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4:25 140 kg = 430 ft Yeah.. good enough

"If that sounds very complicated keep in mind that they were Germans"

Fun fact - I used to live nearby that prototype installation in Wolin when growing up. See those big concrete walls at 09:00 ? If you look close enough, there's a trail post near the top of the photo - blue hiking trail, if I remember correctly. One time me and my two buddies came up with an idea to ride our bikes on that trail and that part is a bit tricky - when passing the post, you're going downhill, there's a turn right at that post and a bit of a curb you need to jump down from, just a couple of feet from that steep drop you see. It was our first time riding there and I was so frickin' thankful I checked and tuned my brakes beforehand. Didn't see the turn, jumped down the curb straight, turned and hit those breaks hard on landing. Stopped sideways, maybe about two feet from the edge of that big drop you see in the photo 😅 A bit further and I would have fallen and smashed headfirst into that bit of history. Imagine - becoming the only casualty of a failed nazi megaproject... 😆

To put yourself in the mindset of late war Germany simply imagine this scenario: Your house is on fire, all the doors are blocked by flames, but the water is running so you could at least try to quench them a little. You decide that you'll build yourself a new washing machine You'll build it out of chocolate. You don't have many actual blocks of chocolate, or many bars, and those you have are a mix or milk, dark, and white. What you have in abundance is hot chocolate powder. You design a complex system of forming this powder into blocks. This is difficult because your house is on fire and your fridge has melted Eventually you've produced 30% of the blocks you need. Then you change the design and make the washing machine bigger. It's also now a kettle. And from now on you'll only use white chocolate. Then the roof collapses The end. No moral

What finally destroyed the V3 site was a lucky bomb drop by a Lancaster bomber, which managed to drop one of the 5 ton "Tallboy" bombs directly down one of the gun shafts. These "earthquake bombs" could do a hell of a lot of damage even when they didn't score such lucky hits, since they had reinforced steel nose cones which allowed them to dig themselves into the ground before detonating. The hit which dropped down the gun shaft collapsed more or less the entire complex, burying hundreds of slave labourers inside.

When you think about it, modern electric railguns are conceptually similar to the V3. Instead of sequential explosive/propellent/whathaveyou, they just use sequential magnetic fields for acceleration.

A10 warthog would be a good topic

One day we are going to find out the real guy operating this channel just has Simon held hostage in a basement. Hes forced to make videos in exchange for another dollar shave club razor.

It’s kind of awkward to say I admired the mad bastards, if only for their engineering insanity

I grew up on the Island of Wolin in the small town a couple kilometers from testing site. I still remember playing as the kid on concrete blocks shown on the pictures. It was 50 years ago. Great story!

Something tells me this video was prematurely uploaded

1:35 - Chapter 1 - The V Weapons 3:15 - Chapter 2 - The V3 4:35 - Chapter 3 - Development 6:45 - Mid roll ads 8:15 - Chapter 4 - Testing 9:25 - Chapter 5 - Mimoyecques site 11:40 - Chapter 6 - Operation Aphrodite 13:45 - Chapter 7 - A new target 15:10 - Chapter 8 - The greatest gun that never was

Big problem with such guns is that there is no shoot and scoot option. Fire three or four rounds and your opponent knows where it is and proceeds to attack it with everything they've got.

I visited the V-3 site at Mimoyeques a few years ago on a tour of the battlefields of N France. It is worth a visit when you can. I understand that 617 squadron hit the concrete cap of one of the barrel tops with a 'Tallboy", putting it and most of the installation out of action. If that is so, it truly *is* "sticking a dart in a line" accuracy. After the war, Churchill ordered the British sappers to destroy what was left of Mimoyeques as we had no desire to have even the *remnants* of such a weapon falling into the wrong hands - it was pointing at London after all...

I would love to see a video on Apollo 13 and the engineering required to get the astronauts home safe. It's something that's close to my heart as my grandpa was an engineer at nasa that helped design the air scrubber fix

"This video is brought to you by Squa..." Me: "Skip... skip... skip..."

