Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

Speed has always been

one of the greatest weapons of war.

To take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness,

to travel by unexpected routes,

and strike quickly where it is least expected

is the key to battlefield success.

And throughout the 20th century and into the 21st,

the speed with which technology has altered

the machinery of war has been electrified.

From bolt-action rifles to machine guns

that can deliver over 500 rounds per minute.

The first jet fighters,

to long range ballistic missiles.

And the humble Jeep,

to the most advanced high speed troop carriers.

The capacity to shoot, move men,

and strike with speed and flexibility

is synonymous with modern warfare.

This is the story of agility.

(dramatic music)

(dramatic music)

Since they first appeared over the battlefield,

the sheer wonder of flight

has made aircraft perhaps the most glamorous of all

the machinery of war.

Machines that have continuously pushed the boundaries

of technology in the quest for speed and agility.

Modern fighter aircraft are designed

to respond to threats quickly and effectively

in situations where mere minutes can determine outcomes.

They are the pinnacle of a quest for agility

that began in World War I.

A quest that appeared to have stalled during World War II.

But one that gained new life

in the dying days of the war,

with the introduction of a new power source,

the jet engine.

Introduced in 1944, the first jet powered combat aircraft

to enter service, the Gloster Meteor,

very nearly didn't get off the ground.

The heat generated by the new turbo jet engines

were deemed beyond the bounds

of metallurgical science of the period.

But it did, and those engines,

designed by Englishman, Sir Frank Whittle,

opened a new world of possibilities for aviation.

The turbo jet engine was a dramatic change

in the design philosophy.

The conventional piston engine was incredibly complex.

We ended up with radial engines that were multi-rowed,

even up to four rows,

heating was a problem.

And then Frank Whittle designed this thing called the jet,

which was so simple because it was all rotating

basically on one shaft.

It had a compressor at the front of the engine.

It was in its early days, incredibly simple.

The advantages of jet propulsion were many;

More power was the most obvious,

which allowed greater payloads.

And in wartime that translated

to greater all-round attacking and defensive capability.

While the combustion efficiency of jet engines

gave them the ability to operate effectively

at higher altitudes,

importantly, jet power meant the meteor

could also maintain top speed at lower altitudes.

Something which piston driven aircraft could not,

which gave it the speed

to catch the low level V-1 flying bomb.

The meteor was in every way a record breaker

with a top speed of 960 kilometers per hour

when it entered service,

it was faster than anything that preceded it.

And its excellent rate of climb

of over 760 meters per minute,

made it possible to reach its service ceiling

of 10,000 meters in as little as 12 minutes.

While the meteor design was not without issue,

it served a greater purpose

in advancing a technological cause.

A cause the Harrier Jump Jet would take to another level.

Speed is one aspect of agility in the air,

flexibility of purpose is another.

As fighter aircraft increased their airborne capabilities,

they also required increasingly large infrastructure

to support their operations.

To overcome these service limitations,

the British came up with the Harrier,

the only true vertical short takeoff and landing aircraft

created during the cold war.

And with it came a new dimension in airborne agility.

It was an aircraft that was developed

to remove reliance on runways.

And so it could be operated

right at the front of the combat arena.

What allows the Harrier

to provide that frontline support

directly from improvised bases

such as car parks and small flight decks,

is a rather unique high bypass turbo fan engine

working with an ingenious engine vectoring system.

Four exhaust nozzles,

two operating off the fan at the front of the engine,

and two off the exhaust at the rear,

are used to direct a proportion of the overall thrust.

And it could swivel these exhaust nozzles

from pointing backwards,

which you would normally do on an aircraft, down to vertical

so that it could take off vertically if needed.

It could land vertically,

and even it could swivel, lean slightly forward,

thus moving the thrust vector

and allowing it to maneuver quite differently

than a normal aircraft.

This ability to vector thrust

makes the Harrier capable of incredible maneuverability

at speed in normal operations.

