- 5 minutes ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Warning. What you're about to see could be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:13What are the most shocking weapons ever created?
00:16How about one that transforms animals into cold-blooded killing machines?
00:21This is absolutely a stroke of genius. Bats can carry more of their body weight than birds.
00:27They fly faster than birds. And then when the timer goes off, the napalm is ignited and then kabam, they
00:34explode.
00:35Or a device that breaches enemy lines with some rather unconventional ammunition.
00:40They filled a trebuchet with their most foul-smelling, worst-looking, rotting, bloated corpses and launched them into the city.
00:50They're exploding on impact. Just stuff is just oozing from all sorts of gaps and crevices in these bodies.
00:58What about a gun that gives its user a real headache?
01:02An inventor decides that guns have a major problem.
01:06He thinks that he can take the firearm to the next level by making it a hands-free device.
01:13And thus, the gun helmet is a recipe for disaster.
01:17These are the weapons. So wild, they are truly unbelievable.
01:34In 1941, after suffering an unprecedented attack on home soil, the United States knows it must retaliate.
01:41But how? The answer lies in a secret weapon so unusual, it is the last thing anyone expects.
01:52The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, the United States enters World War II.
01:57And we're trying to come up with any, any clever idea to end the war as quickly as possible.
02:06In Pennsylvania, this dental surgeon by the name of Dr. Lyle Adams thinks that he has the ideal remedy, the
02:13ideal weapon for the United States.
02:17Adams is a part-time inventor, and he is also a man who enjoys exploring caves.
02:22And one day, he's touring around caves in New Mexico, and he sees bats hanging everywhere.
02:27And he thinks, what if we weaponize them?
02:31His idea? Strap explosives to bats and release them into enemy territory.
02:39This is absolutely a stroke of genius. Dr. Adams knows that bats can carry more of their body weight than
02:47birds. They fly faster than birds.
02:50The way this can work is that you can chill the bats down to around 40 degrees, and they enter
02:56a hibernation state.
02:58Each hibernating bat is fitted with a little incendiary device of napalm.
03:05These hibernating, bomb-laden bats could then be loaded into a canister, and that could be carried up aloft in
03:12a B-25.
03:13Once released, the bats would naturally wake up when they hit warmer air.
03:17They will then flutter off and find whatever building they possibly can and roost.
03:23So these bats make their way into the eaves of buildings, into attics, into crawl spaces.
03:28And then when the timer goes off, the napalm is ignited, and then kabam, they explode.
03:34Exploding bats may sound wild, but Adams has friends in high places.
03:41Adams knows the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. He writes her a letter describing what he wants to do.
03:49She then shows that letter to her husband, the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the
03:54American military.
03:56FDR hands the idea over to the U.S. Army Air Force, along with a $2 million check, and says,
04:03go develop bat bombs.
04:05To pull this off, Dr. Adams needs bats, and a whole lot of them.
04:10Adams chooses the Carlsbad Air Base because it's right near a system of caves that have a population of roughly
04:159 million bats.
04:17So it's perfect. They'll be able to have an unlimited supply of bats, and be able to test them using
04:22Air Force airplanes.
04:24There's just one question now. Do these flying mammals have what it takes to win a war?
04:29The day arrives to do the first test without incendiary devices. So they take thousands of bats and then drop
04:35them over a farm.
04:37They fly down to the ground, and they fly into the barn, they fly into hay bales, fly into the
04:42house.
04:43They're doing exactly what they hoped that they would do.
04:45After the successful test with the unarmed bats, the Army gets a little bit ambitious, and that same day decides
04:52to do a mini-test with six armed bats.
04:56Six unlucky bats strapped with timer-rigged napalm capsules. Again, what could possibly go wrong?
05:02They're getting ready to put them into the casing when suddenly the bats wake up. They come out of hibernation
05:07mode, and they fly away.
05:09These bats fly all over the Air Force base. They get into a control tower, they get into a hangar,
05:13they go under a fuel tank.
