archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Nazi_Supergun.doc (also …Nazi_Supergun.pdf) => doc pdf URL-doc URL-pdf more on this topic is on the /Military.htm page at doc pdf URL note: because important websites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/hitlers-supergun.html on January 16, 2018. This is NOT an attempt to divert readers any website. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if it cannot be found at the original author's site. Bombing Hitler's Supergun PBS/NOVA Airdate: May 11, 2016 NARRATOR: It is the height of World War II. Allied intelligence officers spot something terrifying. The muzzle of an enormous cannon protruding from an underground Nazi bunker. It is a SuperGun. A monstrous new weapon, part of Hitler's plan to reduce London to rubble and win the War through terror. TONY POLLARD (Battlefield Archaeologist): It's a very cruel and a very nasty way of making war. But they believed it might work. NARRATOR: The Allies hatch 2 bold plans to defeat it. One involves Joe Kennedy, Jr., the eldest son of what would become an American political dynasty. He would be piloting an explosive drone. NICK SPARK (World War II Drone Expert): What happened to Joe Kennedy and his co-pilot on that plane is actually one of the greatest mysteries of World War II. NARRATOR: The other scheme would use the biggest bomb the world had ever seen. But would either plan work? HUGH HUNT (Engineer): 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... NARRATOR: Now in a series of explosive experiments, engineer Hugh Hunt will investigate the allies' bunker-busting technologies. HUGH HUNT: It's vanished. There's ground-zero and there's nothing there. NARRATOR: And he will build his own supergun … HUGH HUNT: Firing! NARRATOR: …to see if the weapon really could have brought London to its knees. Bombing Hitler's Supergun -- right now on NOVA. By spring of 1943, the tide of World War II was beginning to turn against Hitler. In an effort to regain the offensive, he drew up plans for the World's biggest gun. With 25 barrels, this - 1 - enormous cannon would be buried deep underground in Nazi-controlled France. It was designed to fire shells 100 miles, cripple London, and pave the way for a Nazi victory. In a desperate race to knock out Hitler's supergun, the Allies devised their own miracle weapons. The Americans pioneered the drone. A radio-controlled heavy bomber packed with 12 tons of high explosives. Leading the drone mission was 29-year-old Joe Kennedy, Jr., a man groomed from birth to be the first Catholic president of the United States. The British drafted in the brilliant engineer Barnes Wallis. He came up with the original bunker-buster. A bomb that would explode underground and trigger a manmade earthquake. The Allied efforts were focused on the tiny hamlet of Mimoyecques 5 miles inland from the French coast. On the surface, it's now just a ruin. But hidden inside this hollowed-out hill is the secret installation built to house the V-3 Nazi supergun. TONY POLLARD: Good grief! HUGH HUNT: I can't quite make sense of this. This isn't natural rock. This is concrete. TONY POLLARD: No, this is a roof. Look at it. It's 4-or-5 meters thick! NARRATOR: Engineer Hugh Hunt and battlefield archaeologist Tony Pollard have been drawn to find answers to the many questions that remain about this mysterious super weapon. HUGH HUNT: This was the entrance of a tunnel? TONY POLLARD: Yes. It looks as though there is some sort of hatchway. NARRATOR: How did it work? Was it powerful enough to hit London 100 miles away? And could it have ended the War? These are the mysteries that Tony and Hugh are trying to solve. HUGH HUNT: This is a glorified pillbox with a 130-meter-long gun. I'd love to see what's underground. ... Right. Let's go. NARRATOR: The fortified bunker has not been fully explored since the War. TONY POLLARD: Whoa! That's slippy! You okay? HUGH HUNT: Yep, yep! NARRATOR: They rappel down one of the steep shafts that would have each contained 5 barrels of the supergun. TONY POLLARD: Wow! Look how steep it looks from the bottom! This is certainly BIG. HUGH HUNT: This, we reckon, is about 50 meters. TONY POLLARD: And it was 130 meters. HUGH HUNT: And this is one-third of the way down. - 2 - NARRATOR: The shaft extends a further 300 feet beneath them. But now it's blocked by rubble. Today, there is no sign of the barrels. But the design of the shaft reveals a telling detail. HUGH HUNT: This tunnel is centered very accurately on a particular line. ... Well, here