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Soviet Space Weapons Cosmos 389 Space became a battleground between the US and USSR well before Reagan floated the Star Wars idea. In the early 1970s, Russia launched the Cosmos 389, the first of what would become known as "ferret" satellites. These small spacecraft lock on to radar and...

Soviet military innovations KM - the Russian "Caspian Sea Monster" Ekranoplan "KM" was the biggest ground-effect vehicle ever designed (100 meters long, weight: 544 tons, powered by ten Dobryin VD-7 turbojet engines). It still holds the record for lifting the heaviest load off the ground...

Tracked Mines The Nazis' Goliath tracked mine was anything but Goliath-like in stature. Known as the " Doodlebug " by American troops, the Goliath was run with a joystick operated by a controller. It had coiled within its compartments 2,145 feet of cable leading back to the controller. The...

NAZI Germany innovations Nerve Gas - the world's first three types of "Nerve Gas" chemical weapons were developed in Germany: Tabun (1936), Sarin (1938), Soman (1944), all many times more lethal than earlier chemical weapons. Unlike chemical weapons like Mustard Gas which injure and kill by...

The U.S. picked up a whole bunch of German scientists after World War II in Operation Paperclip. One of the most notable was Werner von Braun, who jump-started the American space program. The Russians picked up a similar number of "rocket scientists" as the West, but the lesser ones. These...

Airborne Units German paratroopers on Crete – Bundesarchiv It was the Germans who seized on the potential that paratroopers gave. Such troops fitted in perfectly with Guderian’s vision of Blitzkrieg, the lightening war. Hermann Göring, as head of the Luftwaffe, formed the first parachute...

Night Vision The Zielgerät ZG 1229 Vampir displayed by a British soldier. As early as 1939, the first night vision devices were introduced by the German army. The first devices were being developed by AEG starting in 1935. By the end of World War II, the German army had equipped approximately...

Why the U.S. Government Brought Nazi Scientists to America After World War II As the war came to a close, the U.S. government was itching to get ahold of the German wartime technology Wernher von Braun, one of the architects of the Apollo program, was a Nazi scientist brought to the U.S. in...

NAZI Germany Military Innovations The World's First Mass-Produced Helicopter Both the Axis and Allies were developing helicopter technology, but Germany got there first in terms of actual production. The Flettner Fl 282 became the world's first large-scale produced helicopter, with prototypes...