05:14Some of them fly into an automobile nearby. Turns out it's the general's automobile, and they detonate.
05:20The test of the bat bomb is such a success, it demolishes the military base. But it means it works.
05:26It works perfectly.
05:28Unsurprisingly, there is one person who is not very happy with the outcome.
05:33Our Army Air Corps general is pretty much fed up with this project because it blows up his car.
05:39Sort of puts a blemish on his record. So it's handed off to the United States Navy.
05:44But the U.S. Navy has other priorities.
05:46The Navy, uninterested in developing this program further, turns it over to the United States Marine Corps.
05:53When the Marines take over this project, they move the operation eventually to Utah, where they build a model Japanese
06:00village.
06:01And they're able to destroy this model village using these incendiary bats.
06:05Despite this initial success, the Marines quickly learn bats aren't always cooperative.
06:12Sometimes they don't wake up from hibernation. So when they're dropped out of a plane, they just kind of fall
06:18and land wherever.
06:20They find that when females are pregnant and males are in the vicinity of the pregnant females, that the males
06:26become agitated to such a degree that they're no longer predictably capable of delivering the explosives as intended.
06:33And there's really only about a five month period in the calendar year during which the bat can be reliably
06:40used for the delivery of explosives.
06:41And the big problem there is that the war goes on 12 months a year.
06:45As the team is working through all these difficulties in parallel, there's another effort underway to shorten the war.
06:53And that is the atomic bomb project. So eventually the bat bomb is simply discarded.
07:00As one unconventional idea is shelved, another is just taking flight, this time with wings of a very different kind.
07:10We're in the midst of World War II, and all the missiles that we used are not guided.
07:16They can't be directed to hit a specific target. They can only be flown over an area and then dropped.
07:24If we had a way to have that bomb go precisely to that location, it could be a game changer.
07:32Noted Harvard psychologist and inventor B.F. Skinner has an epiphany one day while out for a walk.
07:41He happens to see a flock of pigeons and it occurs to him, I could use their natural innate honing
07:48abilities to direct the bomb.
07:51Skinner approaches the National Research Defense Committee with this plan. He code names it Project Pigeon.
07:58Using pigeons to hone in on the enemy sounds crazy, but is it crazy enough to work?
08:05The Defense Committee certainly thinks so.
08:08Skinner receives 25 grand or roughly half a million dollars today to figure out how to make a pigeon guided
08:15bomb work.
08:17But Skinner has a plan. He thinks that in order to create a pigeon guided missile, you need a pigeon
08:24guiding cockpit.
08:25So Skinner creates a little cone that will go on top of a glide bomb and in the cone will
08:32be a video screen.
08:33Skinner places a gold electrode on the pigeon's beak. He then shows the pigeon video of targets like buildings and
08:41battleships on the screen.
08:44Skinner's theory is this. If you train a pigeon to peck at an image of a battleship or a building
08:51and you reward them for it, they'll continue pecking at it.
08:56And after a while, they will no longer require the reward. They'll just keep pecking.
09:04The images on the touch panel are linked to the guidance mechanism of the missile.
09:11So the pigeon actually is guiding the missile towards its particular target.
09:17The system works almost perfectly, except for a slight issue with focus.
09:24It can get distracted. It might get something wrong. It might send the bomb to the wrong target.
09:29So Skinner comes up with a great idea. Let's add democracy to our pigeon bombs.
09:35And thus, Skinner uses three pigeons. If two out of three pigeons pick the ship, the bomb's going to steer
09:43in that direction.
09:44Turns out that pigeon democracy works every single time.
09:50All they have to do now is stick a camera on the missile and let those pigeon pilots fly, right?
09:58Not so fast.
10:00The system Skinner creates works very well, but the army thinks it would be a little bit embarrassing to have
10:06pigeons guiding their missiles.
10:08So they choose not to go with the pigeons.
10:10But it's not a total loss.
