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00:00Hitler's buried secret, the Nazis' ultimate weapon, it's got very long range, built to
00:20kill without warning.
00:23You think you're prepared for it, then you get here and it overwhelms you.
00:29World War II was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.
00:34Where we're going, we don't need roads.
00:39But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.
00:45That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.
00:50That's it.
00:51Congratulations.
00:54Now, technology expert Pete Kelsey and military historian Marty Morgan are using 21st century
01:05technology to strip away the present and reveal the buried secrets of World War II.
01:20This time, why were these buildings targeted by Allied bombers?
01:25My God, this thing is massive.
01:29What dark secrets lurk in these mysterious tunnels?
01:32Wow, look at that.
01:36Can these twisted remains reveal the truth about Hitler's vengeance rocket?
01:41What?
01:42Oh my God, this thing weighs a ton.
01:46March, 1945.
02:02A V-2 rocket rips through Smithfield Market in London.
02:10110 people are killed.
02:15There is no warning, no air raid siren.
02:19Just shock and carnage.
02:22Hitler's V-2 rockets were the world's first ballistic weapons.
02:31517 people were the world's first ballistic weapons.
02:47This devastating weapon went into development in the 1930s.
02:53But the Smithfield attack was launched only seven weeks before Hitler's death.
03:00Germany had all but lost the war.
03:03Hitler's army was depleted and starved of fuel.
03:08The Allies had bombed every weapons installation they could find.
03:13So how were the Germans still building and firing the most advanced weapon in the world?
03:25Planning expert Pete Kelsey and military historian Marty Morgan are on a mission to find out.
03:31Is that a bomb crater?
03:33God.
03:35They'll be the first in the world to use 3D modeling to reconstruct the history of the V-2,
03:41its invention, manufacture and launch.
03:48Their search begins on a remote island off the Baltic coast, near the village of Peenemünde, Germany.
04:02Somewhere in this dense forest, the Nazis developed their V-2 rockets.
04:11They cloaked this place in absolute secrecy.
04:16How can Marty and Pete find out what really went on here?
04:25Can we just open the gate?
04:27Why not?
04:32An old power station is the only significant building still standing on the huge Peenemünde site.
04:41The Soviets destroyed everything else after the war.
04:45They do have one important clue about the rocket program.
04:58The Nazis filmed many hours of their rocket tests.
05:03But where did those tests take place?
05:06Where were the rockets designed and built?
05:08This place is huge.
05:13To unlock those secrets, Pete and Marty must first peel back the present and reveal Peenemünde
05:19as it was 80 years ago.
05:25They've teamed up with a group of German researchers from the University of Osnabrück.
05:30Together, they've set up a makeshift HQ in the old power station.
05:37For the first time ever, they'll use LiDAR data gathered by the German government
05:42to create a virtual landscape in 3D.
05:52This amazing LiDAR technology uses lasers mounted on aircraft to strip away all the trees and ground cover.
06:02The results are astounding.
06:09LiDAR reveals the sheer scale of Peenemünde, a complex occupying 10 square miles.
06:17A vast array of buildings beyond the power station.
06:20Hundreds of miles of roads, railway lines, and piping criss-cross the island.
06:26Hitler's secret site is exposed.
06:30But how did this place work?
06:35There's not much to go on.
06:37Many vital documents were lost or destroyed.
06:40With the model at their fingertips, one feature immediately stands out.
06:50A mysterious elliptical shape set apart from the rest of the site.
06:54So, this feature, whatever it is, has clearly been heavily bombed.
07:00But what is that?
07:02Can we maybe zoom in on that, Andreas?
07:04It's well-connected by road and rail and occupies some 300,000 square feet.
07:14It's clearly important.
07:18But what was it for?
07:24Using LiDAR as a map, Marty treks two and a half miles north and east from the power station to check it out.
07:34On the ground, it's clear that the donut is a great bank of earth, a berm.
07:39And in the center, Marty recognizes something important that they didn't pick up in the LiDAR.
07:51He's found a key that may unlock the geography of the site.
07:55This fire hydrant was made in Magdeburg.
07:58And it shows up in much of the motion picture film footage and the still photographs taken of tests that were conducted.
