hello everybody welcome back to another episode of mega projects this one is all about the v2 i think we did the v1 and the v3 people like someone where's the v2 at you've just skipped the v2 where's the v2 here it is calm down just before we get into today's episode i will say that it's brought to you by what sport to you by beardblaze what is beardblaze some of you might have heard this before but i've got another channel called businessplace and that actually led to the development of this very majestic product right here long story short as i made a joke about youtubers of beauty lines and a fan of that channel imam be saying like simon don't have a beauty line that's not your thing or chap but what you can do is beard oil and i was like okay that sounds good beardblaze makes a full luscious beard a reality look at this thing solving all of life's problems with fine facial hair not a guarantee life's problems that is your bid will be awesome the story was the guy i teamed up with on this will sent me a bunch of samples i rubbed them into my beard and i chose the best ones and then we released them as a range of beer dolls if you're not sure which one's for you we also do samples because someone watched the videos like simon how do i know which one to get and i was like well can we make a sample back and will was like hell yes how cool is this so how's this different from other beer dolls basically i've used a lot of beer dolls i think this is just better personally worked great with my beard also what we didn't do is make it in these tiny little bottles that cost a fortune this is a large bottle you can see here i have regular sized man sized hands and this is a decent sized bottle that will last you a good long while there's no special code there's no special anything this is something that i get to control so it's just at a good price go to beardblaze. com that's that let's get into it [Music] almost three months to the day that the largest inflation fleet in history appeared off the coast of normandy hitler ordered the use of a weapon that would go on to define the 20th century though this weapon could do little to aid the crumbling german forces it proved to be an enormous step forward in modern warfare and eventually space travel so thank you hitler just joking hashtag canceled simon simon whistler taken out of context on the morning of the 7th of september 1944 the first two v2 rockets were fired at paris both fell short causing no damage but in the coming months many certainly hit their targets in total 3 172 rockets were fired at targets across belgium the uk holland france and in an act of blind last-ditch desperation even germany itself as the nazis tried to block the allies crossing the rhine these were countries that had already borne the brunt of the german weirmarkt and luftwaffe in the preceding years but this was an entirely new terror like its younger brother the b-1 the v-2 failed to break the spirit of the allied civilians it was a dastardly weapon but thankfully one that came too late in the day to be of any use to adolf hitler but the v2 rocket was just the start of the frantic missile race that began shortly after the conclusion of world war ii [Music] much has been said about hitler's retribution weapons and why they were used when they were especially on this channel we have covered them the v1 v2 and v3 all fell into this category and luckily for any interested viewers we've already done videos on the v1 and v3 as i said so if you're having a nazi experimental weapon kind of day well look no further than mega projects for more glorious content and also beard oil at beardblaze. com these were all weapons that appeared shortly after d-day a fact that leads many to assume that they were simply vicious weapons used by a dictator amid the final throws of his rule which is only partly actually correct the truth is for all his bloodthirsty tendencies and boy did he have those hitler was highly dubious about these experimental weapons probably for good reason these weapons were all technologically sound more or less but were very much rushed in their final phases of development these were not quite the finished articles and while they were able to add a new layer of horror to an already horrendous war hitler only ordered their use once it became clear that his western front was on the verge of collapse [Music] the v2 will always be associated with one man and it isn't adolf hitler vernavon braun a german aerospace engineer was very much a man who experienced two lives born in germany two years before the outbreak of world war one von braun eventually became involved with rocketry in the 1930s and proved himself every bit equal to his mentor and idol herman julius ober widely considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry in 1933 while von braun was working on his doctorate at the technical university of berlin the nazi party assumed control and well i think we all know where the story goes from there von braun played a pivotal role in the development of the v2 rocket but as i said he's a man with two lives after the defeat of nazi germany the brilliant von braun was whisked thousands of miles away from his homeland and was eventually granted u.
s citizenship his work for nasa particularly on the development of the saturn v rocket that took the apollo missions to the moon was absolutely groundbreaking he went from nazi party member to american hero within the span of 30 years anyway i'm getting way too ahead of myself but it is important to highlight the progression of ombron's work on the surface of things and if you don't know much about this topic you might think well what does a nazi superweapon and the apollo program have in common but they had a lot in common german leaders understood the importance of von braun's early work his thesis construction theoretical and experimental solution to the problem of liquid propellant rockets was written in 1934 and it wasn't declassified by germany until 1960. this was the kind of theoretical brilliance and von braun was the kind of ingenious person that the nazi party knew they had to keep close to their chest shortly after its release von born secured an ordnance department research grant and began building and testing rockets and so the aggregate rocket series was born the first rocket known as a1 is generally seen as the grandfather of most modern rockets at just 1. 4 meters in height 30.
