On July 16, 1945, the United States became the first country to successfully detonate an atomic weapon, signalling the beginning of a new era in warfare and in politics. In the early 1940s, the U.S. government authorized a top-secret program of nuclear testi…
The Heavy Gustav, was completed towards the end of 1940 and the proof rounds were fired early in 1941 at the Rugenwalde Artillery Range. Both Hitler and Albert Speer, later to be his armaments minister, attended the occasion. Named after the head of the…
German troops in Soviet Union destroying the railroad during an organized retreat. The Schienenwolf (Rail Wolf), sometimes also referred to as a Schwellenpflug (Sleeper Plough) was a German rail vehicle built to destroy rail lines through the use of an imm…
In both World Wars, the most distinctive feature of the Germany army uniform was the item that has come to symbolize German militarism in even remotest corners of the world – the helmet, the Stahlhelm. Here, on a table set up outside a steel helmet factory i…
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations and private sport. A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water's surfac…
It's so odd to see that an object roughly the same size as a large car can destroy an entire city and leave radioactive damage for lifetimes afterwards. Fat Man was the codename for the type of atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasak…
These photographs show the UB 110, a German submarine that was sunk and risen in 1918. The show the control room in the submarine, including the manhole to the periscope well, hand wheels for pressure gear, valve wheels for flooding and blowing and the air…
The nuclear test of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon was codenamed Trinity, but the atomic device was nicknamed The Gadget. The date of the Trinity test is usually considered to be the beginning of the Atomic Age. The gadget was an implosion-type p…
The facility is the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt Hermann Goering. It was located in Volkenrode, a suburb of Braunschweig and it was the most advanced wind tunnel test facility in the world at the time, though they were never able to fully calibrate most of t…
This detonation, known as the Baker Test, was part of Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships. The Crossroads tests were the first of many nuclear tests held i…