08:05Marty has spotted a hydrant just like this one in the Nazi test footage.
08:13It crops up again and again in shots of the test site.
08:18The weapon was mounted on the launch platform, protected by the arena berm,
08:24so that personnel were protected on the outside in the event that something went wrong.
08:28And, oh, my God, when things went wrong, things went wrong dramatically.
08:35It was spectacular, the failures that occurred.
08:42The hydrant was essential for firefighting.
08:46Explosions and fireballs were everyday hazards.
08:49And there's a huge concrete pit here.
08:58This is also clearly visible in the Nazi footage.
09:03Wow, so this is for Test Stand 7.
09:12Test Stand 7.
09:14It's the launch pad where prototype V-2s were tested.
09:21It was the beating heart of the V-2 rocket program.
09:28So, in a way, this is the Nazi Cape Canaveral.
09:37LiDAR has torn the lid off this site and brought Marty to Test Stand 7.
09:42It's revealed the footprints of storerooms, observation bunkers,
09:47and even the tracks used to move the rockets into place.
09:52The scale of this top-secret facility, the massive earthworks,
09:56and the enormous concrete test pit are clear evidence of manpower and money invested here.
10:02Pete and Marty are itching to know more.
10:12The rockets were tested here, but where were they built?
10:16On October 3rd, 1942, a V-2 rocket became the first man-made object to reach the edge of space.
10:36But it would take the Nazis two more years to weaponize it.
10:44Tech wizard Pete Kelsey...
10:46I'm headed this way.
10:47...and historian Marty Morgan...
10:48All right, later.
10:49...are trying to work out how and where they built their deadly V-2 rockets.
10:54Hitler threw resources into the project.
11:04The Peinemünde V-2 facility cost the Third Reich around $10 billion in today's money.
11:11The Fuhrer was determined to smash London at any price.
11:15He planned to rain down rockets on Britain's capital city.
11:31And he was demanding production of 3,000 a month.
11:42Launching a prototype was a brief triumph.
11:45But how could they build enough to satisfy Hitler?
11:51There must be a factory somewhere under this vast forest.
11:56But where?
12:05I've been curious about this spot right here that looks a lot like a building footprint, but it's so big.
12:13LIDAR reveals what might be the foundations of a building occupying an area 815 feet by 390 feet, bigger than five American football fields.
12:27Maybe they're on to something.
12:29Maybe they're on to something.
12:36It's a shadow on the LIDAR.
12:40Marty needs boots on the ground to check it out.
12:42He's joined by Dr. Constanza Ruhl.
12:55Right now we are entering the building.
12:57Even standing among the debris, it's hard to imagine how it once looked and what went on here.
13:05To look at the rubble that's left of it today, you don't really get much of a sense of the impressive structure that once was here.
13:12So that must make your job quite difficult.
13:14Some of the mysteries surrounding this place may never be solved.
13:31Most of the top secret plans were lost or destroyed in the chaos after the war.
13:35But Constanza has unearthed one architect's drawing of this building, dating from 1942.
13:44The Nazis called this Hall F1, and the plan clearly shows a factory designed to manufacture rockets.
13:53But it's only a plan.
13:55With the plans and the drawings, we can't be sure if they actually show the final state of the building.
14:05But when the team combined the 1942 draft plan with the modern LIDAR data, everything fits.
14:15The old plan, the evidence on the ground, and the LIDAR all match perfectly.
14:22For the first time since this site was destroyed, 3D imagery can reveal far more than just a footprint.
14:29This is the building designed to mass-produce Hitler's killer rocket.
14:37It's clear that every part was made on site, feeding into production lines.
14:44For part of the assembly, rockets were upright, so the building had to be tall.
14:49A ramp with two huge cranes linked the factory to the railway, delivering the rockets for deployment.
14:59The factory floor, covering 320,000 square feet, was supported by two lines of monumental concrete blocks.
15:08These concrete blocks were built to withstand aerial bombardment.
15:26Pete and Marty are starting to build a picture of the Peña Munda rocket site.
15:31They've located the test stand, north and east of the power station, and Hall F-1, two and a half miles south, down the coast.