The Video is not correct concerning the Mimoyecques site : it has been bombed very effectivly and there was a lot of casualties. One of the tallboy bomb that was droped managed to enter one of the tunnels where the cannons were located and slid all the way to the bottom where it exploded. This was both luck and due to the increased odds of this happening due to the intensity of the bombings of the site. The explosion caused a nearby pocket of water to flood the bottom 2 levels of the bunker (including the third level where more than 1500 forced-labour prisonniers died). It was estimated that if another (smaller) kind of bomb had made its way to the mouth of the bunker, the other tunnels and the water pocket would have hold, and the construction could have been finished. Today, you can only visit the first level as the 2 bottom ones are graveyards.

Kind of an odd request here... the wheel. Simple, yet quite possibly the most dynamic megaproject in history. From where we've come... to where we're going. Literally, transportation, gearing, literature, time, etc. Y'alls take would be interesting.

Simon, even though some of the topics do not pique my interest initially, I start to watch them and find my enthusiasm for the particular topic grow exponentially. Presentation does have a key role in these endeavors. Cheers to your tireless efforts in bringing excellent factual information, to those who wish to learn, one great segment at a time. Thank you!

The videos in your series are really informative, appreciate your hard work, thank you!

600 rounds a minute , i think you have that a tad wrong

Saddam Hussein got inspiration from this weapon and engaged Gerald Bull a Canadian misfit expert on very large guns, to build one for him.

I randomly came across your videos on UKposts and oh boy, I've gone through 2 pots of coffee and skipped sleeping. Your videos are utterly fascinating. Thanks for all you do!

*One of the best jokes in futurama is when they are playing a WWII video game and mom’s kids are playing as the nazis. When their V2 rocket doesn’t get the job done one of them smacks his head and says “Ughh I could have had a V-8*

4:20 140 KG (430 feet) What? Slow down, Simon, you're getting sloppy

Was the V-3 Cannon made by Squarespace? Couldn't tell by the title picture.

Wonderful video. The graphic at 4:17 shows "140 KG (430 FT)" and should be "140 KG (308 LB)" for weight accuracy. Please keep these coming.

2 videos.... oops but a happy oops 😁😁😁

There are two kinds of people - those who watch "SR-72 The Son of Blackbird" first, or those who watch this first.

So early the title hasn't even been finished

Simon, you said that V.2s fell on Britain until March 1944, it was of course March 1945. Those who criticise later Bomber Command raids, notably that on Dresden in February 1945, should bare that in mind.

Another great and entertaining video team. Thank you 🙏👌

I'm surprised that you didn't link in the connection between the V-3 and the work of Gerald Bull. He was the one who seemed to get and use the bulk of the information captured at the end of the war and that led to his HARP research gun, his long range artillery for South Africa, and most infamously his Baghdad gun for Saddam Hussein. It's the latter that probably got him murdered, some say by the Israelis.

Have you done an episode on the The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, the longest bridge in the world? It's ridiculously long, an Gephyrophobic's nightmare come true.

Whilst I understand the obsession with the Kennedy family, Mimoyeques is associated with three greater wartime legends. The bombs that wrecked the site were Tallboy "Camouflet" or earthquake bombs designed to destroy targets by actually missing them. They were designed by Barnes Wallis who pioneered Grodetic design in bombers and invented the bouncing bomb. The Tallboys were dropped by 617 Squadron, RAF, The Dambusters, in daylight using the SABS bombsight, the British Bombsight developed parallel to the American Norden. 617 Squadron were led by Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire VC, who had taken a reduction in rank ( from Wing Commander) to lead the Squadron. He had worked with Mick Martin to improve marker accuracy and would fly a single seat P-51C/Mustang III to drop the markets for this raid accurately. It was his last mission with the Squadron.

HOW TO DEFEAT UKposts ADS. if you click on the reverse or forward buttons on the top left corner, you can skip ads, by clicking reverse then forward, the original video clip comes back without the ad. if the forward or reverse is blank, click on another video clip on the right, then click reverse arrow top left and the original video clip comes back to the same point you left off at, without having to watch thoser annoying ads

If I remember it correctly the story of the bombing raids included the newly developed earthquake bombs which were effective in destroying the structures.

I wonder if Saddam Hussein's "Project Babylon" gun was a knockoff of this V-3 Cannon from back in the day?