Continuously revised and updated

since it was introduced into operational service in 1969,

the current Harrier II is an evolution of the original

that has transformed the aircraft

into a more versatile combat platform.

No longer tied to basic close support sorties

as it's only forte,

modern systems have given the Harrier combat capabilities

that make it a premier ground strike aircraft

with unparalleled attack helicopter-like agility

that no conventional aircraft could match.

But one thing it doesn't have is raw speed,

something the MIG-29, has in spades.

(jet engine roars)

As with so many weapons developed during the cold war,

the MIG-29 was designed to be the number one

air superiority fighter in the world.

In this case, it meant it had to be faster

and more maneuverable than the lightweight F-16.

An aircraft with an impressive thrust to weight ratio

that could perform radical maneuvers

with surprisingly little energy loss.

First flown in October, 1977,

the MIG-29 matched its competitor

in almost every performance measurement.

Both have top speeds of 2,400 kilometers per hour,

both have a thrust to weight ratio of 1.09,

but where they differ is in wing area.

The MIG has 30% greater,

and that makes it significantly more stable

and maneuverable at lower speeds.

Utilizing this super maneuverability,

the MIG-29 can perform the highly complex Pugachev's Cobra,

an aerial fete

which would cause a conventional aircraft to stall

and lose altitude rapidly.

And while both can maintain sustained vertical flight,

the MIG can achieve it surprisingly quickly after takeoff.

And its capacity to maintain a very high angle of attack

means that it climbs at an astonishing 330 meters per second

significantly quicker than the F-16.

But as technology continued to alter the tactics

on the battlefield, neither the F-16 nor the MIG-29

were ever truly tested as fighters

in the way they were designed.

(dramatic music)

Despite the end of the cold war,

both militaries continued to push the boundaries

of aeronautical engineering.

And when the Americans took the means of propulsion

first used in the meteor,

added the aerodynamic agility and the speed of the MIG-29,

the operational flexibility of the Harrier,

and then installed the latest weapons

and electronic systems,

they created an aircraft that is beyond compare.

The F-35B Lightning II.

(pensive music)

The basic concepts behind the F-35B

were actually developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works

as a potential replacement for the Harrier

over a decade ago.

That idea was originally shelved, but it resurfaced

as part of the joint strike fighter program.

Which then evolved into the F-35 A, B and C.

This was a design that was promised

to be able to replace, not just the Harrier,

but a whole range of aircraft in a range of missions,

both in the Marine role of STOVL,

of short takeoff and vertical landing,

but also in the more traditional fighter

and ground attack role for the US air force.

(dramatic music)

What has emerged is an aircraft

that has all the attributes of a frontline strike fighter,

but with the capacity for STOVL.

One of the three variants of the F-35, the F-35B,

is a short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft.

Which can take off without the need

for a dedicated large runway,

but then you can have all the attributes

of a fixed wing aircraft in terms of speed and range

during most of your flight.

But then when you want to come back and land,

then you can land vertically

again without the need, perhaps for that dedicated runway.

Which it does in a stealth package

with a top speed in excess of twice the speed of sound.

The F-35B uses some of the ideas from the Harrier,

but takes quite a different approach

in terms of the propulsion system.

Unlike the Harrier,

the F-35B incorporates a separate lift fan system

powered via a drive shaft from the front of the engine,

which works in conjunction with the aft thruster.

Operating in tandem,

they can direct up to 80,000 Newtons of thrust

from the engine to the vertical

in just two and a half seconds.

The F-35B also has the most complex

electronic sensor package ever fitted to a fighter aircraft.

Which allows a pilot,

via the very sophisticated head up system in the helmet,

to basically look anywhere they like.

Around the aircraft, through the walls of the aircraft

and see what is going on in various wavelengths,

the visible wavelengths but also in the infrared.

All of the sensor data is collected and passed

via the latest generation communication systems

to other assets in the field,

optimizing the aircraft as a part of a bigger system,

hugely increasing its effectiveness

and ultimately the capacity

to effectively prosecute that conflict.

