Germany Watched Entire Battalions Die in Three Minutes — The Weapon No One Could Explain

Comments · 104

• TI

  @timwerner7771 · 1 month ago

  I met a woman who assembled these in Cincinnati in WW-2. I asked her how they were able to shoot them out of a cannon and survive? "They are packed in beeswax to cushion them" was her answer.

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• WW

  @WW2WarBirds123 · 1 month ago

  What makes the proximity fuse remarkable is that it transformed artillery from simply hitting an area into detonating at the most lethal moment. The image of German troops discovering that even their foxholes offered little protection from airbursts really shows how dramatically technology was changing warfare by 1944.

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• WI

  @WiredGrape · 1 month ago

  Too many repeating sentences in the video.  If most were removed the video would have been much shorter.

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• WW

  @WW2Arsenalst1 · 1 month ago

  “The air kills.” That phrase captures the terror of the proximity fuse perfectly—traditional cover suddenly offered little protection against shells bursting overhead. What fascinates me most is how physics, mass production, and secrecy came together in one weapon. Do you think the proximity fuse deserves more recognition among WWII’s decisive technologies?

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• 4O

  @4OHz · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5AzULhUk9k&amp;t=153">2:33</a> Actually it happened in more than a half-dozen German research labs as well but the disparity and lack of a consolidated effort killed the idea early on in Germany

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• 1L

  @1lettylove · 1 month ago

  Great research, very well written and good delivery. <br>Great video

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• ER

  @EricClausen-k3s · 3 weeks ago

  The delay of artillery exploding is another killer of soldiers when all three air burst Delay and super quick hits a target simultaneously every soldier dies

• ER

  @EricClausen-k3s · 3 weeks ago

  Drones change one thing everything

• WW

  @WWIIAftermath · 1 month ago

  “We face not just American soldiers, but American science.” That idea captures what made the proximity fuse so revolutionary. It transformed artillery from shells exploding at a predetermined time or on impact into ammunition that could respond to its surroundings. What impresses you more: the science behind the fuse or the industrial effort required to manufacture it at wartime scale?

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• BP

  @BP_Devo · 1 month ago

  This video explains why so many classified R&amp;D projects were based in Silver Springs, MD and College Park, MD.

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• WW

  @WW2PacificRecords · 1 month ago

  The engineering challenge may be even more impressive than the battlefield results. Engineers had to fit a miniature radio system inside an artillery shell and make its fragile vacuum tubes survive roughly 20,000 times the force of gravity and 30,000 revolutions per minute. That sounds almost impossible for 1940s electronics.

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• EV

  @evilshews · 1 month ago

  The part not mentioned is the american artillery organization, and command control, where the artillery hq section, could command mulitple batterys spred acrost a front, to exicute a time on target barrage, where every shell fell within seconds of each other, regardless of where the gun was when it fired. That, added to the vt fuse, was hellfire touching the earth.

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