The V-3 “ supergun ” was meant to win the war for Germany . In 1943 , for the first sentence since World War II began , Hitler was on the back groundwork . Allied bombs were withering German cities and the Fuhrer was rattled . His proposed V-3 cannon would be the bounteous gun the world had seen .
The V-3 was built in a truly tremendous bunker entomb late in a chalk hill in northern France . billion of MT of stone were excavated by hand and among the actor were 100 of slave jack . In its original creation , 25 drum were to head at London – about 100 miles away – deliver up to one turkey per minute of arc and to make an environment of fear that would turn the course of instruction of the war back in Hitler ’s favour . And it was a doomed secret “ pilotless aircraft ” deputation to destroy the V-3 thatled to the death of Joe Kennedy Junior , a pilot and old brother of the next US president , John F. Kennedy .
The workings of the German supergun remain something of a mystery story , because so much of it was destroyed and so few photographs and documents have survived . We estimated that a rocket reach London must achieve speeds in excess of 1,500 metre per second . Each barrelful of Hitler ’s gun was 130 metres prospicient , inclined at 50 degrees and we work out that this is the perfect slant to reach London – they seem to have got it correct .
The missile was to be accelerated by means of a successiveness of bearing along the barrel . accurate timing of these additional charges was very important and it has been hypothesize that this was done electrically . In our research fora TV documentary on Channel Four , PBS Nova and National Geographic International , we institute no grounds for this . Photographs from the time have no sign of electrical wiring or triggering devices and our own experiments suggest that the charge were triggered by the heat of the advancing accelerator behind the rocket .
Hitler ’s engineers had great difficulty perfecting the all - important timing , we remember because of outflow of red-hot gas past the seal behind the projectile . They meet other problems with their aim , particularly to hone a form of missile that would be aerodynamic at ultrasonic hurrying . It had to persist stable without the benefit of twist ( the barrel was not rifled ) but in early test the missile was ascertain to tumble uncontrollably . This problem was never solved , as far as we have sex . The Allies knew nothing of the supergun until Canadian forces overran the website after D - daytime . But they know that for the Germans to be expending that many resources on the site – they were sure enough up to no trade good .
It was n’t sluttish to see how to destroy the supergun . The Americans planned to attack the installation with a “ drone ” ( not known by that name back then ) which was a remote - keep in line leaden bomber tamp with 12 t of high explosive . The theme was to doss down the unmanned aircraft directly into the site at Mimoyecques , near Calais . The mission , codification named Project Anvil , ended badly .
The Joe Kennedy Jr mission
Joe Kennedy Junior was piloting a B-24 Liberator on August 12 1944 . He and co - pilot Wilford Willy were supposed to take the plane up to cruise altitude , set the right course and bail out . A 2nd aircraft flying nearby was to take over the controls ( aided by a archaic television transmission system ) . But completely without warning , the plane exploded over Blythburgh in Suffolk only 20 minutes after it had taken off . Kennedy and Willy were killed and their bodies never found , such was the vehemence of the explosion .
The luck of Kennedy ’s death were n’t well know for the best part of 70 years . Recent documents have been found that show that the dud - arming mechanism was flawed and that effort to make it dependable only exacerbated the peril . In our documentary we show that solenoid – a type of electromagnet – used for arming the bombs were probable to have overheat have premature detonation .
This calamity was all in self-conceited . Unknown to the ally at the clip , the building complex at Mimoyecques had been desert after it was successfully destroyed in a bombing foray on July 6 1944 . British engineer Barnes Wallis , the wit behind the jounce bomb , had developed the Tallboy bomb . drop from a top of 15,000 foot it was plan to forget itself deep into the shabu and to activate a small temblor . Eight Tallboys reach the supergun site and the internet of tunnels and the foundations , bunkers and ordnance store stores were all damaged beyond repair .
The genius of Barnes Wallis can not be overstated . He had work out the veracious shape for the olfactory organ conoid of the Tallboy so that it would remain aerodynamic while approaching the speed of auditory sensation and at the same prison term being inviolable enough to penetrate 15 metres underground . He attain that if the fins were cant by only 5 degrees the bomb would spin , stabilise it in flight .
It is improbable that the supergun would ever have been a successful biz - exchange weapon , even if theNormandy landingshad failed . The legion technical challenges of the gun itself were proving hard to resolve but perhaps more significantly a fixed gun installation is an easy fair game . If it had n’t been the Tallboys of July 6 , or the ill - fatten out Kennedy military mission of August 12 , then the instalment at Mimoyecques would have been put down one way or another before it could do much damage to London .
But from a strictly engineering perspective I ’m deplorable that it was never trial - provoke ( though it ’s knockout to imaging how to do that safely ! ) I would wish to have seen it work . What an amazing gismo .
Hugh Huntis a Reader in Engineering Dynamics at theUniversity of Cambridge .
This article was originally published onThe Conversation . Read theoriginal clause .
Image byPrioryman .
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