Absolutely wanted you to mention this in the Rail gun video!!

A mega project worthy of a programme would be the refortification of Britain in the 1860s. Now referred to as Palmerston's Follies, the defeat of France by Prussia in 1870 eliminated the enemy they were designed to deter, but had France triumphed in that conflict, who can say what Napoleon III might not have attempted. Plenty of dramatic visual imagery available on line, if Covid precludes travel...

"Vergeltungswaffen weapons" would be "retribution weapons weapons"

Another potential megaproject video for a weapon that never was to be: Project SLAM/Project Pluto, which was an attempt to make a nuclear powered cruise missile that could stay in the air for potentially days at a time.

Correction at 4:20 - when describing the projectiles weight it is listed as 140kg (430ft), obviously one is weight and other distance, I’m guessing it should say 308 lbs

The Mimoyecques site is well worth a visit. The route to it is reasonably well marked. Much of the site is well lit but you should wear warm clothing even in summer. There are few genuine artefacts though a short section of one gun barrel can be seen. The site was liberated by a Canadian force. They received a large amount of explosive with which to destroy as much of the site as possible on Churchill's orders so it could not later be used by the Fenech.

In the nicest possible way, this episode is missing a lot of data. The Allies knew about the V3, and the Mimoyecques site was put out of commission, permanently, on 6 July 1944 by Squadron 617 ("Dambusters") using another Barnes-Wallis invention, the five-ton "Tallboy" bomb: an "earthquake" bomb designed to travel deep into the ground before exploding. Barnes-Wallis also designed a ten-ton version the, "Grand Slam", of which 42 were dropped on hard targets and were the heaviest bombs ever dropped through the war. The first Grand Slam was tested on 13 March 1945, and promptly successfully used in an operation the very next day (now that's an accelerated development!). I believe Barnes-Wallis' of implementation of deep-burrowing bombs before exploding remained unique until the US started playing with shaped nuclear charges in the late 1970s: yes, they do exist. Why waste most of the energy in a ball when you can direct it?

Hey guys I think someone goofed.

Fascinating stuff. Your hosting skills are, I think, second to none Simon.

What a genius move to put the sponsor directly on the thumbnail. What a marketing GENIUS Simon is! Clearly that business degree payed off !

Projected rate of fire was 600 per hour, not per minute.

The story of Port Hedland Australia. Iron Ore discovered there in the 50s. Now the heaviest tonnage private port in the world. 9 ships carrying 200 000 metric tons leave for China and Japan a day. @ 150 AUD a ton that's a significant amount. It wont fit in my calculator. There is so much Iron Ore there that it throws compasses off and at the current rate there is 500 years of high grade iron ore still to mine, then medium and low grade. There are numerous multinational companies involved in mining in the region which is called by the indiginous as the Pilbara which means "hot place". The hottest I ever experienced there is 50 degrees. I worked there for about 8 years and I don't ever want to go back ha ha ha. It would be the exact opposite of the shale sands in Canada where it gets to -40 and men and machines continue to work. It can be seen on Google earth and so can the ships lined up awaiting their cargo.

I had no idea any of these had actually been built and fired during the war! I thought all of these only got fired in the early 60s! Great video! Thank you!

its actually pretty simple to do in theory. One method is to leave exposed ends in the casing of the subordinate charges and as the projectile passes the casing the hot gas pushing the charge will ignite the secondary propellant adding to the charge as a whole with a lower pressure curve than lighting it all at once.

4:23 140kg = 430 feet? I thought it was 308 lbs, I guess I was wrong.

01:35 "The WuHrGaLtOoNgsWuPhAn" - Simon, translator Remember: never buy Wurgelton's Wophan!

I visited the site, its an amazing building. Sadly the top of the bunker rest on private property so only acces a few times a year.

Very good video! Interesting things I'm learning about the advanced weapons projects. Keep up the good work⚠️

I find it ironic that the little V-1 needed a big fixed-site launch facility; whereas the V-2 despite being 10x as big and 100x as sophisticated was launched from a portable TEL.

It's to these things that I point to whenever someone says that the Empire wouldn't have built the death star. Yes the death star is way, way bigger than the V3 but the First Galactic Empire is way, way bigger than the third reich.

