Secret Nazi plan to blow up cities and boil oceans with a mile-wide 'SUN GUN'

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

It may sound like a proposal from a James Bond villain but these pictures reveal the secret plans of the German army to create a mile-wide 'space gun' powered by the sun.

The giant mirror would focus the sun on a target, like the magnifying glasses used by children to create fire.
The pictures from Life magazine in 1945  reveals how 'U.S. 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 was the brainchild of renowned rocket scientist Hermann Oberth in 1923.
With an estimated cost of three million marks and 15 years to construct, the original purpose of the space mirror was intended to provide the people of earth with sunshine on demand,anywhere on the globe.

As late as 1957 he was still convinced that his space mirror would become a reality and also that it was the 'ultimate weapon'.

 

In 1945, when the victorious Allies began sifting through Nazi war plans, it emerged the Nazis had updated Oberth's proposals and begun investigating the possibility of the Third Reich building a mirror weapon in geosynchronous orbit 22,236 miles above the Earth - which was then reported in Life Magazine's 23 July 1945 issue.

A FOUNDING FATHER OF ROCKETRY

Hermann Oberth, the man behind the 'sun gun'

Hermann Oberth was an Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and engineer.
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 the  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 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

'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. ... 'I was a schoolteacher long enough to have collected certain data on the subject.'

Although there were no official details of the construction of the project, Life magazine believed it would have been put into orbit in preassembled sections.
The entire surface of the mirror---front, back and edges---would be mirrored, 'otherwise [the sun’s rays] would burn occupants of disk to death instantly,' the magazine claimed.

 

The secret plans by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party were only found at the end of the war

The Life version of the mirror also contained manned space stations with 30-foot holes in which supply rockets could dock with hydroponic gardens to provide oxygen and solar powered generators for electric power.
Once in orbit, the 'master rocket' for the project would unreel six long cables, each only 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches thick.
Spinning the rocket on its axis would extend the cables radially, allowing construction to begin.

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.