What use is an inflatable dummy tank in a very real war? A lot, if the enemy believes that it’s real. During both World Wars, Allied forces made use of dummy versions of the British heavy tanks. These were constructed from a wooden framework and covered wi…
Hoover Dam is as tall as a 60-story building. It was the highest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935. Its base is as thick as two football fields. Each spillway, designed to let floodwaters pass without harming the dam itself, can handle the …
In the early 1930s, the German military began seeking out new weapons which would not violate the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Assigned to aid in this cause, Captain Walter Dornberger, an artilleryman by trade, was ordered to investigate the feasibil…
In 1889, Paris hosted an Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) to mark the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution. More than 100 artists submitted competing plans for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars, located in central Paris, and serv…
A British splatter mask worn by a French tank gunner. It was designed to help protect the crewmember's face from shrapnel when looking through the view ports. The eye covers were metal, the mask was leather and there was a chainmail skirt to cover the m…
The development of nuclear artillery was part of a broad push by nuclear weapons countries to develop nuclear weapons which could be used tactically against enemy armies in the field (as opposed to strategic uses against cities, military bases, and heavy i…
Acoustic location was used from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of aircraft by picking up the noise of the engines. Passive acoustic location involves the detection of sound or vibration created by the object being detected, …
First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued commercially for 27 years. With a cruising speed of 1,350 mph (2,180 km/h at cruise altitude), its unmistakable roar, and sleek, sexy lines the Concorde became an icon of aviation history.…
Conveying the officials in the photograph is a section of 30ft diameter steel penstock of the soon-to-be-completed Hoover Dam. In the same year, the pouring of the project's concrete had concluded - a total of 3.25million cubic yards. As the United Stat…
On July 16, 1945, the United States became the first country to successfully detonate an atomic weapon, signaling 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 t…
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…
These pictures show the German troops in the 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 lin…
In both World Wars, the most distinctive feature of the German army uniform was the item that has come to symbolize German militarism in even the remotest corners of the world – the helmet, the Stahlhelm. Here, on a table set up outside a steel helmet f…
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 surf…
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 Na…
These photographs show SUB 110, a German submarine that was sunk and risen in 1918. We can see 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 air pre…
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-typ…
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 h…