Original subtitles

Narrator: Hitler's buried secret,

The nazis' ultimate weapon.

Pete: It's got very long range.

Narrator: Built to kill without warning.

Marty: You think you're prepared for it.

Then you get here, and it overwhelms you.

Narrator: World war ii was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Narrator: But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

Pete: That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.

Man: That's it!

Man (over radio): Congratulations!

Narrator: Now, technology expert pete kelsey,

Pete: I've gotta scan this.

Narrator: And military historian marty morgan...

Marty: Oh my god, look at this view.

Narrator: Are using 21st century technology to strip away the present

And reveal the buried secrets of world war ii.

This time, why were these buildings targeted by allied bombers?

Marty: Oh my god this thing is massive.

Narrator: What dark secrets lurk in these mysterious tunnels?

Pete: Wow, look at that.

Narrator: Can these twisted remains reveal the truth about hitler's vengeance rocket?

Marty: Oh my god this thing weighs a ton.

(explosion)

(fire)

Narrator: March, 1945.

A v2 rocket rips through smithfield market in london.

110 people are killed.

There is no warning, no air raid siren.

Just shock and carnage.

Hitler's v2 rockets were the world's first ballistic weapons.

Killers from space.

517 v2s hit britain's capital city.

Others hit paris and antwerp.

This devastating weapon went into development in the 1930s,

But the smithfield attack was launched only seven weeks before hitler's death.

Germany had all but lost the war.

Hitler's army was depleted and starved of fuel.

The allies had bombed every weapons installation they could find.

So how were the germans still building and firing the most advanced weapon in the world?

Scanning expert pete kelsey

And military historian marty morgan,

Are on a mission to find out.

Marty: Is that a bomb crater? God.

Narrator: They'll be the first in the world to use 3d modeling

To reconstruct the history of the v2,

Its invention, manufacture, and launch.

Their search begins on a remote island off the baltic coast,

Near the village of peenemünde, germany.

Somewhere in this dense forest the nazis developed their v2 rockets.

They cloaked this place in absolute secrecy.

How can marty and pete find out what really went on here?

Marty: Do we just open the gate?

Pete: Why not?

Narrator: An old power station is the only significant building

Still standing on the huge peenemünde site.

The soviets destroyed everything else after the war.

Marty: And just like that we're in.

Narrator: They do have one important clue about the rocket program.

The nazis filmed many hours of their rocket tests.

But where did those tests take place?

Where were the rockets designed and built?

Pete: This place is huge.

Narrator: To unlock those secrets, pete and marty must first peel back the present

And reveal peenemünde as it was 80 years ago.

They've teamed up with a group of german researchers from the university of osnabrück.

Together, they've set up a make shift hq in the old power station.

For the first time ever, they'll use lidar data gathered by the german

Government to create a virtual landscape in 3d.

This amazing lidar technology uses lasers mounted on aircraft,

To strip away all the trees and ground cover.

The results are astounding.

Lidar reveals the sheer scale of peenemünde.

A complex occupying 10 square miles.

A vast array of buildings beyond the power station.

Hundreds of miles of roads, railway lines and piping, criss-cross the island.

Hitler's secret site is exposed.

But how did this place work?

There's not much to go on.

Many vital documents were lost or destroyed.

With the model at their fingertips, one feature immediately stands out.

A mysterious, elliptical shape set apart from the rest of the site.

Pete: So, this feature, whatever it is,

It's clearly been heavily bombed, but what is that?

Malte: Can we maybe zoom in on that, andreas?

Narrator: It's well connected by road and rail and occupies some 300,000 square feet.

It's clearly important, but what was it for?

Using lidar as a map, marty treks two and a half miles north and east

From the power station to check it out.

On the ground it's clear that the donut is

A great bank of earth, a berm.

And in the center, marty recognizes something important,

That they didn't pick up in the lidar.

He's found a key, that may unlock the geography of the site.

Marty: This fire hydrant was made in magdeburg and it shows up in much of the motion

Picture film footage and in the still photographs taken of tests that were conducted.

Narrator: Marty has spotted a hydrant just like this one, in the nazi test footage.

It crops up again and again in shots of the test site.

Marty: The weapon was mounted on a launch platform protected by the arena berm,

So that personnel were protected on the outside,

In the event that something went wrong.

And oh my god when things went wrong,

Things went wrong dramatically.

It was spectacular the failures that occurred.

Narrator: The hydrant was essential for firefighting.

Explosions and fireballs were everyday hazards.

And there's a huge concrete pit here.

This is also clearly visible in the nazi footage.

Marty: Oh wow, so this is test stand seven.