4 centimeters in diameter and with a takeoff weight of only 150 kilograms it wasn't exactly the fearsome beast that we have come to associate with the word rocket it was also wildly unstable and quickly led to a new design by december 1934 he and his team had successfully launched two a2 rockets one reaching a height of 2. 2 kilometers and the other 3. 5 kilometers in terms of physical appearance it looked almost identical to the a1 but came with a separate propellant tank the tests in front of high-ranking officials cemented von braun's position and reputation and he was actively encouraged to press on during the summer of 1936 with nazi germany basking in the glow of the berlin summer olympics bombard's team were thinking big and designs began to take on a wholly more militaristic feel design specifications from the german military called for a one-ton payload a range of 276 kilometers and a dispersion of between 3.
2 kilometers and 4. 8 kilometers that's a lot to ask considering what they were doing a few years before in early december 1937 during operation lighthouse a series of a3 launches took place at kuma's door for launch site south of berlin they were all unmitigated disasters all four tests failed to reach their desired altitude and followed the same rough pattern a premature engine cut out and a fiery wreckage not far from the takeoff point and this was back before they had photoshopped remember a few years ago that i can't remember who it was but a country faked maybe it was north korea faked their missile succeeded people were like yo that's just a photoshop of the other one guys it was a sobering experience for von braun and the development of the v4 was immediately put on hold as they tried to determine why all of the tests had gone so wrong now if you're expecting the a4 at this point will hold your horses while the a4 would eventually go on to become the v2 von braun decided to test various factors on the slightly smaller version the a5 the a5 rocket was 5. 8 meters long with a diameter of 0.
78 meters it had a takeoff weight of 900 kilograms and came with a new control system built by siemens tests on the a5 were much more promising and over the course of around 80 flights up until 1943 the rockets reached a maximum height of roughly 12 kilometers and a range of 17. 7 kilometers perhaps most importantly however they greatly contributed to the team's understanding of rocket aerodynamics as well as allowing them to test the more advanced guidance system and with that well the pieces were really starting to fall into place [Music] through a mixture of trial and error and sheer mechanical wizardry von braun and his team were now approaching a high altitude rocket with fearsome capabilities the a4 as it was first known took flight for the first time in march 1942 but only clocked up a paltry distance of 1. 6 kilometers however things improved at a dramatic pace the third launch in october of 1942 was hailed as a great success and followed its projected trajectory perfectly landing 193 kilometers away after reaching an altitude of 83 kilometers in december 1942 hitler ordered the a4 into mass production this may have been a little hasty as there's still countless issues to address but adolf was never a man of restraints and patience we definitely know that through 1943 production was stepped up at three separate facilities each using slave labor because of course they were either from captured prisoners of war or the civilian population but it was the civilian population that proved to be a real thorn in the side one of the v2 test sites was near lisner and central poland the polish resistance began taking note of the strange rockets flying into the sky and when one v2 fell almost intact into marshland it was carefully concealed from the germans before being painstakingly taken apart and moved to warsaw for further analysis and here we have one of those wonderfully audacious missions of world war ii the poles contacted british intelligence and a bold plan was conceived on the 25th of july 1944 a british transportation aircraft took off from italy and landed an abandoned airfield at matson near lublin an area surrounded by germans hastily pulling back from the advancing soviet tide coming from the east out of the woods came the polish resistance dragging carts piled high with parts from the captured v2 which were quickly loaded into the waiting plane in almost a cinematic nerve shredding moment the plane's wheels sank into the ground preventing it from taking off the poles dug frantically with their bare hands to provide enough traction for the plane to begin taxiing this should be a movie if it's not already but it's a movie let me know two days later after a series of journeys the aircraft landed in britain and scientists and engineers began examining this new super weapon how is this not a movie the v2 was 14 meters in length quite an upgrade from the one meter tool a1 all those years ago it was also 1.