(explosion blasting)

The sum of over 60 years

of technological advancement in aviation,

it is an example of the constant growth

in the performance requirements of the machinery of war,

brought about by new technologies

and battlefield innovation.

(dramatic music)

Innovation that hasn't just affected

fighter aircraft design,

but also the design of their larger cousins.

(explosions blasting)

To attack from long range

and to limit your opponent's capacity for agility

is crucial in modern warfare.

For many years, heavy bombers were the most effective way

to damage infrastructure and supply lines,

to soften targets, and to give attacking forces

the best chance of exploiting their offensive capabilities.

But World War II saw a rapid improvement

in the performance of fighter aircraft

and ground based air defenses.

So much so that by the middle of the war,

the old adage that the bomber would always get through

was being well and truly tested.

Even the most heavily armed bomber squadrons

began suffering crippling losses.

But in the immediate post-war years,

the jet engine more powerful

and crucially able to operate at higher altitudes,

not only saved the bombers reputation,

but made it all the more deadly.

First flown in 1949, the Canberra was the world's first

jet powered strategic bomber,

and its advanced design

completely changed the rules for long range,

strategic air warfare.

It was built by a company called English Electric,

they were only a very small company.

They came up with the design,

which was a revolutionary design at that time.

It bears some resemblance

to the Gloster Meteor,

but unlike the first jet fighter,

it was built without any defensive armament

and simply relied on its top speed,

which was in excess of 960 kilometers per hour,

to outrun fighters.

There was need for an aircraft that could fly

at a fairly low level and at high level.

We knew they were going to be ground to air missiles

coming about and so the greatest defense was altitude.

The Canberra's clean aerodynamic design

could approach altitudes of 21,000 meters,

well beyond the range of ground-based deterrence.

But it wasn't aerodynamics that gave it the edge,

it was an all-new axial flow jet engine.

The Avon engine in the Canberra was a pure jet,

and it just had one shaft and all the compressive blights,

the 12 stages, they are all on that one shaft.

And so you get lots of thrust out the back

and it kept the compressor working.

Produced by Rolls Royce,

the Avon engine was a turbojet

based on the earlier designs of Sir Frank Whittle,

but one that produced significantly more power

than anything before it.

They were very good for high altitude work.

And they became quite efficient with fuel,

the wings were designed to carry fuel

as well as bladders in the fuselage.

Those bladders gave the Canberra

a range in excess of 5,500 kilometers.

All in all, it was three times as quick,

could fly three times as high,

and go 30% further than the Avro Lancaster,

the ubiquitous bomber of World War II that preceded it,

carrying and only marginally lighter 4,500 kilogram payload.

So the Canberra could take off with a full bomb load,

quite a lot of fuel, go in low,

and if it couldn't deliver the weapons on the first pass,

go to another target.

And so the Canberra was a very successful airplane

with the armament load that it had.

So well was the Canberra designed

for its purpose, that there was no need to replace it.

And it remained active with the British, US,

and Australian Air Forces for over 50 years.

Whereas one of the aircraft that took over its role

in the late 1950s, one of Britain's famous three V bombers

flew only once in hangar,

almost 30 years after it was first commissioned.

The Avro Vulcan.

The British had always valued strategic bombers,

but as the cold war progressed

and advances in surface to air missiles

made Soviet airspace virtually impregnable,

the requirements of a strategic bomber dramatically changed.

When the cold war started to get really, really cold,

the Americans put the heavies on the Brits

and said, "Look, you got (indistinct).

And what was needed to do that,

was something that could attack

from outside hostile airspace.

The Vulcan, the one I flew on,

carried a nuclear missile as opposed to a bomb.

That weapon was a missile called blue steel.

Blue Steel missile could get an incredible range

of 100 miles.

You dropped it 100 miles away from the target.

Blue steel was not a small weapon.

Rocket science was in its infancy,

and in order to deliver its 1.1 mega ton warhead,

it was over 10 meters in length

and weighed over 7,700 kilograms,

almost double the Canberra's payload.