Narrator: Test stand seven.

It's the launchpad where prototype v2s were tested.

It was the beating heart of the v2 rocket program.

Marty: So, in a way this is the nazi cape canaveral.

Narrator: Lidar has torn the lid off this site

And brought marty to test stand seven.

It's revealed the footprints of store rooms, observation bunkers and even the tracks

Used to move the rockets into place.

The scale of this top-secret facility,

The massive earthworks and the enormous concrete test pit,

Are clear evidence of manpower and money invested here.

Pete and marty are itching to know more.

The rockets were tested here, but where were they built?

Narrator: On October 3rd, 1942, a v2 rocket became the first

Man-made object to reach the edge of space.

But it would take the nazis two more years to weaponize it.

Tech wizard pete kelsey...

Pete: I'm headed this way.

Narrator: And historian marty morgan...

Marty: Alright, later.

Narrator: Are trying to work out how, and where they built their deadly v2 rockets.

Hitler threw resources into the project.

The peenemünde v2 facility cost the third reich,

Around $10 billion in today's money.

The führer was determined to smash london at any price.

He planned to rain down rockets on britain's capital city,

And he was demanding production of 3,000 a month.

Launching a prototype was a brief triumph.

But how could they build enough to satisfy hitler?

There must be a factory somewhere under this vast forest.

But where?

Pete: I've been curious about this spot right here,

That looks a lot like a building footprint,

But it's so big.

Narrator: Lidar reveals what might be the foundations of a building,

Occupying an area, 815 feet by 390 feet,

Bigger than five american football fields.

Maybe they're onto something.

It's a shadow on the lidar.

Marty needs boots on the ground to check it out.

He's joined by dr. Constanze röhl.

Constanze: Right, now we are entering the building.

Narrator: Even standing among the debris, it's hard to imagine how it once looked

And what went on here.

Marty: To look at the rubble, what's left of it today,

You don't really get much of a sense of the impressive structure that once was here.

So that must make your job quite difficult.

Constanze: It does indeed, so that's actually one of

The questions that we are dealing with.

How did the building function?

Narrator: Some of the mystery surrounding this place may never be solved,

Most of the top-secret plans were lost or destroyed in the chaos after the war.

But constanze has unearthed one architect's drawing of this building,

Dating from 1942.

The nazis called this hall f1 and the plan clearly shows a factory,

Designed to manufacture rockets.

But it's only a plan.

Constanze: With the plans and the drawings, we can't be sure if they actually show the

Final state of the building.

Narrator: But when the team combine the 1942 draft plan

With the modern lidar data, everything fits.

The old plan, the evidence on the ground and the lidar all match perfectly.

For the first time since this site was destroyed,

3d imagery can reveal far more than just a footprint.

This is the building designed to mass-produce hitler's killer rocket.

It's clear that every part was made on site, feeding into production lines.

For part of the assembly, rockets were upright, so the building had to be tall.

A ramp with two huge cranes linked the factory to the railway,

Delivering the rockets for deployment.

The factory floor covering 320,000 square feet was supported by two lines of

Monumental concrete blocks.

Marty: My god, this thing is massive.

Narrator: These concrete blocks were built to withstand aerial bombardment.

Pete and marty are starting to build a picture of the peenemünde rocket site.

They've located the test stand north and east of the power station, and hall f1,

Two and a half miles south, down the coast.

But hall f1 never went into full production.

Why?

Something shook this facility to its foundations

And jeopardized the whole v2 rocket program.

Narrator: On the night of August 17th, 1943, churchill ordered one of the largest

Bombing raids the world had ever seen.

596 royal air force bombers filled the skies over peenemünde.

Their mission?

To destroy the secret rocket program.

Raf records show they dropped almost 2,000 tons of munitions in 45 minutes.

Polish intelligence sources had pinpointed the secret installation

In the spring of 1943.

For the first time, pete and the team have combined raf reconnaissance photos,

Taken after the raid, with their lidar images.

And a startling truth emerges.

Malte: Well, now you can obviously see that this

Whole place was bombed in this mission.

But what we can see also, is that f1 wasn't destroyed, this bomb raid.

Pete: Right it's still standing.

Malte: Yes exactly.

Narrator: Hall f1 was the most important structure on the site,

Where these deadly rockets were about to go into full production.

Yet the thousands of tons of explosives mostly landed elsewhere.

The reinforced factory, hall f1, remained intact.

Why?

Pete probes the lidar to see where those thousands of bombs did their damage.

Pete: I want to move in to the area here where the number of

Bomb craters just jumps out of the lidar.

