It is commonly believed that German wonder weapons were born in sterile laboratories where the best minds of the Reich drew up designs for jet engines and ballistic missiles. Tigers, V2s, Mess were the fruit of a vast state machine. But one of the Vermach’s most terrifying machines of 1944 did not come from a design bureau.

 It was assembled in a dirty field hanger, literally from scrap metal. The repair company took the chassis from damaged tanks that were no longer fit for battle, found anti-aircraft guns, and worked with welding equipment where factories had failed. This machine had no complex optics or hydraulics. Officially, it was created to save tanks from aircraft.

But it went down in history not as a defender of the sky, but as a nightmare on the ground. When its four barrels were lowered to human height, the concept of shelter ceased to exist. This is the story of the verbal wind. proof that sometimes a soldier’s ingenuity and desperation can be more terrifying than the entire industrial might of Germany.

And to understand how this homemade machine became a legend, you need to look at its creator, the man who stood behind Hitler for 5 years before the war. In the summer of 1944, air supremacy over Western Europe finally passed to the Allies. What had seemed unthinkable two years earlier became an everyday reality for every German soldier on the Western Front.

 The Vermach’s tank columns, once the symbol of the Blitzkrieg, were gradually turning into prey. American P47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers and British Typhoons hunted German equipment like hawks hunt mice. They patrolled the roads, tracked movements, and flew low. Rounds from large caliber machine guns, tore through the tarpollins of trucks, found gaps in the armor, and turned any daytime march into a bloody lottery.

 And the rockets suspended under the wings could destroy even a heavy tank if the pilot was lucky enough to hit it. German soldiers called these planes Yabos, short for yag bomber, and they pronounced this word with undisguised fear. The luftvafa bled dry in the skies over the Reich could no longer cover even priority routes.

 Messes and fauols were needed to defend German cities from armadas of bombers. At the front, tankers were left alone to face a threat their machines were powerless against. And they quickly learned a simple rule. Moving during the day meant death. Convoys set out at dusk and stopped until dawn. Vehicles were driven under trees, covered with camouflage nets, hidden in barns, and under bridges.

 But even this did not guarantee safety. Allied reconnaissance planes recorded any concentration of equipment, and a few hours later, bombs rained down on the coordinates. Among the divisions awaiting the imminent Allied invasion was the 12th SS Panzer Division, Hitler Yugand. This was an elite unit made up of volunteers from the Hitler youth.

 The average age of the soldiers was 18.5. These were boys who had not yet learned to live but were already ready to die for the Reich. However, their fanaticism was worthless against the diving thunderbolt. The division needed air protection and standard solutions did not work. The first attempt to solve the problem was the mobile wagon.

 The Germans nicknamed it the furniture van because of its characteristic silhouette. A 37 mm anti-aircraft gun surrounded by folding armor shields was mounted on the chassis of a Panzer 4 tank. In theory, it all looked reasonable. In practice, the machine turned out to be a half measure. The problem was time. To open fire, the mobile wagon crew had to stop, fold down the armor shields, and turn the gun toward the target.

 All this took precious seconds. An attack aircraft approaching at 500 km hour did not allow for those seconds. By the time the crew was ready to fire, the plane had already fired and was pulling out of the attack. or even worse, the pilot noticed the anti-aircraft gun turning and fired first. There was another problem.

 With the armor shields down, the crew was exposed from above. Shrapnel, stray bullets, and nearby explosions took their toll. The mobile wagon could protect the convoy, but it couldn’t protect its own crew. A fundamentally different solution was needed. A machine capable of opening fire the moment a threat appeared, without preparation, without lowering the shields, without lost moments that cost lives, and preferably with such a density of fire that even a high-speed target would not have time to slip through the curtain of

shells. Among those who sought this answer was a man with an unusual biography. Carl Wilhelm Krauss spent 5 years closer to Hitler than most generals. He was his personal aid to camp and bodyguard. In the Reich Chancellery, he was called the shadow because he always stood behind the furer at all official events.

However, by the summer of 1944, the former carpenter and architect from West Prussia was commanding an anti-aircraft unit in the very same Hitler Yugan division. And his war now looked verydifferent from the park intrigues of Berlin. Looking at the wrecked Panzer 4 with its burnedout turret, Krauss did not see scrap metal.

