more sophisticated aviation marvel

that appears to be
straight out of science fiction...

...called the...

The story of the Ho 229
is that towards the end of the war,

Hermann Goring,
the head of the German Air Force,

sets a goal of creating a bomber
that can carry 1,000kg of bombs,

travel 1,000km and fly at speeds
up to 1,000km per hour.

And what the Germans build
is a revolutionary design

that will have an impact
on strategic bombers

well into the future.

As the name implies,
the Horten 229

is essentially a big, flying wing.

It's 55ft across,
about the size of a city bus,

just a single body
that blends smoothly into the wings

with a sleek, aerodynamic design.

Prior to the Ho 229,

aircraft designers had already
experimented with flying wings.

But the problem was stability.

Regular planes have vertical tails

to help keep the aircraft
pointed straight.

So if the nose starts to drift
left or right, airflow pushes

against the tail
and forces the plane back into line.

But a flying wing has no tail at all
to keep it on course.

To overcome this challenge,
German engineers built

a sophisticated system of flaps
and rudders on the wing itself

to make adjustments
and keep the aircraft stable

without a vertical tail.

The Ho 229 is the most
cutting-edge aircraft of the war.

But its greatest innovation isn't
discovered until decades later.

What's fascinating
about the Ho 229 is that

it looks a lot like the present-day
American B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

The B-2 Spirit is
the US air force's most advanced

long-range stealth bombing aircraft.

Given the B-2 is
a purpose-designed stealth aircraft,

a reasonable question is:
did the Germans

actually invent stealth design
without even realising it?

In 2008, Northrop Grumman
actually built a prototype

of the Horten Flying Wing,
and what they learnt

was that this design
actually reduces its radar profile.

A flying wing design has a much
smaller radar cross-section

as compared
to a conventional aircraft,

because it just doesn't have
as many reflecting surfaces.

In many ways, the Germans,

even though
they didn't realise it at the time,

were first to begin the development
of stealth technology.

During the final days
of the war in Europe,

Allied troops storm
German naval yards.

But instead of
the familiar Nazi U-boats,

they discover a sleek,
streamlined submarine

that completely changes the game
in underwater warfare.

It's known as the...

The Elektroboot is often referred
to as the world's first

true submarine, and that's because
it's the first submarine designed

to remain submerged
for days at a time.

The average U-boat could really
only spend a few hours underwater

because they have to come up
for air to run the engines,

which charges the batteries.

But the Elektroboot has a snorkel
which allows it to take in air

and charge its batteries,
even when it's underwater.

And so the Elektroboot has about
three times the battery charge

that you would have
on a regular U-boat.

The Elektroboot is so secret,
it is built in different pieces,

in different places,
so even the people

in those different factories only
know the piece they're building.

They don't know what
the whole boat is going to be like.

The Elektroboot has an
automated torpedo reloading system,

which means it can fire
17 or 18 torpedoes in 20 minutes.

Compare that
with your average U-boat,

which takes 20 minutes
to fire a single torpedo.

No other submarine
is even close in terms of power.

The Elektroboot's capabilities

are shockingly ahead of their time.

For the Allies, capturing these Nazi
submarines becomes a top priority.

At the end of the war,
the US and Soviets realised

that these submarines
that the Germans had built

were just far ahead
of anything we had.

And so they begin
strip-mining the technology.

Gauges vanish, wires yanked off,
periscopes are ripped free.

Entire battery banks
are shipped off.

The Allies are acting
more like pirates than soldiers.

The Americans come over, take an
Elektroboot that's fully functional,

they plonk a US flag on the top,

and then they sail it back home
across the Atlantic to study it.

The Elektroboot is such
a game-changer, everyone copies it.

All of the major submarine
categories that are born

in the years after World War II,

their design is inspired to
a certain degree by the Elektroboot.

The Elektroboot's
groundbreaking technology

lives on during the Cold War
and beyond.

But the United States
takes secrecy to a whole new level

to create
the ultimate superweapon...

The Manhattan Project
wasn't simply

a top-secret weapons
development programme:

there are 130,000 people
associated with this project.

And those people
are working at secret cities

the rest of the country
doesn't even know about.

These are
entire communities.

They have schools.
They have recreational facilities.

It is a whole town
surrounded by tall fences,

barbed wire, armed guards.

Whole idea is to keep what's going
on in that city a complete secret.

One of these secret cities
is in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

where the K-25 building

is the largest enclosed building
under one roof in the entire world.

And that plant is there
to produce weapons-grade uranium

for use in the Manhattan Project.

The most important of these secret
cities is Los Alamos in New Mexico

where Robert Oppenheimer
and his team build the most powerful

super weapon of World War II...
the atomic bomb.

The United States drops
two atomic bombs

to defeat Japan and end the war.

Each explosion unleashes more energy

than had ever been released
in the history of warfare.

When a nuclear weapon explodes,
essentially what you've done

is created a tiny star on Earth,
and stars are really hot.

So what happens when you heat air?
It expands.

The air rushes away rapidly,

and that creates a blast wave.

What's fascinating
about the atomic bomb is that...

...splits and creates an explosion
that's as strong

as 15,000 tons of TNT.

A sad reality of the human
experience is it is only during war

that we have our period
of greatest innovation,

and the Manhattan Project produces
a war-winning weapon in the form

of the greatest scientific
innovation known to humankind:

the atomic bomb.

World War II was
more than just an enormous conflict:

it was a flat-out arms race.

Nations created super weapons that,

only a few years prior,
were unimaginable.

There's all these technologies
developed in World War II

that couldn't even be glimpsed
in previous conflicts.

You're seeing this rapid innovation
that's going to, basically,

set the table for the Cold War
and after.

Back during World War II,

having the more powerful gun,
the more powerful ship,

and the more powerful bomb
determined who was gonna win.

Might makes right,
and that's how you maintain power.