10:12The screens that the pigeons were pecking on are the precursors to the screens we use every day in our
10:19cell phones.
10:21Interestingly enough, the pigeons are ahead of their time.
10:26If you think bat bombs and pigeon-driven missiles are weird, wait until you see what's next.
10:35In times of war, protecting lives becomes just as important as destroying enemies.
10:40This holds especially true for new parents in London in 1939, whose worries go from diaper duty and nap time
10:48to shielding their little bundles of joy from lethal chemical threats.
10:53From the First World War, there were 100,000 deaths from mustard and chlorine gas.
10:58So you have the military and scientists trying to develop technology to keep the population safe from gas attacks.
11:05And baby gas masks are invented.
11:09Gas mask is probably the wrong word.
11:12This is like a full body suit.
11:15This is like a helmet with a visor and a metal grate over the kid's face.
11:20In an effort to make them seem less scary, the government names them the Mickey Mouse mask.
11:27Not sure how much that helps.
11:30Getting a baby into these gas masks isn't exactly the easiest thing.
11:34You have to load them into this metal visor thing and then wrap canvas around them like a diaper with
11:41their little legs hanging out from the bottom.
11:42But then it is actually convenient for the parents because you can wear your gas mask baby like a backpack,
11:49like a gas mask baby Bjorn.
11:52This suit is meant to be air tight and you as the parent have to keep pumping air into it
11:58so your kid has enough fresh air to survive.
12:01It's not hard to imagine this isn't going to work well.
12:04So the British start testing out this brilliant idea, but then the nurses notice a little problem.
12:09The babies are falling asleep.
12:11And it isn't because the babies are so warm and cozy.
12:15So it becomes rather clear that they aren't actually getting as much air as they are supposed to.
12:20And ultimately the project is scrapped because of course better to run the risk of a gas attack than inadvertently
12:25wipe out a generation by suffocating them in baby gas masks.
12:29But it does inspire yet another bizarre idea for armor.
12:33As the British people are facing the prospect of war, we also have the baby gas mask stroller for the
12:40parent on the go who wants to make sure their child is protected in the event of a mustard attack.
12:44Basically, it looks like a coffin with a visor over it so you can see the baby, make sure everything
12:49looks good there.
12:49And like the baby gas mask, the gas stroller is also air tight with a cute little pump.
12:56Just don't forget to give it a squeeze now and then.
12:59You put your baby in this airtight coffin like metal container that has an air filter that you have to
13:04consistently pump oxygen into and you go for a stroll in Piccadilly Circus.
13:09What happens to the person walking the baby isn't quite clear, but the intent behind it somehow makes sense.
13:16During wartime, you still want to go to the park with your baby, even though you're under threat.
13:20So people are just grasping at straws to maintain their sense of normalcy.
13:24And luckily, London and the rest of England were not attacked with chemical weapons, and so the baby stroller was
13:33never needed.
13:36As the fear of chemical threats subside, a different kind of terrifying attack takes aim during World War II.
13:46After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese essentially are ruling the entire Pacific.
13:50But by 1944, the tide has turned and the allies are getting closer to Japan.
13:58And as a result, desperate times call for desperate measures.
14:03Enter the kamikaze.
14:08These planes have a pilot, they're loaded with bombs and extra fuel, and they're designed to slam right into American
14:15ships.
14:19So the Japanese Navy is looking around and they see these kamikaze planes and they think, well, that's a good
14:25idea.
14:26What if we had something like that?
14:29Japanese Navy Lieutenants Hiroshi Kuroki and Sekio Nishina come up with a daring design, the Kaiten Torpedo, which roughly translates
14:39to the Heaven Shaker.
14:42The Japanese have long relied on torpedoes as one of their main weapons for naval engagements.
14:49But it's very difficult to get a torpedo on time and on target.
14:54What they develop is essentially a suicide submarine.
15:00They take their standard Type 93 torpedo and in the center, right behind the payload, they add a cockpit for
15:08a pilot.
