On an English Beach · September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in Southwestern England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle consisted of a pair of 10‑ft-/3‑m-high…
Bletchley Park, England · May 9, 1941 As war loomed in Europe, British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park outside London worked feverishly to unravel the Enigma cipher machine, which the Germans used to encrypt their most secret communications. The Enigma had a number of differently wired scrambler rotors that operators changed and shuffled through billions…
Berlin, Germany · April 25, 1945 In the same month World War II began in Europe, September 1939, the German Army Weapons Agency (Heereswaffenamt, or HWA) placed all programs associated with the nation’s nascent nuclear energy project under its authority. The weapons program eventually expanded into three main efforts: setting up a nuclear reactor, producing…
Auburn, Massachusetts · March 16, 1926 On this date in 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard (1882–1945) conducted his first successful rocket flight. His liquid-propellant rocket rose 41 ft, traveled 184 ft, and burned no more than 3 seconds, but it proved the concept of rocket flight worked. Goddard, who received limited support for his research and…
London, England · February 27, 1942 Under the cover of darkness on this date in 1942, 119 British paratroopers kicked off Operation Biting when they parachuted into Nazi-occupied Normandy close to a German radar station in the parish (commune) of La Poterie-Cap-d’Antifer, 12 miles north of the large French harbor of Le Havre. A number of what…
London, England · January 21, 1943 Arguably one of Germany’s greatest assets early in World War II was the Enigma machine. It could encrypt and decrypt sensitive diplomatic and military messages in billions of ways (actually 10 to the 23rd power). The location of U‑boats in the Atlantic, supply convoys, and the orders of battle were…
London, England · November 6, 1940 On this date in 1940 a German Heinkel 111 was shot down and sank in the shallows off southern England. A waterlogged X‑Geraet (“X‑device”) was recovered. The X‑Geraet played a role in the Battle of the Beams, a period early in the war when German bombers were equipped with…
Seattle, Washington · November 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 Japan began an explosive balloon campaign against the U.S. and Canada. Over the next five months the Special Balloon Regiment of the Japanese army launched about 9,300 hydrogen-filled rubberized-silk or paper “fire balloons” (fūsen bakudan, lit. “balloon bomb”), or Fu-Go’s as they were known in…
On an English Beach · September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in southwestern England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle, consisting of a pair of 10‑ft‑high steel…
London, England · May 9, 1941 As war loomed in Europe, British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park outside London worked feverishly to unravel the Enigma cipher machine, which the Germans used to encrypt their most secret communications. The Enigma had a number of differently wired scrambler rotors that operators changed and shuffled through billions of…