And to get within range to fire blue steel,

the aircraft that delivered it

would have to penetrate enemy lines

at either great height or extreme low levels,

and at high speed to avoid interception.

The Vulcan itself was a delta shape.

The Delta wing design of an aircraft

adds the capability of super high speed.

The straight leading edges are more aerodynamic

and allow the wing to go through the air a lot faster.

(dramatic music)

The delta wing housed the four engines,

initially rolls Royce Avon's

that it shared with the Canberra.

And as advances in engine technology progressed,

the Vulcan was repeatedly upgraded.

The original Avon engines

produced nearly 30,000 Newtons of thrust.

In its final incarnation,

its four engines each produced over 60,000 Newtons of thrust

giving the Vulcan incredible all around agility.

Able to carry a payload of over 18,000 kilograms,

retirement of the Vulcan was underway

at the outbreak of the Falklands War in 1982.

By that stage, it had been retrofitted

with in-flight refueling capability,

giving it, theoretically, unlimited range.

Several aircraft were dispatched from Ascension Island

to attack the Argentinians in the Falklands,

a round trip of over 12,000 kilometers or 16 hours.

One that stood for many years as the longest operation

ever undertaken by military aircraft.

(jet engine roars)

While speed and agility is vital

to prevent interception in the air,

on the ground it is the key to reinforcing

an offensive advantage.

And in World War I,

the race to create faster firing, lighter,

and more easily handled personal weapons

began with the design of an efficient bolt action rifle.

The short magazine Lee-Enfield.

(dramatic music)

In 1914 during the battle of Mons in Southern Belgium,

a relatively small British expeditionary force

armed with Lee-Enfields fired on the German first army.

It was assumed by them that the British were heavily armed

with machine guns because of the rate of fire

which was coming their way

from the highly trained British expeditionary force.

Those British soldiers at Mons

had been trained in a new way.

And part of that more intense training

included an annual test known as the mad minute.

To pass, 15 shots had to be fired

at a target almost 300 meters away within a minute.

Which is a bolt action rifle,

which only holds 10 rounds, it's phenomenal.

It gives you an idea of the skill set required

to make that happen.

To achieve accuracy with a high rate of fire,

combined with mobility,

required an efficient, manageable rifle.

And so everything about the smelly,

as it became referred to,

was designed to optimize speed and agility.

It was a rifle of carbine length

and at just one meter it was easy to handle.

It was comparatively light, at four and a half kilograms,

and had a 10 shot magazine,

which was larger than its competitors.

What set the SMLE apart though, was its rear locking bolt,

which meant far less travel and far quicker reloading.

Over 5 million Lee- Enfields were produced,

and saw service for much of the 20th century.

But in the interwar years, the British,

in pursuit of greater mobility

decided to create a weapon that had the brute strength

of a heavy machine gun that could be operated

by a single man.

The Bren Gun.

The Bren Gun was a light machine gun

that was introduced into British army service

in the mid 1930s.

And it's called The Bren

because it was developed in Brno,

which was in Czechoslovakia now Slovakia,

and it was built in Enfield, so BR-EN.

And it became the most common

British Commonwealth weapon of the entire war,

and indeed of the world.

The first thing to note about the Bren

is its weight, which at eleven and a half kilograms

is light for a gun of its power.

What that meant was that while generally fired

from the prone position,

the bren could also be fired from the shoulder

with an accuracy comparable to that of a bolt action rifle.

A bren gunner could also use his weapon on the move,

firing from the hip supported by a sling

much like an automatic rifle,

creating heavy suppressing fire during a forward assault.

It had a high rate of fire. It was 500 rounds a minute.

But it only had a 30 round magazine,

so it fired typically in short bursts.

So it was quite economical to use.

And because the magazine was on the top,

it could be quickly changed on the move.

So every man in a squad

would be carrying a number of spare magazines

to keep this hungry beast fed.

