German Secret Weapons of WWII

That "weapon" was common even among Dutch civilians at the time. Nothing very military about it.

 

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That was supposed to be a joke Roel, nice to see the Dutch sense of humour is still acute!

 

V3

This is what I’ve found on the V3 in a book ‘The Dam Busters’ by Paul Brickhill

‘But the greatest nightmare of all was the grotesque underworld being burrowed under a 20-foot thick slab of ferro-concrete near Mimoyecques. Here Hitler was preparing his V3.

The muzzles would never appear above the earth: the entire barrel would be sunk in shafts that dived at 50 degrees 500ft into the ground. Hitler was putting fifteen of these guns in at Mimoyecques, five guns, side by side, in each of three shafts. They were smooth-bore barrels, and a huge slow-burning acceleration would fire a 10-inch shell with a long steady acceleration, so there would be no destructive heat and pressure in the barrel. In this way the barrels would not wear out as Big Bertha did in WW1. They were more monstrous in every way than Big Bertha: they fired a bigger shell, could go on firing for a long time and more important than that, they had a rapid rate of fire. Thick armour plate doors in the concrete would slide back when they were ready, and then the nest of nightmare guns would pour out six shells a minute on London, 600 tons on explosives a day. They would keep that up accurately day after day, so that in a fortnight London would receive as much HE as Berlin received during the whole year.’

617-squadron dropped 10,000lb Tallboys on it and got a direct hit and 4 near misses which given the way the Tallboy worked were probably more effective – needless to say the complex was never used and it was a terrific waste of effort and manpower.

When Hitler learned his 20ft thick concrete shells were no use he ordered the concrete on other bunkers and pens to be increased but it did no good – the RAF went on the develop another of Barnes Wallis’s madcap designs – the 22,000lb Grand Slam.

 

PMN-1, Good book, agreed?

 

Agreed, i certainly found it interesting.

I found this site afterward on BIG bombs - 42,000lb 'ers

http://members.aol.com/nukeinfo2/

 

the allies did not know the existense of the V-3 until escaped slavelabors reveled this to the allies, perhaps via resistance.