Narrator: Overlaying raf reconnaissance images onto 21st century lidar scans,

Pete has pinpointed the site of a whole village just south of hall f1,

Now obliterated.

Malte: So, this is the area where the scientists and their families lived.

So, you can see the large amount of bomb craters that are still to be seen

In this area nowadays.

Narrator: Hundreds of germany's top scientists worked on v2.

So, the nazis built a luxurious housing complex at karlshagen.

Constanze: I imagine life here to have been something very,

Very comfortable almost with a holiday flair.

I mean you have your little house close to the beach.

So probably quite idyllic.

Narrator: Lidar shows that karlshagen took a brutal pounding.

The bombing raid was codenamed "operation hydra".

The objective was to cut off the head of the monster,

The brains behind the v2 weapons project.

Launchpads and factories could be rebuilt,

But scientists and technicians were irreplaceable.

Killing them would stop the rocket program in its tracks.

The raf bombed at night to catch the scientists asleep in their beds.

But they were still toiling to meet hitler's spiraling demands.

Malte: As you can see on this lidar data, the research area where the scientists have been

Working late that night, wasn't bombed as much as the habitations.

So, this means people working there that night had better chances to survive.

Pete: But they, sure, they survived, um,

But wives and children did not.

Y'know, they probably wished they were dead.

Narrator: 178 people were killed.

The peenemünde site was compromised,

The allies had found it and could attack again, at will.

A $10 billion facility that had been running for six years,

Had to be abandoned.

Germany's war was going badly.

By 1943 the red army was advancing from the east

And the allied forces were landing in Italy.

But hitler remained convinced that with v2 rockets,

He could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

But only if he could find another secret location and build the whole thing again.

Marty and pete now know that the v2 rockets pounding london,

Weren't made on this site.

They're heading off to find hitler's fall-back position.

Narrator: Pete and marty are investigating one of the nazis' darkest secrets.

Marty has found astonishing photographs taken by hitler's personal photographer,

Walter frentz.

He was ordered to document the v2 weapons project,

And he made it look like the set of a james bond movie.

The photos were taken in central germany, a place called mittelbau-dora.

So why this place?

And how did the germans hide the vital factory?

On the surface, there's not much to see today.

Pete and marty pore over lidar scans released by the german government.

They're working again with the specialist survey team from osnabrück.

Pete: Airborne lidar just like from peenemünde.

Malte: Yeah exactly, but this time it shows mittelbau-dora

And how it looks today.

Marty: So, are these railway lines I'm seeing right here?

Malte: Yeah exactly.

They come in from the north just right around this corner and then they disappear.

Narrator: A network of railway,

And footprints of buildings are scattered here.

But there's nothing to match hall f1 or frentz's movie set images.

There had been an old gypsum mine here.

The train lines disappear into the mountain.

It looks like hitler built his rocket factory under the kohnstein mountain.

They built a subterranean production line.

Malte: They tried to camouflage the whole place in order to not be seen by aerial

Reconnaissance for example.

Pete: Right, and also, what better place to be safe

From aerial bombardment than under a mountain.

Malte: Exactly.

Narrator: Pete and marty want to get inside,

To understand the scale of what the nazis did here.

Pete: Well that's a tunnel entrance.

Marty: Yeah that's how we're getting in, there's no doubt about it.

Narrator: How did it work?

How was it built?

What actually went on in here?

Marty: Oh, my god. Look at this.

Narrator: After the war, the soviets demolished most of the tunnel system,

Determined to put it beyond use.

Less than a tenth of these tunnels can still be explored.

Marty and pete are trying to recover a lost factory buried 72 years ago,

By people who didn't want it found.

Marty: This place is enormous.

I've spent a lifetime studying about the v2 rocket

And I was prepared for dora-mittelbau.

But I wasn't prepared for how big the tunnel really is.

Narrator: The entire production line is long gone,

Commandeered by allied forces when they overran the site.

But there's still a mine of information down here.

Marty: Oh god.

There's still v2 parts here.

Look at this.

Those appear to be old gyroscopes.

God!

Oh my god, look at this. That's part of a v2 fuel tank.

Narrator: The few remaining tunnels have never been scanned.

Now for the first time, pete's got permission to use 21st century tech,

To plot this vast interior.

Pete: This is a perfect spot for the laser scanner

Because this has very long range.

And then because there is so much space in here

And it's such a complex sort of labyrinth of tunnels,

I've also got the mobile scanner

That's hand-held that I can actually walk with.

Narrator: Pete methodically works through the accessible tunnels using laser tools

To build high definition 3d images.

He's creating a template to envision the huge area now beyond reach.

Soviet engineers mapped the tunnel network before they sealed it off with dynamite.

