WUNDERWAFFE

'Wunderwaffen' is German for "wonder weapons", and was a term assigned during World War II by the Nazi propaganda ministry to a few revolutionary "superweapons". Most of these weapons reached the combat theatre too late, and in too insignificant numbers (if at all) to have a military effect. Even if they did, the "Wunderwaffen" mostly failed to fulfill their propaganda-inflated capabilities. Most soldiers, and many civilians, realized that. A derisive abbreviation of the term emerged: Wuwa, pronounced "voo-vah".
The V-weapons, which were developed earlier, and saw considerable deployment especially against Great Britain, trace back to the same pool of highly inventive armament concepts which surpassed anything the Allies could field at that time. Therefore, they are also included here.
Although the ''Wunderwaffen'' completeley failed to meet their strategic objective of turning the tides of World War II in Nazi Germany's favor at a time when the war was already strategically lost, they represented designs and prototypes that were extremely advanced for their time. With the exception of the gigantic tanks, almost every single one of the ''Wunderwaffen'' was developed into sophisticated weaponry in the following decades.

Contents

Naval vessels

Tanks

Jets and rocket-propelled aircraft

Combat helicopters

Bombs and explosives

Artillery

Missiles

Rifles

Support equipment

In fiction

Naval vessels

★ Type XXI U-boat

Tanks

★ Panzer VIII "Maus"

★ Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte

★ Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster

Jets and rocket-propelled aircraft

★ Heinkel He 280 - the first jet fighter

★ Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter/bomber

★ Focke-Wulf Ta 183 jet fighter

★ Arado Ar 234 - the first jet bomber

★ Horten Ho 229 "flying wing" jet fighter/bomber

★ Me 163 Komet manned rocket-propelled interceptor

★ Bachem Ba 349 manned rocket-propelled interceptor

★ Silbervogel sub-orbital antipodal bomber

Combat helicopters

★ Flettner Fl 282 "''Kolibri''"

★ Focke Achgelis Fa 223 "''Drache''"

Bombs and explosives

★ Fritz X air-to-ship glide bomb

★ Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb

★ German nuclear energy project

Artillery

★ Schwerer Gustav

★ V-3 cannon "''Hochdruckpumpe''" (a multi-stage cannon)

Missiles

★ Fi 103 (V1) - the first cruise missile

★ A4 (V2) - the first mid-range ballistic missile

★ Rheinbote - the first short-range ballistic missile

★ Wasserfall supersonic ground-to-air missile

★ Hs 117 Schmetterling ground-to-air missile

★ Enzian ground-to-air missile

★ Ruhrstahl X-4 wire-guided air-to-air missile

Rifles

★ Sturmgewehr 44

Support equipment

★ Zielgerät 1229 Vampir night-vision equipment

★ FG 1250 Tank Mounted night-vision equipment

In fiction

★ The video game ''Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe''.

★ The Battlefield 1942 expansion ''Secret Weapons of World War II''