15:09It's got rudimentary controls, it's got a steering column, it also has a button to detonate the warhead.
15:17The torpedo is 30 feet long, but the real importance comes with its speed.
15:21It can reach 60 miles an hour, which is almost twice as fast as any ship afloat at the time.
15:31While it seems like a pretty straightforward single-use vessel, it still needs to be tested.
15:37The first tests that are done are done without a payload, but it's still dangerous to ram a target under
15:44the water.
15:49During these trials, 15 men died, including one of the inventors, Hiroshi Kuroki, who was killed in one of the
15:58tests.
16:02So now with testing complete, there's only one thing left to do, and that's to put it into battle.
16:07And who's going to run that first mission? None other than the other inventor, Lieutenant Sekio Nishina.
16:17He wants to pay tribute to his best friend who died during training.
16:22And as such, he brings a box of his ashes that are going to ride like a co-pilot with
16:28him into action.
16:30On the morning of November 20th, 1944, the Kaitan sets out on its first mission, to ram the USS Mississinawa.
16:41Nishina drives it across the harbor and slams it to the side of the U.S. oil ship.
16:53The explosion blows a massive hole into the starboard side of the Mississinawa.
16:59It rolls over and 63 sailors on board are killed.
17:07Although it appears that the chitin is going to be a revolutionary weapon,
17:11as a matter of fact, when they put them into operation, there's very little success.
17:16At the end of the day, 179 American sailors lose their lives in chitin attacks.
17:21But nearly 1,000 Japanese are lost either on the kaitens themselves,
17:27or in the mother submarines that are sunk on the way to deliver their cargo.
17:33The kaiten torpedo stands as one of the war's most harrowing inventions.
17:38A grim reminder of just how far some are willing to go.
17:42But when brute force won't do, some turn to brain power.
17:49Protecting your head in battle is crucial.
17:51But a century ago, someone turned that safety gear into something far more offensive.
17:59Prior to World War I, an inventor, Albert Bacon Pratt, decides that guns have a major problem.
18:08You actually have to hold them in your hand, point them, and pull the trigger.
18:12He thinks that he can take the firearm to the next level by making it a hands-free device.
18:19So Pratt goes into his Vermont workshop and tinkers away with what he thinks will be the solution to modern
18:26warfare.
18:27It's called the gun helmet.
18:31The design is a steel shell, and integrated into the steel shell is the weapon.
18:39And from the barrel, there's also a sight that falls down.
18:42So all the marksman has to do is look at his enemy, and boom, hands-free shooting.
18:48This, of course, begs the million-dollar question.
18:51How does one fire a handgun without their hands?
18:56The marksman has a rubber hose in his mouth.
18:59And he blows into that hose, which is routed up above his face into the helmet,
19:05which ignites the bulb, depresses the trigger, and now you have hands-free firing.
19:12His patent illustrates that the helmet has another function.
19:17On the top, there is a spike, and it's actually a cooking utensil.
19:23The wearer can tenderize meat, stir stew, maybe even butcher a bear.
19:30Cooking stew notwithstanding, there is one glaring flaw in Pratt's design
19:34that is a real headache to move past.
19:37At this time in history, guns have serious recoil.
19:41When they fire that gun, that sucker's gonna kick his head back.
19:45The neck can snap, the skull can crack, and even teeth can be broken.
19:51And thus, the gun helmet is a recipe for disaster.
19:57Apparently, the U.S. military agrees because the gun never makes it to the front lines.
20:02But there's another way to use your head in battle, and it won't give you whiplash.
20:11Conventional espionage is, although a very successful way of gathering intelligence about a potential foe,
20:16it's also very difficult.
20:18So, during the decades of the Cold War, the government comes up with a plan.
20:23The U.S. military establishes Operation Stargate.
20:26And this is a program by which 10 or 15 men are trained at Fort Meade in Maryland
20:31in a psychological exercise that's called remote viewing.