15:45But Hall F-1 never went into full production.
15:50Why?
15:52Something shook this facility to its foundations,
15:54and jeopardized the whole V-2 rocket program.
16:01On the night of August 17th, 1943,
16:14Churchill ordered one of the largest bombing raids the world had ever seen.
16:21596 Royal Air Force bombers filled the skies over Peña Munda.
16:29Their mission?
16:31To destroy the secret rocket program.
16:34RAF records show they dropped almost 2,000 tons of munitions in 45 minutes.
16:45Polish intelligence sources had pinpointed the secret installation in the spring of 1943.
16:51For the first time, Pete and the team have combined RAF reconnaissance photos taken after the raid with their LiDAR images.
17:05And a startling truth emerges.
17:07Well, now we can obviously see that this whole place was bombed in this mission.
17:16But what we can see also is that F-1 wasn't destroyed at this bomb raid.
17:22Right, right. It's still standing.
17:23Yeah, exactly.
17:24Hall F-1 was the most important structure on the site, where these deadly rockets were about to go into full production.
17:34Yet the thousands of tons of explosives mostly landed elsewhere.
17:38The reinforced factory, Hall F-1, remained intact.
17:44Why?
17:47Pete probes the LiDAR to see where those thousands of bombs did their damage.
17:51I want to move into the area here with the number of bomb craters just jumps out of the LiDAR.
18:05Overlaying RAF reconnaissance images onto 21st century LiDAR scans,
18:11Pete has pinpointed the site of a whole village just south of Hall F-1, now obliterated.
18:17So this is the area where the scientists and their families lived.
18:22So you can see the large amount of bomb craters that is still to be seen in this area nowadays.
18:30Hundreds of Germany's top scientists worked on V-2.
18:35So the Nazis built a luxurious housing complex at Karlshagen.
18:39I imagine life here to have been something very, very comfortable, almost, with a holiday flair.
18:50I mean, you have your little house close to the beach.
18:55So probably quite idyllic.
19:01LiDAR shows that Karlshagen took a brutal pounding.
19:04The bombing raid was codenamed Operation HYDRA.
19:13The objective was to cut off the head of the monster.
19:18The brains behind the V-2 weapons project.
19:24Launch pads and factories could be rebuilt.
19:27But scientists and technicians were irreplaceable.
19:33Killing them would stop the rocket program in its tracks.
19:39The RAF bombed at night to catch the scientists asleep in their beds.
19:44But they were still toiling to meet Hitler's spiraling demands.
19:48As you can see on the slider data, the research area where the scientists have been working late that night
19:59wasn't bombed as much as the habitations.
20:03So this means people working there that night had better chances to survive.
20:09But they, sure, they survived.
20:14But wives and children did not, you know.
20:18They probably wished they were dead.
20:23178 people were killed.
20:25The Pena Munda site was compromised.
20:35The Allies had found it and could attack again, at will.
20:40A $10 billion facility that had been running for six years had to be abandoned.
20:51Germany's war was going badly.
20:52By 1943, the Red Army was advancing from the east, and the Allied forces were landing in Italy.
21:00But Hitler remained convinced that with V-2 rockets, he could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
21:11But only if he could find another secret location and build the whole thing again.
21:16Marty and Pete now know that the V-2 rockets pounding London weren't made on this site.
21:27They're heading off to find Hitler's fallback position.
21:31Pete and Marty are investigating one of the Nazis' darkest secrets.
21:51Marty has found astonishing photographs taken by Hitler's personal photographer, Walter Frentz.
21:58He was ordered to document the V-2 weapons project, and he made it look like the set of a James Bond movie.
22:12The photos were taken in central Germany, a place called Mittelbau Dore.
22:17So why this place?
22:21And how did the Germans hide the vital factory?
22:28On the surface, there's not much to see today.
22:32Pete and Marty pore over LIDAR scans released by the German government.
22:36They're working again with the specialist survey team from Osnabrück.
22:44Airborne LIDAR, just like from Pina Munda.
22:47Yeah, exactly.
22:48But this time, it shows Mittelbau Dore and how it looks today.
22:53So are these railway lines I'm seeing right here?