The V-1, as crude as it was, was the very first cruise missile designed. The guidance system was similar to a wind up music box. Used a drum and contacts to control the various phases of the attack. Have actually laid eyes on one. For the time ingenious.

I love how much there is to know about... well everything, ever, really...lol. But, in this case specifically, WWII. I already knew about the existence of the "V3" but I hadn't ever heard about the early attempts at what were essentially drones. Fascinating stuff.

the next megaproject: listing all Simon's channels :)

You seemed pretty impressed with acceleration of the aircraft when you did your video on the Nimitz class carriers so maybe you could do a megaprojects or sideprojects on top fuel dragsters? 0-330+mph in less than 5 seconds is pretty impressive

Here is a megaproject for you---During WW2 in Elizabeth City, NC the largest wooden structure in the world was built. It was an immense dirgible hangar. Shortage of steel forced the wood construction. I have been in it and it was an amazing space. It burned a few years back, Sparks from welding repairs at top of the hangar smoldered for a while and flamed up during the night and by morning it was gone. I remember as a child going outside and looking up to see an immense air force dirgible directly over our house. It seemed to fill the whole sky. An adjacent metal hangar remains and is still in use.

Yo, two suggestions (i'm sure they're pretty popular): Atlantropa and Project Habakkuk. Habakkuk is less theoretical and more in line with the fantasy/reality mixture of the V-3, but Atlantropa seems like something very very worth covering too.

Vergeltingswaffen weapons is like saying atm machine

"Yes, the early years saw the German army crush all that came before it...." *Shows German soldiers in Tiger 2 tanks, first deployed in Normandy in 1944.*

Nice vid have done the jiant floating icburge carrier? Love your detail.

I heard of the V3 but didn't really know too much about it. Very informative video Simon. Side note: Did anybody else notice at 4:23 it says "140 KG (430 FT)" ? Anyway I'm surfing ur channels bro. Always something interesting indeed.

"it's the gun so big it needed to be built on Simon's head."

you know you're early when it lacks both a thumbnail and title

Great video, I have come across a few short videos dealing with the Krupp family empire, but concentrating on their roll in ww2, it looked interesting ?.

More and more Simon and Co. every day!!! Cheers 🍻

Megaproject: Fixing videos after upload

So, this weapon was so threatening that, we expended a Kennedy against it?

If you imagine having to manually re-load all of those charges along the barrel after every shot, I think you will realize that the 600 rounds per minute statement is glaringly incorrect. From what I have found it is thought that the best they could do is about 1 round every 5 minutes.

Dr Bull got closer again. Problem with a 'supergun' (good as it may be) is guns have been superseded by missiles. Reminds me of the Hedgehog and other ASW mortars. The best ASW weapons of their time but hardly saw the light of day as homing torpedoes were just around the corner.

No mention of Dr. Bull? The super gun story did not end with Germany's surrender.

Check up Gerald bull and project babalyon same type of cannon

Add to the popular "what if" scenarios of WWII: what if Germany's arms development had been focused on reliable and cost-effective systems that the military actually asked for?

5:10 LOL the way he worded it almost sounds like he could be talking about the crew operating the weapon bailing out and running for their lives

Someone done did F'd up

My mother’s first memory was being put under a table during a V1 raid.

The truly sad part about Kennedy and Willy was that a corporal who was an expert on the systems being used to fly the plane and detonate the bombs had warmed the commanders that the system was faulty and that a premature explosion was likely. Since he was only a corporal he superiors ignored his concerns and Kennedy and Willy although aware of the risk followed orders. A prior bombing of the region with Barnes bunker busters had caused enough damage that the site had been abandoned however because the air reconnaissance photos weren't conclusive the mission went ahead.

Would love to see a video on the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte, I think that could be a good topic for theoretical weapons!

*Plot Twist:* Simon hasn't got a beard, his camera is just upside down

Oh, I'm afraid that this weapon is quite, operational...

