The incredible Nazi plans for a mile-wide 'sun gun' to fry cities from space
- Giant space mirror would have concentrated the sun's rays on Earth
- German army would use it to 'burn enemy cities' or 'boil part of an ocean'
- Would also contain a manned space station complete with gardens
By Mark Prigg
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It sounds like something only a Bond villain would propose, but the Nazis planned a mile-wide ‘space gun’ powered by the sun.
The giant mirror could be used to focus the sun on a target – like the magnifying glasses used by children to create fire.
A long-forgotten article from Life magazine in 1945 revealed how ‘US Army technical experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a “sun gun”’.
The mile wide mirror would be able to focus the power of the sun onto a target on Earth
The giant orbital mirror would ‘focus the sun’s rays to a scorching point on the Earth’s surface’. The German army, readers were told, ‘hoped to use such a mirror to burn an enemy city or to boil part of an ocean’.
The idea came to renowned rocket scientist Hermann Oberth in 1923.
With an estimated cost of three million marks and taking 15 years to construct, the original purpose of the space mirror was to provide the people of Earth with sunshine on demand, anywhere on the globe. But Oberth later described it as 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.’
A FOUNDING FATHER OF ROCKETRY
Hermann Oberth, the man behind the 'sun gun'
He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, and constructed his first model rocket as a school student of 14.
In 1928 and 1929 Oberth worked in Berlin as scientific consultant on the first film ever to have scenes set in space, Frau im Mond (The Woman in the Moon), directed at UFA-Film Co. by Fritz Lang, although he lost the sight in his left eye in an experiment for this film.
In autumn 1929, Oberth launched his first liquid fuel rocket, named Kegeldüse, helped by his students at the Technical University of Berlin, one of whom was Wernher von Braun, who would later head the wartime project to develop the rocket officially called the A4, but far better known today as the V-2 - which incorporated many of his inventions and ideas.
Oberth eventually came to work for his former student, Wernher von Braun, who was developing space rockets for Nasa, and retired in 1962 at the age of 68
Details of the sun gun emerged again after they were discussed by US military experts and appeared on internet forums.
The secret plans by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party were only found at the end of the war
Once in orbit, the ‘master rocket’ for the project would unreel six cables. Spinning the rocket on its axis would extend the cables radially, allowing construction to begin.
The Germans are not the only nation to look into harnessing the power of the sun. In 1999, the Russians unveiled a plan to use a mirror to reflect sunlight to Earth during winter.
The giant mirror would be assembled in space, and also contain a manned space station
The cables used to secure the giant mirror - which would extend from a central rocket
19 Sep 1938, Nuremberg, Germany: The latest
plans for a 'sun gun' were only discovered when Allied troops rooted
through Nazi plans after the end of the war
A cutaway of the V2 rocket compiled by American
intelligence forces. Oberth was believed to be one of the designers of
the rocket.
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