When They Put a Massive Infrared Searchlight And Scope Onto a StG 44-They Call It "Mass-Casualty" скачать в хорошем качестве

When They Put a Massive Infrared Searchlight And Scope Onto a StG 44-They Call It "Mass-Casualty"

When They Put a Massive Active Infrared Searchlight and Scope onto a WWII StG 44 | The Vampir Night Vision Story #ww2 #ww2history October 1944. Eastern Front, Poland. German Unteroffizier Hans Becker faces a tactical nightmare: Soviet reconnaissance teams infiltrate his positions every night, killing sentries and gathering intelligence in complete darkness where human vision is useless and defensive fire is blind guesswork. In his hands is a weapon system that seems imported from science fiction: his StG 44 assault rifle transformed by a massive 14-inch infrared searchlight weighing 6.2 pounds, an infrared telescopic sight with image converter tube, and a 30-pound battery pack strapped to his back. The complete system weighs 53 pounds—triple the normal rifle weight—but provides an impossible capability: seeing and killing enemies in absolute darkness at 400 meters. This is the true story of the Zielgerät 1229 "Vampir"—the world's first man-portable active infrared night vision system. Discover how German engineers created image converter tubes that transformed invisible infrared light into visible green images, designed 300-watt infrared searchlights that illuminated targets invisibly, and built high-voltage power supplies generating 15,000 volts from backpack batteries—all in 1944. We examine the revolutionary technology that gave individual soldiers night vision decades before it became standard military equipment, the brutal weight penalty of 53 pounds total system weight that made mobile operations impossible, production of only 1,300-1,500 systems that equipped less than 0.2% of German infantry, and the moment when Becker used infrared sight to kill three Soviet infiltrators who never saw him, never knew they were detected, never understood how they died in complete darkness. Featuring detailed analysis of image converter tube technology and active infrared illumination principles, the tactical advantages of detecting body heat signatures at ranges where enemies believed themselves invisible, the critical weaknesses of fragile vacuum tubes with 20% failure rates and lead-acid batteries providing only 3 hours operation, and why this technological marvel couldn't change Germany's strategic collapse. From AEG laboratories in Berlin to Polish observation posts, this documentary reveals how German desperation and engineering brilliance created the ancestor of all modern night vision—a system that worked brilliantly when conditions allowed but failed too often, weighed too much, and arrived too late to matter strategically.