It was often used by a two man team,

one to fire, the other to reload and act as a spotter.

Each section of the British army

and indeed Commonwealth armies,

the Canadians, the Australians and new Zealanders,

all structured their infantry sections around the gun group

of these two men,

who would provide the organic fire support

for the other six or eight men in the section

to do their job.

That second man was also responsible

for handling an operation that kept the barrel cool

and made the design of the bren revolutionary.

By flipping the catch, and by using the carrying handle,

you could very quickly change the barrel in action,

which meant that there would be no delay.

You didn't have to wait for it to cool down.

So the bren's robustness was one of its best features.

The bren's adaptability and portability

meant that it could be distributed widely

across infantry battalions.

By the middle of World War II,

the British were producing 1000 brens per week,

allowing them to equip every infantry section,

a group of eight to 10 men in every single battalion

with its own light machine gun.

So in a sense, the bren is at the heart

of the tactics the British Commonwealth used to win the war.

But as World War II progressed,

tactics and understanding of battlefield realities changed.

The assault rifle as we understand it today

really emerges in World War II.

Certainly the name, assault rifle,

comes from the German, Sturmgewehr,

storm rifle, assault rifle,

for that assault phase of an attack,

or for trench fighting, or for urban combat.

But the Kalashnikov or the AK,

as it's more commonly known, arguably perfects it.

The AK-47 was not the first assault rifle,

but it embodied the best attributes of various early designs

to create a weapon of extreme agility.

It's gas operated self-loading system

was pioneered by the German storm rifle.

It's trigger mechanism is from the US M-1 Garand,

and its safety mechanism is a direct copy

of that used on the Remington model eight.

But the Kalashnikov embraced other factors in its design

to create the most agile and long lived

of all assault rifles.

The first factor was climate,

the AK 47 is made to operate efficiently

in the same extreme conditions encountered during the war

on the Russian front.

Where the dusty steps of summer

became frozen wastelands in winter.

The second was reliability.

The way that the Russian state has manufactured equipment,

it's always been extraordinarily robust,

which means it can take an awful lot of abuse

and still work.

What's interesting about the AK-47

is that a child can maintain it.

You can drop it into a swamp, pick it out,

and you can very easily disassemble it and clean it up.

It's got relatively few components

compared to certain assault rifles,

and so that is why it was so extensively used.

The third is flexibility.

Kalashnikov can act as a semiautomatic or full automatic,

depending on the battlefield circumstances,

simply by moving a switch and pulling the trigger.

It was and continues to be a rapid firing people's weapon,

designed for ease of use.

One that can be quickly mastered by peasants

and trained soldiers alike.

And as such, it became the most highly produced

and widely used personal infantry weapon

of the 20th century.

(gun firing)

(dramatic music)

The introduction of powered vehicles revolutionized warfare.

Machines like the tank,

a self-propelling artillery piece

with all-terrain capability

was one of the many technical advancements of World War I,

that meant World War II would be faster and far more mobile

than any war that had preceded it.

By taking the drive-line principles of the tank,

fitting it with a lightly armored skin

and a powerful V8 engine,

then arming it with a heavy caliber machine gun,

the British created

one of the most ubiquitous weapons of the war.

The universal carrier,

an extraordinarily agile battlefield workhorse.

The universal carrier

is a very lightly armored tracked vehicle.

It comes out to the fact that through the 1920s and 30s,

European armies had fallen in love with the tank

and were developing tanks to fight the next war.

The universal carrier was in essence, an armored tractor.

And as if to prove its universality

steering was through a wheel,

as opposed to the levers found in other tracked vehicles,

which meant virtually anyone could drive it

with limited training.

It's called universal because it can do lots of things;

It can transport men, it can transport supplies,

it can tow guns.

And it was used all over the world to do that.

Powered by a Ford V8 engine

across the battlefield, in any conditions,

it was both agile and for its time quick,

with a top speed of 56 kilometers per hour.