22:55Yeah, exactly.
22:56They come in from the north, just right around this corner, and then they disappear.
23:00A network of railways and footprints of buildings are scattered here.
23:08But there's nothing to match Hall F1 or Frentz's movie set images.
23:14There had been an old gypsum mine here.
23:17The train lines disappear into the mountain.
23:20It looks like Hitler built his rocket factory under the Kahnstein mountain.
23:29They built a subterranean production line.
23:33They tried to camouflage the whole place in order to not be seen by aerial reconnaissance, for example.
23:40Right, and also, what better place to be safe from aerial bombardment than under a mountain?
23:46Exactly.
23:47Exactly.
23:50Pete and Marty want to get inside, to understand the scale of what the Nazis did here.
24:03That's a tunnel entrance.
24:05Yeah, that's how we're getting in.
24:06There's no doubt about it.
24:18How did it work?
24:19How was it built?
24:21What actually went on in here?
24:31Oh, my God.
24:32Look at this.
24:35After the war, the Soviets demolished most of the tunnel system, determined to put it beyond use.
24:42Less than a tenth of these tunnels can still be explored.
24:50Marty and Pete are trying to recover a lost factory buried 72 years ago by people who didn't want it found.
24:57This place is enormous.
25:01I spent a lifetime studying about the V-2 rocket.
25:05And I was prepared for Dora Middlebow, but I wasn't prepared for how big the tunnel really is.
25:13The entire production line is long gone, commandeered by Allied forces when they overran the site.
25:20But there's still a mine of information down here.
25:26Oh, God.
25:29There's still V-2 parts here.
25:33Look at this.
25:34Those appear to be all gyroscopes.
25:41God.
25:45Oh, my God.
25:47Look at this.
25:49That's part of a V-2 fuel tank.
25:51The few remaining tunnels have never been scanned.
26:01Now, for the first time, Pete's got permission to use 21st century tech to plot this vast interior.
26:11This is a perfect spot for the laser scanner because this has very long range.
26:18And then, because there is so much space in here, and it's such a complex sort of labyrinth of tunnels,
26:28I've also got the mobile scanner, this handheld, that I can actually walk with.
26:34Pete methodically works through the accessible tunnels using laser tools to build high-definition 3D images.
26:43He's creating a template to envision the huge area now beyond reach.
26:48Soviet engineers mapped the tunnel network before they sealed it off with dynamite.
26:58Pete combines their map with his scans to get a realistic picture of the whole intricate web as it was in 1945.
27:07Connecting the two mile-long shafts, like the rungs of a ladder, are 46 additional tunnels, each 600 feet long.
27:21The Nazis constructed a vast factory inside a mountain and got it up and running in a matter of months.
27:33How they managed to do it will take Pete and Marty into one of the darkest chapters in the Nazi story.
27:50Right after Operation Hydra, within 10 days of Hydra, in fact, in August of 1943,
27:58thousands of concentration camp inmates are sent here to convert this space into a factory.
28:04The Nazis had used slaves at Penemunda, but at Mittelbau-Dora, it was done on a different scale entirely.
28:17Contemporary records show that they took them from concentration camps across Europe.
28:23They put tens of thousands to work here.
28:26And the conditions that they live in, when they get here early on, are hellish.
28:34They keep them in the tunnels.
28:37They are sleeping in these connecting galleries.
28:41In fact, there are some people that stay here, they're six months without seeing the light of day outside.
28:48Survivor accounts tell how the victims were worked to death in these tunnels.
28:52On a starvation diet, with poor sanitation.
28:57Pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid, and dysentery were everyday killers.
29:05SS records detail almost 3,000 prisoner deaths in the first six months.
29:16Suddenly, the mechanics of the factory seem less important.
29:19Marty and Pete will try to find out more about the people who worked and died here.
29:37In 1944, the V-2 rocket factory was making 20 rockets a day.
29:44Crowding would impede production, so the slaves had to be moved out.
29:49So what did the SS do with them?
29:54LIDAR scans of middle-bow Dora show the valley is littered with the footprints of buildings.
30:01Pete thinks they may be part of the answer.
30:03This is such a great example of where the LIDAR is so useful.