20:37What is remote viewing?
20:39Well, simply put, it is psychic spying.
20:42The principle of psychic spying is that people use the power of their mind
20:49to locate all the usual intelligence targets.
20:54Missile silos, military bases, ballistic missile submarines, that sort of thing.
21:00Incredibly, this unique form of espionage seems to actually work.
21:04Turns out, the results are way better than chance alone should allow.
21:12Some of the estimates about the success rate of this program put the figure at 70, 80%.
21:20From these experiments, the Army identifies six, quote, star performers.
21:27One of these star performers is named Joseph McMoneagle.
21:32During his remote viewing session, he begins to sketch out what he's seeing.
21:38McMoneagle claims that he's capable of seeing deep into the Soviet Union,
21:42and he observes the construction of a large submarine.
21:46And what McMoneagle describes ends up being the Typhoon class of Soviet ballistic missile submarines
21:52six months before their existence is made public.
21:55But while McMoneagle is seen as a star performer, he's not even the best one of the group.
22:01That would be his colleague Pat Price, who is deemed a psychic treasure.
22:06Pat Price is supposedly successful in being able to infiltrate an underground Soviet nuclear research site.
22:12Price claims to remote view the development of a particle beam weapon
22:17that the Soviets are going to use to shoot down satellites.
22:20Despite its promise, Operation Stargate never really takes off.
22:25And the CIA shelves the program.
22:28But there's a suspicion that it's only in public that the plug has been pulled.
22:33Some people believe these programs continue to this day.
22:37There is a theory that this is a classic black op.
22:41It's still going on, but it's buried somewhere in the private sector, perhaps.
22:47It may sound like a strange Cold War footnote, but Operation Stargate stands out as one of the most groundbreaking
22:55military intelligence experiments ever.
22:59When used wisely, spite can be a very dangerous weapon, especially if you are a professional welder with a passion
23:06for DIY projects.
23:11It's June of 2004, and the town of Granby, Colorado has descended into panic.
23:20Because there is a homemade armored vehicle laying waste to local buildings in the community.
23:27It is an absolute wrecking machine.
23:32The local law enforcement have no idea how to stop this thing.
23:36It seems to be armor plated.
23:39It's knocking down buildings, running over vehicles.
23:42It seems to be retrofitted to be more of an armored fighting vehicle than an actual bulldozer.
23:47As a matter of fact, it's quickly nicknamed the killdozer.
23:52But what the scared citizens of Granby don't realize is that the man driving the steel-clad behemoth is a
23:59neighbor they know and like.
24:04Marvin Heemeyer is the local man behind the wheel.
24:07He is known as an expert welder, and in fact, he runs a very successful business in town.
24:14Outwardly, he seems to be living a happy life.
24:17Life should be good for Marvin, but there's something sticking in his craw.
24:22For years, Marvin has been in a battle with the Granby Town Board due to a land dispute.
24:31The trouble starts in the early 90s, when Marvin outbids the concrete company next door for a prime piece of
24:37land.
24:39They allegedly retaliate by using their connections with the board to get Marvin slapped with costly fines.
24:47Marvin grudgingly pays the fines, but when he's making out his check,
24:52he uses the memo section to insult the town board, calling them cowards and frauds.
24:59As the town fines continue with no end in sight, Marvin's rage builds.
25:09One night, Marvin claims to hear the voice of God.
25:14That voice tells him to get revenge on all of the people that are involved in this scandal.
25:26Marvin gets himself a bulldozer at a local auction.
25:30And while he is running his business during the day, at night, he's spending his time creating this impenetrable armored
25:40attack vehicle.
25:43Marvin reinforces the killdozer with steel plates and concrete, making it virtually impenetrable.
25:50Instead of windows, he mounts cameras behind bulletproof glass and navigates using internal monitors.
25:59On June 4th, 2004, Marvin's rampage begins.