Tracked vehicles are able to traverse terrain

which is extremely boggy

and they are able to get to locations

that wheeled vehicles simply cannot get to.

The body was a simple steel box

with a motor compartment situated in the center.

In front, sat a driver and alongside him a gunner,

usually operating the famous bren light machine gun,

which turned it into a highly mobile light attack vehicle.

And as the war went on,

it was equipped with flame throwers and mortars

and all sorts of things to enable it

to transport and fight on the battlefield.

With over 100,000 produced,

it may have been one of the most ubiquitous, versatile,

and agile weapons platforms of World War II.

But when we turn our minds to the vehicles

that defined World War II,

it's not one of British manufacture that we think of,

it's American.

Any mental picture of World War II would be incomplete

without the presence of at least one Willy MB,

the vehicle better known as the jeep.

(dramatic music)

Us General, George C. Marshall,

called it America's greatest contribution to modern warfare.

And it would see service with all of the allied forces;

Russians, British and Anzacs in all theaters.

Ultimately over 600,000 would be produced

by the end of World War II alone.

Adaptable like the universal carrier,

the Jeep was put to work in tasks

as wide ranging as a mobile mortar platform,

artillery towers, a field ambulance,

and just about everything in between.

It was the personification

of battlefield flexibility and agility.

The Humvee is the natural inheritor of the Jeep legacy,

a high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle.

The Humvee began life as a project to find a single vehicle

that could be used

to perform a multitude of functions in combat.

A Humvee is effectively Jeep replacement.

It's a four wheeled vehicle, that's the main variant,

that is able to transport troops very quickly

from one location to the other.

For nearly 30 years, the Humvee has been the workhorse

of militaries across the globe, and like its predecessor,

it has achieved iconic status

as one of the most recognizable vehicles on the planet.

It can operate on 40% of side slope, climb a 60% slope,

fjord one and a half meters of water,

and is fast enough to keep up with the Abrams tank.

Despite its size, 1.8 meters high, 2.1 meters wide

and 4.5 meters long,

like the Jeep, the Humvee is a relative lightweight

tipping the scales at 2,600 kilograms.

But what really sets it apart from the Jeep is its cabin,

which offers full occupant protection.

And to achieve the low weight necessary

for high speed agility and soldier safety,

that cabin is largely constructed of aluminum.

And what we find with aluminum alloys

is that for lighter weight vehicles,

ballistically, they generally perform better

than high strength steels.

But that can come with its own difficulties.

Seeing service in the Middle East

during the first Gulf war,

the Humvee proved to be the ultimate

in agility and adaptability.

But war is constantly changing,

the widespread introduction of IEDs,

or improvised explosive devices,

have made the lightly built Humvee vulnerable,

and a replacement is on the way.

A replacement designed to protect the occupants

from not just IEDs but also weapons like Himars.

The purpose of himars is to clear a path

for infantry, tanks, and traditional artillery

by engaging in destroying virtually any enemy asset

within its target area.

It does this by launching its weapons at a distance,

after which it moves away from the area at speed

before enemy forces locate the launch site.

Featuring a six shot mars rocket launching module

attached to the flatbed

of a modern multi-purpose heavy truck.

At seven meters long, 2.4 meters wide,

and with a height of just 3.2 meters,

the himars is remarkably compact

given its destructive capability.

In a typical mission, himars would travel

at over 85 kilometers per hour

to a designated launch location

where a command and control post

would transmit selected target data

to the onboard launch computer.

The computer then aims the launcher

and provides prompts to the crew

to arm and fire a pre-selected number of rounds,

a sequence that takes just 16 seconds.

Firing an array of guided missiles

with ranges up to 100 miles.

Most rockets fired by himars carry a payload

of several hundred anti material grenades

which are dispersed over the target in midair

and detonate on impact,

destroying or disabling all enemy assets

in the designated area.

Himars is an incredibly agile, modern expression of a weapon

that prior to World War 11

lived solely in our imaginations, the missile.

Missiles are the ultimate in agile attack weapons,

ones that leave an enemy with little time

to defend or respond.

