Wunderwaffe
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Wunderwaffen is German for "wonder weapons", and was a term assigned during World War II by the Nazi propaganda ministry to a few revolutionary "superweapons". Most of these weapons reached the combat theatre too late, and in too insignificant numbers (if at all) to have a military effect. Even if they did, the "Wunderwaffen" mostly failed to fulfill their propaganda-inflated capabilities. Most soldiers, and many civilians, realized that. A derisive abbreviation of the term emerged: Wuwa, pronounced "voo-vah".
The V-weapons, which were developed earlier, and saw considerable deployment especially against Great Britain, trace back to the same pool of highly inventive armament concepts which surpassed anything the Allies could field at that time. Therefore, they are also included here.
Although the Wunderwaffen completely failed to meet their strategic objective of turning the tides of World War II in Nazi Germany's favor at a time when the war was already strategically lost, they represented designs and prototypes that were extremely advanced for their time. With the exception of the gigantic tanks, almost every single one of the Wunderwaffen was developed into sophisticated weaponry in the following decades.
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[edit] Naval vessels
[edit] Tanks
[edit] Jets and rocket-propelled aircraft
- Heinkel He 280 - the first jet fighter
- Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter/bomber
- Focke-Wulf Ta 183 jet fighter
- Arado Ar 234 - the first jet bomber
- Horten Ho 229 "flying wing" jet fighter/bomber
- Me 163 Komet manned rocket-propelled interceptor
- Bachem Ba 349 manned rocket-propelled interceptor
- Silbervogel sub-orbital antipodal bomber
- Heinkel He 162 jet fighter
[edit] Combat helicopters
- Flettner Fl 282 "Kolibri"
- Focke Achgelis Fa 223 "Drache"
[edit] Bombs and explosives
- Fritz X air-to-ship glide bomb
- Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb
- German nuclear energy project
[edit] Artillery
- Schwerer Gustav
- V-3 cannon "Hochdruckpumpe" (a multi-stage cannon)
[edit] Missiles
- Fi 103 (V1) - the first cruise missile
- A4 (V2) - the first mid-range ballistic missile
- Rheinbote - the first short-range ballistic missile
- Wasserfall supersonic ground-to-air missile
- Hs 117 Schmetterling ground-to-air missile
- Enzian ground-to-air missile
- Ruhrstahl X-4 wire-guided air-to-air missile
- Fliegerfaust/Luftfaust hand-held automatic rocket launcher
[edit] Rifles
- Sturmgewehr 44 - the first assault rifle
- Sturmgewehr 45 - prototype
[edit] Support equipment
- Zielgerät 1229 Vampir night-vision equipment
- FG 1250 Tank Mounted night-vision equipment
[edit] In fiction
- The video game Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
- The Battlefield 1942 expansion Secret Weapons of World War II
- The video game "Secret Weapons Over Normandy"