Pete combines their map with his scans to get a realistic picture

Of the whole intricate web, as it was in 1945.

Connecting the two-mile-long shafts,

Like the rungs of a ladder, are 46 additional tunnels,

Each 600 feet long.

The nazis constructed a vast factory, inside a mountain and got it up and running

In a matter of months.

How they managed to do it will take pete and marty into one

Of the darkest chapters in the nazi story.

Marty: Right after operation hydra, within 10 days of hydra in fact,

In August of '43 thousands of concentration camp inmates are sent here to convert this

Space into a factory.

Narrator: The nazis had used slaves at peenemünde, but at mittelbau-dora,

It was done on a different scale entirely.

Contemporary records show that they took them from

Concentration camps across europe.

They put tens of thousands to work here.

Marty: And the conditions that they live in when

They get here early on are hellish.

They keep them in the tunnels.

They are sleeping in these connecting galleries.

In fact, there are some people that stay here six months

Without seeing the light of day outside.

Narrator: Survivor accounts tell how the victims were

Worked to death in these tunnels,

On a starvation diet, with poor sanitation.

Pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid, and dysentery were everyday killers.

Ss records detail almost 3,000 prisoner deaths in the first 6 months.

Suddenly the mechanics of the factory seem less important.

Marty and pete will try to find out more about the people who worked and died here.

Narrator: In 1944 the v2 rocket factory was making twenty rockets a day.

Crowding would impede production so the slaves had to be moved out.

So, what did the ss do with them?

Lidar scans of mittelbau dora show the valley is littered

With the footprints of buildings.

Pete thinks they may be part of the answer.

Pete: This is such a great example of where the lidar is so useful.

Without 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.

Narrator: Pete's noticed a sewage system linking the buildings,

So these were probably dwellings.

Pete: Wow, look at that. 111.

So no doubt this is barrack 111.

What's interesting is the lidar brought us here because of this concrete slab.

So, we really wanted to come up here and we are way off in the woods.

We are way up on the top of this slope and boy, I'm glad we came up here.

Narrator: Pete's identified a concentration camp right alongside the rocket factory.

Stephan: We have a report from December '43,

Telling that there were about 20 barracks already finished.

So, the last inmate moved out of the tunnel around April '44.

Narrator: Ss records show that prisoners were categorized according to their usefulness.

Stephan: The ss decides to separate the production

And the construction site prisoners.

And separate the unfit and sick prisoners from that part.

Narrator: Semi-skilled prisoners, those actually building the v2,

Live in the buildings on the valley floor.

Unskilled laborers live further up the hill.

The injured and the sick, unfit for work,

Live at the top of the hill, beside the crematorium.

Stephan: And this place pretty much turned into a death zone because the ss let them die,

Because they were not of any value anymore.

Narrator: As they died, more prisoners were drafted in.

At least 20,000 died at mittelbau-dora camp.

They disposed of the corpses as they did at auschwitz and elsewhere.

They incinerated them like garbage.

Marty: This is the camp's permanent crematorium.

And it's the only original building still standing at mittelbau-dora today.

Narrator: The crematorium was quite literally the end of the road

For many of mittelbau-dora's slaves.

Pete: If there's a symbol of the nazi regime,

It's got to be this. Disposal.

The final solution. Um.

Wow, um.

It's a little overwhelming.

So forgive me, but I've got to get out of here.

Narrator: In April 1945, mittelbau-dora was liberated by the 3rd armored division

Of the us army.

In fifteen months, mittelbau-dora produced over 6,000 v2 rockets,

By the blood and sweat of 60,000 slaves.

An important question remains.

If churchill hadn't delayed production by bombing peenemünde,

Could the v2 have changed the outcome of world war ii?

Narrator: Pete and marty want to know,

Just how lethal were v2 rockets?

March 8th, 1945.

A german base in the netherlans has launched a v2 rocket

And hit smithfield market in london to devastating effect.

The same battery fires a second of these ballistic missiles.

It's also aimed at london.

But it misses.

Marty and pete are following up an extraordinary lead on that stray rocket.

Only one v2 has ever been archeologically excavated.

Not much was recovered.

This time, german and british scientists are working togethe,

Using magnetometry.

It's a highly sensitive technology that maps

Variations in the earth's magnetic field.

Marty: Andreas, what do you think that shows us what might be down there?

Andreas: We can't say what this really is.

It can be a soil or sediment layer that was very, very high temperatures.

Narrator: They've found something strange about the geology,

As though a small meteor has crashed here.

Pete: Which would be consistent with an impact of a rocket.

Andreas: Yes. Pete: With a warhead.