26:06The first thing he turns into rubble is the concrete factory next door, owned by the family who he had
26:12the problems with.
26:14Law enforcement shows up and they start firing .50 caliber bullets at him.
26:19They even try to use concussion grenades, but not a scratch on the killdozer.
26:24Marvin takes to the highway to visit everybody on his long list.
26:29Next, Marvin hits the propane company, owned by a town board member.
26:34Then he moves to the town hall itself and runs it completely into the ground.
26:41He turns the killdozer towards the hardware store, also owned by a board member.
26:47But Marvin makes one massive tactical blunder.
26:53He fails to realize the building does have a basement.
26:58The killdozer wedges into the basement where it gets stuck.
27:05The dozer starts overheating and finally shuts down.
27:11Marvin does not survive the ordeal, but he does become a folk hero of sorts for the people in the
27:18area.
27:18People who feel that taking matters into their own hand is the only act they have left.
27:26Decades earlier, the British military rolled out something just as unstoppable and far more explosive.
27:37It's 1943 and World War II is at a stalemate.
27:41The Germans have built a massive fortification along the entire French coast called the Atlantic Wall.
27:48It's nigh unimpenetrable.
27:52So this is a big conundrum for the Allies.
27:55How do you get troops on the beach and circumvent the obstacle of the Atlantic Wall?
28:02What they come up with is something straight out of a Roadrunner cartoon.
28:08The weapon is the brainchild of British wing commander C.R. Finch Noyes.
28:13And he comes up with what he thinks will be a war-winning weapon.
28:18Picture, if you will, two 10-foot-tall steel wheels upon which are 70 slow-burning cordite rockets.
28:26In the middle, a canister stuffed with 4,000 pounds of high explosive.
28:33The idea? Get up close to the beach with the panjandrum, spark up the rockets and let her rip.
28:39They wanted to send 12 panjandrums up to the beach at Normandy to blow channels in the wall so that
28:47the troops could just walk on through.
28:50That's an insane idea for this rocket-powered wheel of death.
28:56In late 1943, Finch Noyes decides it's time to take the panjandrum out for a little test spin.
29:04Finch Noyes invites the military's top brass to witness this war machine in action.
29:10This being a test, they decide we're not going to actually blow something up.
29:14So its payload, rather than being 4,000 pounds of explosive, is 4,000 pounds of inert sand.
29:21This turns out to be a very wise decision.
29:25When the test begins, they light the rockets and the panjandrum comes off the landing craft.
29:31Everything looks good for the first 20 or 30 feet.
29:34Then it starts losing rockets and all hell breaks loose.
29:38An officer's dog starts chasing the panjandrum down the beach like it's a chew toy.
29:45Then the panjandrum turns and starts going after the dog.
29:49Rockets are firing irregularly, the thing's flipping from side to side like a wagon wheel.
29:54It's an unmitigated disaster, and for that reason alone, the panjandrum is not included in the plans for the D
30:01-Day invasion.
30:05We are happy to report that no dogs were harmed in the making of the panjandrum.
30:12In times of war, necessity breeds not just innovation, but sometimes unspeakable acts of resourcefulness.
30:18One such example comes from the Mongol Empire, while running low on soldiers and ideas.
30:26So it's the early part of the 13th century, and the Golden Horde, a mighty, massive military force led by
30:34Genghis Khan, overtakes most of Asia, is on their way to Europe, and takes over the Crimean Peninsula.
30:41In the newly conquered Crimean Peninsula, the Mongols strike a deal with Genoese merchants in the walled city of Kapha,
30:49keeping the peace for now.
30:51All goes really well for some time, until we have a new Khan, Johnny Beck.
30:59Johnny Beck Khan wants Kapha back.
31:02For two brutal years, the Mongols batter the city.
31:06Just as victory seems within reach, something unexpected turns the tide.
31:12Suddenly, men in the Mongol army are dying in droves.
31:17Johnny Beck is seeing his soldiers fall left and right.