And the faster the missile, the harder it is to destroy.

What's more, it can be launched with a flick of a switch,

delivering a massive payload without any human risk

to the operator.

All sides in World War II

were looking at rockets of one kind or another,

but it was the Germans

who took what were at the time, storybook musings,

and created a most agile and deadly reality.

A reality that would change the face of modern warfare.

A long range pilotless flying bomb

that in World War II, was accompanied by a sound

that would live in the minds of the British for decades.

(missile roars)

(explosion blasting)

(dramatic music)

The treaty of Versailles signed after World War I,

forbade the defeated Germans

from developing any new artillery weapons,

but it said nothing, however, of rockets.

(pensive music)

With Hitler's rise, and a determination

that technology would win the next war,

the Germans committed huge resources

to the development of rocket powered weaponry.

They called them vengeance weapons.

The V-1 was a pilotless jet powered plane

with an explosive warhead.

Over eight meters long,

and with a wingspan of over five meters,

it was launched by igniting its pulse engine

and firing it on a sled up an inclined ramp, 36 meters long.

The V1 was then thrown into the air

in much the same way

that an aircraft carrier launches planes.

Once airborne, it simply continued toward its target

in the same direction it was launched

using a preset magnetic gyrocompass.

The V1 Doodlebug is guided by gyroscopes

and a flight termination system

basically running on a timer.

So it will fly a particular time in a particular direction

and then it will dive at the ground and explode.

Initially designed to power into the ground,

a fault in the fuel system of the V1's engine

caused it to cut out as it dived.

(explosion blasting)

And of course there's stories around London

of people knowing that they were about to have a V1 attack

when you heard the pulse jet go across the sky

and then cut out.

And you knew that some short time later

it would be impacting somewhere in the city.

And when it did, it was devastating.

The Doodlebug or buzz bomb, as it became known,

carried a one ton warhead

that was detonated by immediate action fuses on impact.

Sending its blast outwards across the surface.

Over four months, more than 9000 were launched,

primarily at London, with devastating effect.

But the V1 had a range of just 321 kilometers.

And by late 1944, allied advances in Europe,

along with sustained bombing

had destroyed and pushed back its launch sites,

making London safe from the buzz bomb.

But worse was to come.

(dramatic music)

As the war turned decidedly in the allies favor,

the Germans took one last technological roll of the dice

and introduced a supersonic weapon

that could neither be tracked, intercepted,

nor chillingly, heard.

The V2 is probably best described

as the first ballistic missile.

Many of the technical innovations

that were necessary to build a useful rocket

were solved by Wernher von Braun

and the German design team with the V2.

First launched in September, 1944,

the V2 was a potent, destructive weapon

designed to breed terror in civilian populations.

It succeeded and it also killed thousands,

with over 3000 fired at England, Belgium, and France

in a six month reign of terror

before the allies overran their launch sites in early 1945.

A silent killer, it was also a scientific marvel,

one that would change the course of humanity.

The V2 was the first man-made object

that actually reached the boundary of space,

which we normally define to be 100 kilometers

above the surface,

and actually did that during the second world war.

Arguably at the point

where they were on the point of losing as well.

So quite a technical achievement.

The most fundamental hurdle

that needed to be solved to build a useful rocket

was the development of a method

for combining liquid fuel and oxygen

under sufficient pressure

to generate the required thrust.

To do this, they designed turbo pumps

powered by household chemicals like hydrogen peroxide,

simple bleach that mixed and compressed the fuel

before it was driven at pressure into the firing chamber.

A principle that is central

to rocket propulsion systems to this day.

While it terrified the allied nations,

the V2 had a relatively small effect on the war.

Its primitive guidance system

didn't allow it to strike strategic objectives

such as bridges, factories, or airfields.

But it was perhaps the most astounding

technological development of the war.

Unlike so much German World War II technology,

V2 rockets, and scientists captured at the end of the war,

would form the basis of US and Russian missile programs

that would very quickly change the world forever.