30:18Without this LIDAR, it would be all but impossible to understand that there are many, many buildings and signs of earthwork going all the way up this hill.
30:30Pete's noticed a sewage system linking the buildings, so these were probably dwellings.
30:44Wow, look at that.
30:451-111.
30:47So no doubt, this is barrack 1-111.
30:55What's interesting, the LIDAR brought us here because of this concrete slab.
31:01So we really wanted to come up here, and we are way off in the woods.
31:05We're way up on the top of this slope.
31:09And, boy, I'm glad we came up here.
31:14Pete's identified a concentration camp right alongside the rocket factory.
31:19We have a report from December 1943 telling that there were about 20 barracks already finished.
31:29So the last inmate moved out of the tunnel around April 1944.
31:38SS records show that prisoners were categorized according to their usefulness.
31:43The SS decides to separate the production and the construction side prisoners and separate the unfit and sick prisoners from that part.
31:57Semi-skilled prisoners, those actually building the V2, live in the buildings on the valley floor.
32:05Unskilled laborers live further up the hill.
32:08The injured and the sick, unfit for work, live at the top of the hill, beside the crematorium.
32:18And this place pretty much turned into a death zone.
32:22Because the SS let them die because they will not have any value anymore.
32:29As they died, more prisoners were drafted in.
32:33At least 20,000 died at Middle Bow Dora camp.
32:38They disposed of the corpses as they did at Auschwitz and elsewhere.
32:45They incinerated them like garbage.
32:50This is the camp's permanent crematorium.
32:54And it's the only original building still standing at Middle Bow Dora today.
32:58The crematorium was quite literally the end of the road for many of Middle Bow Dora's slaves.
33:09Well, if there's a symbol of the Nazi regime,
33:26it's got to be this.
33:31Disposal.
33:33Final solution.
33:34Wow.
33:42It's a little overwhelming.
33:48So forgive me, but I've got to get out of here.
33:51In April 1945, Middle Bow Dora was liberated by the 3rd Armored Division of the U.S. Army.
34:13In 15 months, Middle Bow Dora produced over 6,000 V-2 rockets.
34:26By the blood and sweat of 60,000 slaves.
34:30An important question remains.
34:39If Churchill hadn't delayed production by bombing Peinemunde,
34:44could the V-2 have changed the outcome of World War II?
34:48Pete and Marty want to know just how lethal were V-2 rockets.
35:09March 8th, 1945.
35:18A German base in the Netherlands has launched a V-2 rocket
35:22and hit Smithfield Market in London to devastating effect.
35:26The same battery fires a second of these ballistic missiles.
35:40It's also aimed at London, but it misses.
35:49Marty and Pete are following up an extraordinary lead on that stray rocket.
35:54Only one V-2 has ever been archaeologically excavated.
35:59Not much was recovered.
36:03This time, German and British scientists are working together using magnetometry.
36:12It's a highly sensitive technology that maps variations in the Earth's magnetic field.
36:20Andreas, what do you think that that shows us might be down there?
36:24We can't say what this really is.
36:26It can be soil or sediment layer that was very, very high temperatures.
36:34They found something strange about the geology,
36:38as though a small meteor has crashed here.
36:41Which would be consistent with an impact of a rocket with a warhead.
36:46Andreas' reading suggests that tremendous heat may have affected the geology.
36:54It tallies with a 2,000-pound warhead detonation.
37:01The British scientists, Colin and Sean Welch, think there's solid evidence down there.
37:07So, the Germans think that there's a thermal anomaly, which I admittedly do not know what that means.
37:16It has to do with that much mass going that fast, hitting this kind of geology.
37:24There's going to be a lot of heat generated.
37:26What's interesting about that is, obviously, it points to a high-velocity impact.
37:35And there's another clue.
37:38A 1946 aerial photograph shows a mysterious hole in the ground.
37:43Even if there's a V2 down there, is there anything left after detonation?
37:53It's time to call in the digger.
37:57This is exciting.
37:58The digger is scraping away the uppermost layer of topsoil.
38:02Once he's done that, we're going to see what's in this crater.
38:05The outline of the impact is plainly visible.
