Nazi Scientists Had Plans for a Giant Space "Sun Gun"

Nazi Scientists Had Plans for a Giant Space "Sun Gun" - Gearlog




This is of the weirder files to come out of WWII. The July 23rd 1945 issue of LIFE magazine detailed a secret Nazi plan to concoct a giant space mirror or magnifying glass that would concentrate solar rays to burn whole cities or oceans (Google books link).

Kind of like a super-sized version of using a magnifying glass to burn ants.

In Germany last month, U.S. Army technical experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a "sun gun," a big mirror in space which would focus the sun's rays to a scorching point at the earth's surface. The Germans, the Army reported, hoped to use such a mirror to burn an enemy city to ashes or to boil part of an ocean.

Plausible schemes to build a station in space were engineered on paper long before the war. European rocket enthusiasts, including Dr. Hermann Oberth, who may have been the designer of the V-2, had planned to use the space station not as a weapon but as a refueling point for rockets starting off on journeys into space. ... The only major obstacle: constructing a rocket powerful enough to reach a point where a space station could be built. If the modern German scientists had been able to make such a rocket, they might have ben able to set up their sun gun. Whether the sun gun would have accomplished what they expected, however, is another matter."
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Even if the Nazis would have maintained power long enough to create a space Reich, it appears this dream of a city-destroying sun gun was far from practical.

Since the sun appears in the sky as a disk and not as a point, the best any optical system can produce is an image of this disk. At very short focal lengths, the image is small and hot but as the focal length is increased the image becomes progressively bigger and cooler. At the distance the Germans proposed to set up their mirror (3,100 miles) the image of the sun cast on the earth would be about 40 miles in diameter and not hot enough to do any damage.
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lol, the things Nazis set their minds to...but you'd think they'd think that it would be a little far-fetched.

 

As opposed to a pure Aryan race ruling the world for a thousand years? I think it's one of their more plausible schemes for world domination. If they had developed it maybe the Allies could have waded ashore, at Normandy, with sunscreen and parasols.

 

Don't forget the!!!

Two soldiers serving with the Deutsches Afrikakorp (German Africa Corps) reading the "Zwickauer Zeitung" on a beach - World War II


Test run. lol