31:20He's thinking, how are we going to continue a siege like this?
31:24At the same time, the Genoese look over this wall, and they're starting to see this powerful Mongol army writhing
31:30in pain on the fields, vomiting, just bleeding.
31:34And they think to themselves, we've won.
31:37They're too sick to fight.
31:38There's no way that they're going to be able to take over the city from us.
31:41We get to keep it.
31:43The day is ours. Hurrah.
31:45That's when the golden horde of Mongols' fearless leader devises a plan that is both unbelievable and, well, disgusting.
31:54They filled a trebuchet with their most foul-smelling, worst-looking, rotting, bloated corpses and launched them into the city
32:04in the hopes that the smell alone will drive the residents out.
32:10They're bloated bodies.
32:12They're corpses.
32:13So when they hit, they're exploding on impact.
32:19Just stuff is just oozing from all sorts of gaps and crevices in these bodies.
32:25The Genoese are inside going, man, we know we have to do something with all these dead bodies.
32:31So they start loading them into wagons and carrying them to the river and dumping them in.
32:41Problem solved, right?
32:43Nope.
32:44Turns out the Genoese are victims of a new form of warfare.
32:49As they're collecting these bodies and starting to dump them, they're noticing that they're also starting to get sick and
32:55they're also starting to have the same symptoms that the Mongols did outside of the city.
33:00They are now writhing in pain and they realize, oh, my God, we've got the same thing that they got.
33:08What the Genoese got is none other than one of the most infectious diseases.
33:14The disease that Jannebeck and the Mongols have hit the Genoese with is a bubonic plague.
33:23So Jannebeck Khan's original idea was to just stink these people out.
33:26But now he's realizing, oh, my God, I can get them just as sick as my men.
33:30So the bodies keep coming over the wall.
33:33He has no shame in throwing these men, flinging them over the walls, just watching them explode on impact and
33:38getting these Genoese people sick.
33:42The Black Plague Trebuchet is easily the weirdest example of biological weaponry in human history and its impact will reach
33:50far beyond the walls of Kaffa.
33:52The Mongols retreat south of Kaffa and all the Genoese abandon the city, board boats towards Europe.
34:02And what they begin to do in their retreat is spread the Black Plague through Europe.
34:12We can't say for certain that Mongols are solely responsible for this infamous pandemic.
34:17What we do learn is a valuable lesson.
34:20When launching hazardous ammunition, it's best to keep a safe distance.
34:25But centuries later, that gets a lot harder when the payload is nuclear.
34:32At one of the peaks of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force are
34:38the two services leading the way in America's nuclear arsenal.
34:42But the Army wants to find some way to use nuclear devices in its own activities, notably in the field.
34:49What if, on the battlefield, a confrontation with Soviet Russia, we have a portable nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb attached
34:59to the end of a bazooka?
35:02That is a battle-winning idea.
35:06They call it the Davy Crockett, and it packs a potent punch.
35:11The Davy Crockett weapon system fires a 20-ton nuclear warhead.
35:15Anything in its immediate vicinity is going to be reduced to ash, rubble.
35:23It's great at eradicating your enemies.
35:26It's also great at eradicating your allies.
35:31Therein lies the king of the wild frontiers, Little Problem.
35:35It uses radioactive material, and the men who are deploying this device are going to be very close to it,
35:42so they're at risk of radiation poisoning.
35:45What they actually tell them to do is safely fire the weapon, hide behind cover, don't look at the bright
35:52flash, get away as quickly as possible.
35:54That way you don't suffer from nuclear fallout.
35:56Believe it or not, friendly fire radiation isn't the only issue.
36:02Deploying nuclear weapons on a battlefront is a guaranteed way to start an escalation to global nuclear war.
36:12It won't just stop with the Davy Crockett.
36:16The army starts recalling the weapon.
36:19The official reason is that they are not accurate enough for combat.
36:27Well, I think the threat of possibly ending civilization as we know it merits a change of pace.