Narrator: Andreas' readings suggest that tremendous heat may have affected the geology.

It tallies with a 2,000 pound warhead detonation.

The british scientists, colin and sean welch,

Think there's solid evidence down there.

Marty: So, the germans think that there is a thermal anomaly.

Which I admittedly do not know what that means.

Pete: It has to do with that much mass, going that fast, hitting this kind of geology.

There's going to be a lot of heat generated.

What's interesting about that, is obviously it points to a high velocity impact.

Narrator: And there's another clue, a 1946 aerial photograph shows a mysterious

Hole in the ground.

Even if there's a v2 down there,

Is there anything left after detonation?

It's time to call in the digger.

Marty: This is exciting.

The digger is scraping away the upper-most layer of topsoil.

Once he's done that, we're going to see what's in this crater.

Narrator: The outline of the impact is plainly visible.

Only a few feet down the digger makes its first find.

Marty: Oh brother.

So, gentlemen what have you found?

Colin: 20th century archaeology.

Sean: Well the magnetometer didn't tell a lie. Marty: No?

Sean: There's plenty of metal here.

Narrator: What the scan found is a post-war automobile, an old morris oxford.

But the team aren't put off by this false dawn, and their efforts are soon rewarded.

Colin: This part is a small fragment of the rocket that's been blasted

Into the wall of the crater.

Marty: This is a very encouraging discovery because underneath the car

We found this piece of v2 rocket outer skin.

This proves that there's more v2 just beneath the surface.

There's more waiting to be found.

Narrator: As the crater wall is scraped away, many more fragments of v2 come to light.

Marty: I mean we can barely keep up with the amount coming out now.

Narrator: And they're finding identifiable parts.

Sean: Oh, that's heavy.

Colin: Yes, I'm thinking perhaps that is...

Sean: Combustion chamber. Colin: Combustion chamber, yeah.

Narrator: The v2's combustion chamber was the rocket motor's heart,

Where the fuel was burnt.

Marty: Oh my god this thing weighs a ton.

Colin: That's a burner cup.

There are another 17 of these here somewhere.

So, there were 18 of these on top of the combustion chamber

Pushing the alcohol through these jets.

Narrator: This is hard evidence of what happened on impact.

Colin: The combustion chamber was very, very strong.

It had to be to withstand the temperature,

The force of the thrust as it was launched.

That thing smashed into pieces,

So it gives you a very clear idea about the massive explosion

At the time of the impact.

Narrator: But the massive explosion has left a surprisingly small crater,

Especially for a 2,000 pound warhead.

An extraordinary truth is emerging.

Hitler's vengeance rocket may have been flawed.

Colin: The missile was coming down at perhaps three,

Three and a half times the speed of sound,

Which means it's puncturing the ground faster than the detonation.

Narrator: Smithfield market had a peculiar vulnerability,

Because it was built over underground tunnels.

When the v2 slammed into the ground at over 3,000 miles an hour,

It penetrated those tunnels and exploded below.

The market collapsed into the void.

So, the v2 worked like a bunker-buster.

But on other targets it would be much less damaging.

The warhead only exploded several feet below ground,

Where much of its force was wasted.

And this spot reveals another big flaw, that hitler's rocket scientists never overcame.

Sean: V2 was very, very inaccurate so I mean the very fact that we are stood here

In a field in kent, it hasn't got to london.

Narrator: The welch brothers have catalogued 1,119 v2's launched against london.

Less than half hit the city.

The nazis' fixation with the flawed v2 cost the regime a fortune.

Each missile cost 100,000 reichmarks to make,

Around $150,000 in today's money.

It was a hugely expensive way to deliver explosives.

A single lancaster bomber could carry seven times more fire-power

And could fly many sorties.

Not to mention the human cost.

Pete: It's become clear to me anyway that far more people

Lost their lives creating the thing

Than lost their lives being a target of the thing.

Marty: Yeah.

Narrator: For every person killed by a v2, three died in mittelbau-dora.

Hitler's conviction that his vengeance rockets would win the war for germany,

Was a huge miscalculation.

Marty: Maybe it's a good thing that nazi germany made the poor decision

Of investing in the v2 program.

That's a hard sell.

It's hard to sell that to the victims, but it certainly is,

I think, a better ending for the allied side that all of those resources

Went into making this thing, which was a big fizzle and disappointment,

Rather than making more tanks or more fighters.

Narrator: Marty and pete have explored hitler's v2 rocket program.

Scientific advances may yet reveal more, but one thing is clear.

Hitler's obsession with this ultimate weapon was

A significant part of his undoing.

Captioned by cotter captioning services