At the end of the war,

Von Braun was captured by the Americans.

He was an SS officer.

By pragmatic politics,

the Americans decided not to prosecute,

to bring him home and use him as an engineering leader.

Given the relative immaturity

of ballistic missile technology,

neither Russia nor the US

achieved usable ballistic missiles

immediately after the war.

Both had atomic weapons,

but in the late 1940s and early 50s,

most of the competition between the two countries

revolved around gravity bombs

delivered by strategic bombers.

But the race for supremacy was forever changed

by the events of 1952,

with the successful full-scale test

of a workable hydrogen bomb.

The power of these weapons

was very scary for them at the time,

both the Russians and the Americans

ended up running experiments

and test detonations where the yield

was much higher than they expected.

With both countries

in possession of H bomb technology,

the race was on to find a way to deliver the warhead.

(dramatic music)

And when in 1957, the Soviets launched

a multi-stage ballistic missile

as well as the first man-made satellite, Sputnik,

the Americans quickly responded with the SM-65 Atlas.

The world's first nuclear armed

intercontinental ballistic missile.

More than simply an Americanized vengeance weapon,

the Atlas was designed to fly

in excess of 10 times the range of a V2,

5,500 kilometers from the United States

to strike at the heart of the Soviet Union.

On its parabolic journey,

it would fly between 150 and 400 kilometers into space

from where the warhead separated from the main stage rocket,

would transition in orbit until it plunged back to earth

and exploded over the desired target.

A large task.

And given that the heavier the rocket,

the more power required to launch,

huge efforts were made to trim its bulk.

Even so, the Atlas at 25 meters high, weighed over 108 tons

and like the V2 and many rockets to this day,

much of that weight was its propellant,

a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen.

It proved to be a definitive design.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles and space rockets

have almost identical types of characteristics.

And so the Atlas still see service today

basically into the 2000s.

The Atlas was the first stage

in a dangerous game of brinkmanship,

and was produced in sufficient numbers

that had they been fired,

we would be living in a very different world today.

But such was the paranoia that surrounded the cold war,

obvious deterrents were not enough to stop development.

The fear amongst Americans was that if they were attacked,

the Atlas would be too slow to respond.

So one of the problems with a nuclear war

such as they envisaged in the cold war,

is that it's incredibly destructive.

There is the risk that if somebody starts a war,

then it will very quickly get out of hand,

and you'll end up with a bloodbath on both sides.

With most of the belligerent countries

territory destroyed most of their population dead.

The concern was how do you stop

this scenario from happening?

How do you stop someone from starting a nuclear war?

The solution was immediate launch capability.

Enter, the minute man.

The minute man was so named

because like it's colonial namesake,

it could respond immediately to threat.

But to respond to the press of a button required solid fuel.

One of the normal problems with rockets

is that they're all liquid fueled.

The problem with that is liquid propellants,

you can only hold them in the rocket

for a short period of time before you have to remove them

and probably refurbish the rocket

to make up for the fact that it's been fueled.

Which means they're not a very good deterrent

because you can't keep them in a ready to launch state.

But the minute man brings forward a solid rocket propellant,

which means that it can sit in the silo

ready to go at a moment's notice,

and they don't degrade very much over time.

So 15 to 20 year lives are not unusual.

Rapid advances in solid fuels

left just the question of accuracy.

The other revolutionary part of the design

was the navigation system.

To fly a ballistic trajectory

and hit a designated target,

demands a very accurate inertial navigation system

that uses gyroscopes spun out

and aligned to the earth's rotation.

And there's not time to do that,

it might take anywhere up to half an hour

for that gyroscope to align.

So consequently with the minute man,

the gyroscopes are already spun up, ready to go.

With its underground silos

able to withstand a nuclear blast,

retaliation was guaranteed.

The epitome of agility and the ultimate stalemate weapon.

If the minute man is ever truly fired,

what is certain is that both sides will lose.

(dramatic music)