36:35There's no shortage of bizarre World War II weapons, from baseball grenades to a wind cannon that shoots puffs of
36:42air at the enemy.
36:43But these pale in comparison to one British engineer's idea to bounce the Nazis out of the war.
36:56In World War II, Britain comes up with this idea to attack Germany within.
37:02We're going to destroy their infrastructure.
37:05So the idea that they come up with is destroying dams.
37:08They will terrorize the population, but they'll also take out hydroelectric power,
37:13and it should have a negative impact on their manufacturing capacity.
37:17An easy way to take out the dam would be to shoot a torpedo at it.
37:22But the Germans actually have torpedo nets.
37:25So that's off the table.
37:28Dr. Barnes-Wallace is an engineer,
37:32and he's got a plan to get something past the torpedo net and below,
37:37which would ultimately cause them to fail.
37:39To Dr. Wallace, the answer is as easy as skipping stones.
37:44You bounce the bomb across the surface of the water,
37:47it hits the dam, then drops down and explodes in just the right point to create maximum damage.
37:53But a key element is that the bombs must have backspin.
37:57So backspin helps in several ways.
38:00One, it helps with the skipping off of the water,
38:03but also when it finally hits the wall of the dam,
38:06the backspin has the English effect, and it brings it down to the base of the dam,
38:11so it settles there.
38:13With no idea on how to create the backspin,
38:16Barnes-Wallace does what many of us do when stumped at work.
38:20He hits the golf course.
38:23He realizes something about the golf ball that may actually help with the bouncy bomb,
38:28and that is, is that the golf ball has these dimples.
38:32Because a golf ball, the way the dimples work on it, it actually helps create the backspin.
38:37Barnes-Wallace and his designers actually incorporate this into their bouncing bomb,
38:43even to the point where they're calling them the golf mines.
38:47By July of 1942, it's test time.
38:50Will Dr. Barnes-Wallace's dimpled bomb have what it takes to take out a dam?
38:56They find a place in Wales called Nontigro Dam,
38:59and that's where they first test the bouncing bomb.
39:02The RAF bomber takes off with the bouncing bomb slung underneath.
39:06You have to spin it at exactly the right speed, 500 RPM.
39:11You have to be exactly the right height over the water, 60 feet.
39:16And you have to be traveling at exactly the right speed, 232 miles per hour.
39:22This is a very narrow window that these teams have to hit.
39:26It skips across the river, hits the dam, sinks, 90 seconds later...
39:33The bomb works.
39:36The confident Royal Air Force readies a fleet of bombers, eager to bounce havoc on the Germans.
39:42Enter the Dambusters.
39:44Just after midnight on May 17, 1943, the Dambusters go into action.
39:50And the raid is led by a 24-year-old wing commander by the name of Guy Gibson.
39:55133 men from Britain and her allies flying in 19 bombers.
40:00The plan calls for them to hit three dams in Germany's Ruhr Valley, their industrial heartland.
40:09Gibson is the first to release his bomb.
40:12It bounces three times on the surface of the water, but then falls short.
40:16One plane's bouncing bomb even bounces clean over the dam.
40:20The first four planes miss. The fifth plane coming in is Flight Lieutenant David Maltby.
40:26He's approaching the reservoir.
40:28Gibson circles back around so that he takes the fire on his plane so that Maltby can make it through.
40:35And Maltby releases his bouncing bomb.
40:42And then suddenly the bomb explodes, concrete is crumbling, a huge column of water goes into the sky. Complete success.
40:52By the end of their mission, the Dambusters take out two of the three targets.
40:57But they pay a high price.
40:59Out of 133 men, 53 are killed on this raid.
41:04Three of them end up in the hands of the Germans.
41:07But the Dambusters go down in history as one of the most legendary squadrons ever to take to the skies.
41:18Whether it's handheld nukes or bomb dropping bats, these are not only the wildest weapons ever created.
41:25They are the very best of the unbelievable.