65 meters in diameter and had a wingspan of 3. 56 meters the rocket weighed 12 500 kilograms which this is mega projects silly weight analogy that's twice as heavy as a male adult elephant the warhead contained amital which weighed 1000 kilograms the rocky used a mixture of ethanol and water for its propellant 75 ethanol 25 water weighing a total of 3 810 kilograms this was one of the hindrances that the germans faced during mass production as the amount of ethanol available was dependent on the local potato harvest which as you might imagine during the war was fairly up and down after launching the v2 would travel for roughly 65 seconds reaching a height of 80 kilometers before the engine shut down and it fell back to earth on a ballistic free-fall trajectory the rocket was guided by four external rudders on the tail fins and four internal graphite veins in the jet stream all controlled by an analog computer called the mishkarat this information was sent by electrical hydraulic servo motors based on electrical signals from the gyros two gyroscopes were used one for the horizontal pitch and one for the vertical urine roll also included was the piga accelerometer which measured speed and distance covered which dictated when the engine cut off depending on where the target was production of the v2 was badly hampered by a massive allied airstrike codenamed operation hydra which targeted the german scientific research center at pinemunta pinemunde maybe of course this wasn't by chance the allies had been tipped off by an austrian resistance group regarding what was being developed a pina mundo over the course of one night straddling the 17th and 18th of august 1943 raf bombers laid waste to the area across three separate waves the death toll for everybody involved was incredibly high the raf lost 40 bombers and 215 crew men while scores of civilians and prisoners of war on the ground were also killed it's thought that operation hydra put back the emergence of the v2 by four to six weeks which in the long run must have saved many lives but was far from the total obliteration that the british had hoped for the germans rather ingeniously camouflaged the ground make it appear like the destruction had been more severe than it actually had been the site was left alone for the rest of the war but production and testing quickly began again including operation hydra and the horrific conditions many worked in during the production of the rockets historians believe roughly 20 000 people died while building this nazi wonder weapon the germans had initially envisioned stationary launch sites close to the english channel but this was changed in favor of mobile launch pads in july 1944 with the allies quickly establishing a foothold in normandy four separate storage dumps for the weapons had been built in northern france as they prepared to begin operations the germans estimated 350 launches per week with 100 per day a maximum output although this was never seen as sustainable the first rockets were launched against paris on the 7th of september 1944 with the first hit the french capital coming the following day london was also hit for the first time on the 8th of september with a v2 claiming its first british lives this included a three-year-old child now remember that the allies knew full well what was coming the information on the v2s that had been smuggled out of continental europe painted a pretty definitive picture with this in mind the british government's reluctance to announce the use of the new nazi weapon probably had more to do with not wanting to cause mass panic they even went so far as to blame the explosions on faulty gas lines by mid-november however any denial seemed ludicrous i mean how long are you going to get yeah there was another gas line we're definitely not what are you talking about our prime minister winston churchill announced the nation that the germans had been using a new type of rocket weapon antwerp took the brunt of the v2 attacks with 1736 killed and 4500 injured in the greater antwerp area this was primarily because of the city's port which remained intact and open unlike every other port strung across northern europe the allies were struggling to get resupplies through the beaches of normandy and this corner of belgium was seen as vital and well hitler sure knew it the death toll in london was higher 2754 civilians killed and another 6523 injured despite receiving slightly less v2 attacks down to the dense population in the english capital the british began sending fake messages through turned spies and double agents saying the v2s were overshooting their target and the germans duly obliged almost half of the rockets fired at london fell short and because of that the counter-espionage operation known as operation double cross was remarkably effective the final v2 and the last to claim british life came on the 27th of march 1945 when a rocket landed on orpington in kent with the allied advance now thundering across europe the v2s pulled back out of range [Music] the v weapons certainly caused damage but their psychological impact was far greater than the damage these were weapons that had never been seen and for many perhaps never even considered just think that 30 years before pilots had to drop a bomb out of a rickety aircraft the progress that had been made was absolutely extraordinary people just couldn't believe it but these were costly weapons the v1 of the two programs cost roughly 40 billion dollars when adjusted for inflation that's double what the u. s bent to build the atomic bomb a total of 6048 v2s were built at a reported cost of a hundred thousand reichsmarks each that was about 249 000.
which equates to a pricey 3. 7 million dollars today but only about half of them were ever launched as i mentioned earlier one of the main problems came down to potatoes a single v2 required roughly 30 tons of the vegetable to make the alcohol needed for the propellant with the nation being bombed into the previous century by the allies food was scarce and this was a major reason why so few v2s were launched the v2s acted as a sort of final hurrah to hitler's murderous ambitions they exemplified just how far ahead german scientists were at the time but they had little to no impact on the war if anything considering the huge resources put into hitler's vengeance weapons they may have been more of a hindrance to the preservation of the third reich but the v2s certainly had a profound impact on what came next with the nazis defeated the allies took their pick of german scientists and engineers verna von braun made his way to the u. s along with around 1 600 of germany's best and brightest the blueprints of the v2 fell into the hands of both the soviets and the european allies and the race for the intercontinental missile soon began so look if you can look past the murderous intent that it was created for the v2 was a hugely important step forward the years of work done by von braun in the lead up to world war ii undoubtedly sped up the space race going from mass murder to one small step for man in just 25 years that's insane the scientific and engineering line between murderous carnage and groundbreaking developments can sometimes be a fine one and so it proved to be with the b2 the revenge weapon that eventually led us to space so i really hope you enjoyed that video if you did be sure to smash that like button also why don't you get some smashing beard oil if you are a man with a beard just go to beardblaze.