I do love the crazy things that come out of frantic arms races (WW2, the cold War, etc) :D

Whoa, whoa, you missed something here. It's the story of the Allied effort to destroy this weapon. It was a story of two efforts, one British and one US, to destroy the super gun emplacement. The American idea was the drone bomb. The story was that a private, working on the install of the electric bomb control, saw a flaw in the design. This Private, before the war, was a electronic bug with no formal training. This guy looked at the circuitry for the bomb detonator and figured out that the detonator would cause the explosives to detonate prematurely. He tried franticly to warn his superiors of the flaw, but, his concerns were discounted because he had no formal electronics training and it was felt that the experts back in the States, with their college degrees, surely knew what they were doing. Of course, the American attempt blew up prematurely, just as the Private predicted it would, killing the Kennedy and the other pilot. For all this effort, there was no chance this American effort would have any success, since, explosives above ground are not good at penetrating below ground structures. The British, however, worked on a ground penetrating bunker busting bomb. One giant bomb per plane, designed to penetrate into the ground and detonate. This bomb was carried by a stripped down bomber so it could carry the extra heavy bomb. The bomb was designed to collapse bunkers by nearby underground hits. By being detonated underground, much more explosive force could be concentrated on the nearby bunkers. These bombs were successful in destroying the German bunkers before they were even finished. This resulted in the in the Germans abandoning the project as it became apparent that the bunkers could not be built without destruction from the air. I am telling this story from memory so of course more documenting is needed. Yeah, I would say this would be a good mega-project video. Especially highlighting the American bone head thinking and educational prejudice that took place in this effort. The British took a much more scientific approach to the problem. The story of the guy who came up with the bomb is also a good story. This being, I think, a good story of how how a mega-project can be successfully developed and how such a project can be a mega failure, all in the way the project is managed and thought out.

I'd like to see a video on the Flak 88mm the Germans used.

Some day those concrete pads on the side of the hill will be rediscovered. "Experts" will try to hypothesize how they were used to get water to the top of the hill.

The sidechamber gun, with detonations along the barrel as the granate passed, was an idea made by a german, who presented it to the Waffenamt, which found it unlikely to function, but he then gave it to another section, which then used a lot of money on the idea, and then gave it back to the Waffenamt, as it didn't really function. And the Waffenamt had to find out something, as much money had now been spent. And in the end they found a way to make it function in the cannon.

You should do some of the huge construction equipment pieces. Like those massive pit trucks or bucket wheel excavators

saddam hussein's supergun was being build based on the V3 by Dr. Gerald Bull

600 rounds per minute? I would like to see an artillery piece fire at the same rate as an AK-47.

OK, a short list of things that I've notice that are wrong: 1) 600 Rounds Per Minute, is wrong. This is because each tube would take time to reload all 33 charges. (Initial charge plus the 32 booster charges. He's talking about a large amount of tubes, kinda like referring to the barrage of shells that all 3 of the U.S.S. Des Moines class cruisers could put out .vs. what a single gun (tube) could reliably sustain before it overheated. (Overheating can do 1 of 2 things: cause the metal of the barrel to weaken to the point it bursts (like the V-3 test barrel did during firing of the 8th round in quick succession) or "cook off" the round's explosive charge in the chamber much to the dismay of the people loading the round! 2) 140 Kg ~308 pounds. 3) Didn't mention the Tall Boys & Grand Slams used against the site... 4) Would you lie to Hitler by telling him data that didn't support his point of view? Hence Hitler being told of everything going right and problems, especially major problems being describe as minor things needing more research....

Whoa...whoa....whoa...15:35...we know they had installed the V3 weapon ready for firing because the barrels are actually still there to this day, we also do know like you say that they were put out if commission by RAF bombing raids (by the dam bursters squadron if I remember rightly) and it's was because of these bombing raids crumbed a tunnel onto a barrel that put the site out of action because it was to expensive to rebuild at that point in the war especially with what was to come shortly after.

Did we accidentally get two videos today?

WE WANT ETA WE WANT ETA

A firerate of 600 rpm is just insanely high for a cannon of that era. Especially considering that you would have to replace each of the solid rocket boosters. All 32 of them. and do that every 0.1 seconds to achieve that firerate. For comparison, 600 rpm is the same as a bren gun. This info just cannot be right. Once every 600 seconds might be more accurate.