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Satanic Tomatoes and Other Weird Details Not Taught in History Class

Khalid Elhassan July 4, 2020 33 min

South Lawn - Goat — Wilson's sheep. Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

15. Inventing the Concept of Ballistic Missile Submarines

An Ursel-firing U-boat. Weapons and Warfare

The Nazis put a lot of thought into how to reach out and wreck the Big Apple. In addition to the Prufstand, the ad-hoc submersible V-2 transport, the Germans had also been busy with plans for a dedicated ballistic missile U-boat that could carry multiple rockets and launch them at inland targets.

Separately, in a project codenamed Ursel, the Germans had figured out a guidance system that allowed the targeting of surface ships with rockets fired from submerged U-boats. The rockets, however, were still under development when the war ended. After the war, both the US and Soviet navies drew on Project Ursel to develop ballistic missile submarines in the 1950s.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.