Over the course of World War II, the Nazis invented a lot of different weapons to get an upper hand. Some fundamentally changed combat forever, like the V2 rocket, the first operational ballistic ...

The German auxiliary cruiser Komet was disguised as a Soviet icebreaker and painted in Soviet colors, using a secret route ...

It takes more than a few mental gymnastics to appreciate the scale of the achievement of the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet rocket interceptor. Then again, seeing the less-than-stellar-looking example at ...

Key point: Like many other over-hyped German wonder weapons, the Komet was revolutionary but not practical. Overengineered and full of problems, it was too fast and only had 7 minutes worth of fuel.

Dangerous to Allied bombers as well as the ground crews that maintained it and the pilots that flew it, the tiny Me-163 had an amazing climb rate and top speed thanks to its unique rocket engine ...

Key Point: The Me 163 was too fast to be a good bomber destroyer. Nazi Germany pursued numerous ambitious and impractical weapon programs over the course of World War II. One of the few that saw ...