The Nazis, during WW2, planned and worked on building a “sun gun” — a big mirror orbiting the Earth that could concentrate the sun’s energy into a single beam. They hoped it would burn anyone and everything in its sights.
While a gigantic mirror in space sounds like something out of the 2012 movie Iron Sky (where the Nazis flee to the moon after their defeat in WW2), it is a fact that Nazi scientists had their fingers in a lot of pies. We also know that the Füherer supported the development of new technologies to defeat the Allies.
But can there really be any truth to the “sun gun” theory?
In short, yes.
The Third Reich was at the forefront of many incredible scientific feats. For example, Fritz X is often considered to be the first type of smart bomb ever.
This weapon was radio-guided and could carry up to 700lbs of explosives. Dropped from a bomber at an altitude of about 20,000 feet (6 kilometers) it was well out of reach of any anti-aircraft weaponry and could hit targets like warships with pinpoint accuracy.
This bomb was used to lethal effect during WW2 in the sinking of HMS Warspite, HMS Spartan and the hospital ship HMHS Newfoundland to name but a few.
Another devastatingly effective weapon that saw action, albeit late in the war, came in the guise of the Messerschmitt 163 Komet. This airplane was the first rocket-propelled plane. It could reach speeds of over 700 mph (1,126 kph) in a vertical dive – that’s slightly shy of the sound barrier at about 767 mph (1,234 kph).
Despite all of the technological advancement, the plane was highly impractical in that it only had a range of about 20 miles (32 kilometers) and then ran out of fuel.
The Flettner FI 282 was the first mass-produced helicopter ever built with prototypes taking off as early as 1941. However, despite the fanfare, only 24 were ever made because the Allies bombed the factory. But it must be said that the Nazis used these flying machines for reconnaissance purposes very effectively.
The Allies even found prototypes for a stealth bomber that could fly all the way to New York and drop a nuclear bomb – the Americans would never have seen it coming.
History shows us that the Nazis were pretty resourceful, so it is highly possible that they planned something of the magnitude and scale of the “sun gun.” If you believe a Life Magazine article published in 1945, it is reported that “US Army technology experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a “sun gun.””
The colossal mirror in space was supposed to focus the sun’s rays on a focal point on the earth’s surface. “The Germans hoped to use such a mirror to burn an enemy city to ashes or to boil part of an ocean,” the readers were told.
The initial idea came from the renowned rocket scientist Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) in 1923. Over a kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter, powered by the heat of the sun, this super cannon in space was supposed to set fire to large swaths of enemy territory on the earth below, even vaporizing entire cities.
The Germans even went so far as to set a budget of three million Reichsmark. Furthermore, Oberth calculated that it would take 15 years to construct the massive mirror in the sky. The building material would be brought up into space with rockets and then mounted onto the superstructure.
The original idea of using a gargantuan mirror in space was to supply the earth with sunshine anywhere on the globe. But Oberth later called the project the “ultimate weapon.”
“My space mirror,” he wrote, “is like the hand mirrors that schoolboys use to flash circles of sunlight on the ceiling of their classroom. A sudden beam flashed on the teacher’s face may bring unpleasant reactions.”
Hermann Oberth was a German physicist and engineer. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he is regarded as one of the founding fathers of rocket science and astronautics. He was only 14 years old when he made his first rocket model. During the Nazi period, he was said to have been involved in the development of the V2 rocket.
After the war, he worked under his fo