we are here at Mimoyecques. And this particular tunnel that we see here points directly over here at Westminster Bridge. Which is astonishing! NARRATOR: Hitler's gun was trained right on central London. By the spring of 1943, the Nazis had tasted defeat in the deserts of North Africa. And they had been driven from the Soviet Union after a bloody battle at Stalingrad. Hitler was determined to strike back. Taking center stage in his war room was the SuperGun or the “London Cannon” as he called it. Its 5 shafts would each contain 5 barrels. That's a total of 25 barrels firing 300 shells an hour 24 hours-a-day. Maintaining this onslaught would require an enormous infrastructure. A network of galleries to store ammunition. 1,200 troops to man the guns and an underground railway to supply them. This was artillery warfare on an industrial scale. HUGH HUNT: Whoa! NARRATOR: Hugh and Tony explore the farthest reaches of the complex looking for clues to how the tunnels were built. TONY POLLARD: It's almost like a city underground, isn't it? HUGH HUNT: Yep. TONY POLLARD: Look at this, Hugh. Look! What they've done is they've actually used drills or spikes. NARRATOR: What they find shows them the tunnels were carved by hand using pickaxes and jackhammers with steel spikes. TONY POLLARD: Oh look! Look! Look at that! Look at that! HUGH HUNT: That fits. TONY POLLARD: They're just using them to prise away fragments of the stone. And imagine the effort all day every day hammering these spikes in and then moving away all the rubble. It's just a horrible thought. NARRATOR: The SuperGun's first victims were not the people of London but the slave laborers who built the installation. - 3 - TONY POLLARD: This complex was built by a large number of people that had been conscripted against their will. And there can be no doubt that many many people lost their lives. This wasn't a normal building site. Work here never stopped. They had gangs of workers on site, 24 hours-a-day 7 days-a-week. The priority here was to get those guns into action. The human cost didn't matter. NARRATOR: Hitler wanted to rush his wonder weapon into action because he was hungry for revenge. He had bombed London during the Blitz in the early days of the War. But since then, his Luftwaffe had lost air superiority in the skies over Europe. The Allies were exploiting this lack of air cover by relentlessly bombing German cities. Hitler began building fortified installations all over Northern France. Massive concrete bunkers hidden in remote woods that would house a new generation of secret armaments called “V-weapons.” TONY POLLARD: They're called the V-weapons because they're about vengeance. They're about retribution. This is Hitler getting his own back. What the R.A.F. and the American Air Force have been doing is bombing German cities and killing German civilians. Hitler is absolutely outraged by this and decides that he's going to take it out on London. So all of these weapons are designed to hit London from France. NARRATOR: These were technologies straight out of science fiction. There was the V-1, a jet- powered flying bomb. There was the V-2, a rocket that would shoot beyond the stratosphere before falling back to Earth. These weapons had the potential to reduce London to rubble. But they were untested in battle and unreliable. TONY POLLARD: Initially, at least, Hitler was fairly skeptical about these new experimental weapons. Rockets and missiles were not really his bag. His was a more traditional military background molded in the trenches of the First World War. But what that experience did give him was knowledge of how effective artillery could be. He had seen how artillery could cut men apart. Upwards of 80 percent of the casualties on the Western front were caused by artillery. And the V-3 was a super gun. It was old school but with a new twist. NARRATOR: The twist was that unlike traditional artillery, the shells of the V-3 SuperGun would not be falling on frontline soldiers but raining down on London's terrified civilians. In September 1943 in a country house in Buckinghamshire, the first evidence began to emerge of Hitler's secret plot against the British capital. An elite team of specially trained intelligence officers had been posted here to comb through aerial photographs taken on reconnaissance missions over occupied northern France. They were searching for signs of Nazi weapons sites. Officers examining pictures of the Mimoyecques area spotted something mysterious. Railway tracks disappearing into a hill.