38:15Only a few feet down, the digger makes its first find.
38:21Oh, brother.
38:23So, gentlemen, what have you found?
38:2620th century archaeology.
38:29Well, the magnetometer didn't tell a lie.
38:31No?
38:32There's plenty of metal here.
38:33What the scan found is a post-war automobile, an old Morris Oxford.
38:42But the team aren't put off by this false dawn, and their efforts are soon rewarded.
38:51This part is a small fragment of the rocket that's been blasted into the wall of the crater.
38:56This is a very encouraging discovery, because underneath the car, we found this piece of V2 rocket outer skin.
39:08This proves that there's more V2 just beneath the surface.
39:13There's more waiting to be found.
39:15As the crater wall is scraped away, many more fragments of V2 come to light.
39:24I mean, we can barely keep up with the mount coming out now.
39:27And they're finding identifiable parts.
39:31Oh, that's heavy.
39:32Yes.
39:33I'm thinking perhaps...
39:34That is combustion chamber.
39:36Combustion chamber, yeah.
39:38Yeah.
39:38The V2's combustion chamber was the rocket motor's heart, where the fuel was burnt.
39:51Oh, my God.
39:52This thing weighs a ton.
39:53That's a burner cup.
39:56There are another 17 of these here somewhere.
39:58So, there were 18 of these on top of the combustion chamber, pushing the alcohol through these jets.
40:08This is hard evidence of what happened on impact.
40:14The combustion chamber was very, very strong.
40:17It had to be to withstand the temperature, the force of the thrust as it was launched.
40:22That thing smashed into pieces.
40:23So, it gives you a very clear idea about the massive explosion at the time of impact.
40:31But the massive explosion has left a surprisingly small crater, especially for a 2,000-pound warhead.
40:40An extraordinary truth is emerging.
40:43Hitler's vengeance rocket may have been flawed.
40:46The missile was coming down perhaps 3, 3.5 times the speed of sound, which means it's puncturing the ground faster than the detonation.
41:00Smithfield Market had a peculiar vulnerability because it was built over underground tunnels.
41:06When the V2 slammed into the ground at over 3,000 miles an hour, it penetrated those tunnels and exploded below.
41:16The market collapsed into the void.
41:20So, the V2 worked like a bunker buster.
41:25But on other targets, it would be much less damaging.
41:29The warhead only exploded several feet below ground, where much of its force was wasted.
41:35And this spot reveals another big flaw that Hitler's rocket scientists never overcame.
41:46The V2 was very, very inaccurate.
41:50So, I mean, the very fact that we're stood here in a field in Kent, you know, it hasn't got to London.
41:55The Welch brothers have catalogued 1,119 V2s launched against London.
42:09Less than half hit the city.
42:14The Nazis' fixation with the flawed V2 cost the regime a fortune.
42:19Each missile cost 100,000 Reichmarks to make, around $150,000 in today's money.
42:28It was a hugely expensive way to deliver explosives.
42:31A single Lancaster bomber could carry seven times more firepower, and could fly many sorties.
42:46Not to mention the human cost.
42:49It's become clear to me, anyway, that far more people lost their lives creating the thing
43:01than lost their lives being a target of the thing.
43:07Yeah.
43:09For every person killed by a V2, three died in Mittelbau, Dora.
43:16Hitler's conviction that his vengeance rockets would win the war for Germany was a huge miscalculation.
43:25Maybe it's a good thing that Nazi Germany made the poor decision of investing in the V2 program.
43:34That's a hard sell.
43:35It's hard to sell that to the victims.
43:36But it certainly is, I think, a better ending for the Allied side that all of those resources went into making this thing,
43:46which was a big fizzle and disappointment, rather than making more tanks or more fighters.
43:55Marty and Pete have explored Hitler's V2 rocket program.
43:58Scientific advances may yet reveal more, but one thing is clear.
44:08Hitler's obsession with this ultimate weapon was a significant part of his undoing.
44:14The End
44:21On the Auction
44:29On the auction
44:30You
44:30Kical
44:32Clar misconceptions
44:32On the Auction
44:32Lin
44:33Sense
44:35Lаль
44:41L