@benmcreynolds8581

It's amazing how they manufactured this complex unit for every artillery shell... Thats just utterly meticulous

@Luis-be9mi

A little side note, the naming VT Fuze (Variable Timed) Fuze was used to throw off the enemy. For if the Allies used the name Proximity Fuze it could have caused the Axis to take another look or put more effort to steal the plans that went into the development of the VT Fuze.

@Respectable_Username

Just want to give huge props to whoever did the animations on this one. Not only are they excellent at showing the mechanisms in play, but they're also just downright gorgeous in their finish! I can imagine it took a lot of time and skill to get those so good, not to mentions a buttonne of render power!

@jcarry5214

I lived near a bunker where Sylvania worked on the radar fuse. There were tons of rumors about the "secret base" on the hill in the middle of an island neighborhood, so I asked some vets I knew. It was a test lab for this project. They picked the spot because it was a perfect granite bubble that was innocuous, close to research universities and industry, but totally physically insulated from outside electronics and vibration. But locals still insisted there were nukes behind the one steel door unguarded on a public street.

@NealB123

The VT fuse was a true game changer in the Pacific. The naval 5 inch gun went from being a totally ineffective AA gun to being the most effective practically overnight. One of the greatest technological accomplishments of the war.

@Simple_But_Expensive

They made a difference, especially in conjunction with the “predictors” (analog mechanical targeting computers and electromechanical relays to automatically aim the gun). Once these were implemented, the crews didn’t even look at the targets. It was just load the gun, and keep the pointers aligned. One pointer (under control of the gunner) showed where the gun was actually pointed, the other (under the control of the computer) showed where it should be pointed. The crews never even had to look up. The seemingly obvious step of removing the gun crew and turning the aiming over to the computer didn’t happen until the 80’s though with the advent of the CIWS gatling gun antimissile system.

@starwarsnerd949

It’s crazy how a war that was just six years long led to incredible advancements in technology

@nathanokun8801

TECHNICAL DESIGN POINT: VT fuzes had a small, especially-shaped antenna wrapped around the battery and oscillator radio source for transmission and reception. The antenna had to be configured as designed. However, when a glowing base tracer element was used to allow the gunners to see where the shells were going and adjust their aim, this burning tracer was ionized and electrically conductive, leaving a long invisible trail of electrified air behind the shell. This acted like an extension of the antenna in the fuze and short-circuited its operation. Thus, VT-equipped shells had to have their tracers removed, To fix the aiming vision problem, every so many shells would be an old powder or clockwork time fuze with a tracer installed. The smallest shells that could fit a VT fuze in WWII was a 3" (75mm) gun projectile, with 4-5.25" being used in the majority of US and British naval guns. Against German troops in Europe and Japanese-held islands, larger guns from 106mm through 203mm Army guns and up to 16" naval guns had HE shells with VT fuzes.

@Mark-m9z4q

This was a truly interesting video. As an electronic technician and nuclear submarine veteran, the miniaturization of the thyratron, oscillator, battery, safety interlocks, and other components during the era of vacuum tubes is amazing. Like the Manhattan project...a project leader would have to oversee the theory, testing, miniaturization, development, and manufacture of each of the teams tasked with with a particular obstacle and device.

@404BYTE

A true wonder weapon.
"As volume increased, efficiency came into play and the cost per fuze fell from $732 in 1942 to $18 in 1945."

@arcfault2873

I can't speak for British AA targeting systems, but I imagine they had similar methods to the Germans. Flak targeting was actually a fairly well-developed affair and not as imprecise as one may think.

German Flak batteries were directed by the Kommandogerät (Command apparatus). An analog electro-mechanical computer that used parallax to compute a firing solution. The device relied on a stereoscopic rangefinder, which was manually aimed at the approaching aircraft by an operator. Two images of the same aircraft would be visible through the eyepiece, and a knob was rotated until the two images merged. This merging was accomplished by the knob causing a deflection of the optics of one of the viewports of the stereoscopic pair. The computer then used elevation + optical deflection of the viewport to calculate altitude and distance trigonometrically. The operator maintaining the aircraft in view and focus also provided speed.

The firing solution from the command apparatus was then sent through cables to each of the battery's guns. Dials on each gun indicated the elevation, azimuth, and necessary time delay required to reach the target, all the gun crew had to do was match the dial readings. The system even accounted for the error introduced by the varying distance between the guns and the central rangefinder.

@dan725

Oh man the CG animations and the sounds were so on point and incredibly well done!

I’ve been following you for YEARS; and every video, the production value of you and your team just keeps setting the bar higher and with the CG coupled with the amazing sound designs!

You have assembled a professional production company, and I can’t believe your tiny team can pump out ULTRA quality educational and entertaining content for pretty much free.

Thank you Brian and your amazing team for making these for us!!!

@DonVigaDeFierro

The engineering on the VT-fuze is nothing short of genius. Whoever came up with the idea of the wet cell must've rested very easy every night, knowing they've saved thousands of people.

@SpIattercaster

My grandfather worked on the Proximity Fuse project, he had an example (minus explosives) as a paperweight in his office many decades later. He was a radio guy, and mentioned the difficulties of engineering a radio that can survive 20,000g's coming out of an artillery cannon.

@fonkbadonk5370

As a German, I was initially surprised how a luffa (sponge) themed video would command such visceral imagery, and that kind of video title.
As much as I love your videos: Please note that the "t" in Luftwaffe isn't silent, but rather important, as it literally splits the words this compound is made of: Luft (air) Waffe (weapon).

@ronjohnson9032

An old boy that I used to work for was heavily involved in the development of the proximity fuze. He wrote a book about it called They never knew what hit them. His name was Ralph Baldwin. There is a documentary about this also.

@Sprengstoff

Wow, the design with the glass ampule breaking and the round spinning to prime the battery is just so elegant! Very nice video, really enjoyed it - The graphics explaining the tech is just excellent, well done! I totally agree on the pivotal importance of this invention, war drives innovation, maybe you could do a video on that sad fact?

@Hey_MikeZeroEcho22P

As a USN Veteran that now "Serves" onboard USS IOWA BB-61, we Mention the VT/Proximity fuse when explaining the "smaller weapons" onboard the ship.:text-green-game-over:

Thanks for the posting!!!:trophy-yellow-smiling::trophy-yellow-smiling::trophy-yellow-smiling:

@austinveenstra7186

the design of that wet cell battery is absolutely amazing, making use of the spin of the round to control the release of the battery mechanism and also designing the cell in a way that makes it needed for it to function to prevent accidental detonation is amazing. It really showed a lot of creativity and awareness of the conditions that the round was going to be used under. It's also amazing how they managed to develop the cell considering that they couldn't really have any "lab" experiments of it in action, if it only worked when it was fired out of a barrel, then the system would have been hard to troubleshoot to really finish it.

@wbfairer2

My mother, may she rest in piece, told me stories of what she did in WWII. She and her sisters manufactured radio triggered artillery fuses at the Sylvania plant in Altoona, PA. The internal workings were just like you described. God bless my mother, and God Bless AMerica.