 He saw a chassis that could still move. and he saw a solution. Krauss’s idea was simple to the point of genius. Take the damaged chassis from the Panzer 4, remove the wrecked turret, and install a quadruple flackfiring 38 anti-aircraft gun in its place. Four 20 mm barrels, which had previously been in fixed positions defending airfields, now had tracks and armor.

 Krauss did not wait for permission from Berlin. His men assembled three such vehicles right in the field using damaged tanks and standard anti-aircraft guns. The design was crude. Simple armor shields instead of a full-fledged turret and soldiers ingenuity instead of factory assembly. However, these improvised vehicles worked.

 In the summer of 1944, they shot down 27 Allied aircraft. 27 confirmed victories from homemade prototypes assembled in the field. Rumors of the unusual vehicles reached Berlin. Lieutenant Hans Kristoff was sent to France for inspection. His report from 27th April 1944 was enthusiastic. The officer recommended using the field development as the basis for a production vehicle.

 The report reached Colonel General Hines Gudderion. Inspector General of Armored Forces. Gudderion approved. Hitler approved. By May, the first factory prototype was ready. The new vehicle was assembled at the Osba Veric factory in the Celisian city of Zan. The design was recognizable. The nine-sided turret made of sloping armor plates resembled a giant tin can.

 German soldiers immediately nicknamed it the biscuit tin. However, inside this tin was hidden monstrous firepower. Four barrels could fire up to 800 shells per minute. This meant that more than 13 20 mm shells flew towards the target in 1 second. For comparison, the MG42 infantry machine gun, which the allies called Hitler’s saw because of its characteristic sound, fired about 20 rounds per second.

 The Verbal Wind could maintain a comparable rate of fire. Still, each of its shells weighed 10 times as much and carried explosives. The turret rotated 360°. The barrels rose almost vertically. The crew could open fire in any direction in a matter of seconds without leaving the shelter of the armor. This was what the mobile wagon lacked.

 This is what made the new vehicle deadly. There was, however, a compromise. The turret remained open at the top. This was not a mistake on the part of the designers. It was a conscious decision dictated by the reality of war. Four 20 mm automatic cannons produced a considerable amount of powder gases when fired.

 In a closed space, the crew would suffocate after a minute of continuous fire. In addition, the open top gave the gunner and loaders a circular view of the sky, which was critical in repelling air attacks that lasted only seconds. The ventilation systems of the time could not solve both problems at once. There was another problem.

 The 20 mm caliber was considered effective against aircraft at the beginning of the war. However, by 1944, Allied attack aircraft had been fitted with armor protection. 20 mm shells could still damage the engine or kill the pilot with a lucky hit, but they no longer guaranteed a kill. The command understood this and simultaneously developed the Ostwin with a more powerful 37 mm cannon.

 But the OS wind required time and time was working against Germany. Therefore, the Verbal Wind went into production as it was imperfect but affordable. Vulnerable from above, but capable of firing instantly, weak against modern attack aircraft, but potentially deadly against everything else.

 About 100 vehicles rolled off the assembly line. 100 units for the entire eastern and western fronts. a drop in the ocean for an army that was losing dozens of tanks every day. However, even this drop left its mark. On the 6th of June 1944, the Allies landed on the coast of France. The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Jugand was thrown into battle the next day.

Krauss’s anti-aircraft unit saw combat almost immediately, and the vehicles proved that they were capable of doing precisely what they were designed to do. During the summer of 1944, the unit recorded 45 Allied aircraft shot down. 45 thunderbolts and typhoons that did not return to their airfields. The WBLE wind served as an anti-aircraft gun and performed well.

 However, the machine earned its true fame, dark and bloody in a completely different role, the Normandy bokeh. These were not just the living hedges seen in English gardens. It was a system of earthen ramparts up to 4 m high, overgrown with centuries old trees and shrubs. The ramparts divided the fields into an endless maze of small enclosed spaces.

 Each field was the size of a football field. Each was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of greenery. Each could become a trap. Tanks designed for breakthroughs in open terrain became blind here. Infantry accustomed to the support of armor was left alone with aninvisible enemy. The Americans and British advanced at a speed of several hundred meters a day, paying for every meter with blood.

 And it was in this hell that verbal wind found its second calling. Aircraft rarely appeared in the bokeage. The dense foliage hid both the Germans and the allies. Pilots could not distinguish between friend and foe from the air, but the infantry appeared constantly. American soldiers seeped through gaps in the hedgeros, gathered before the attack, and tried to gain a foothold in the captured fields.

 They were hundreds of meters away, sometimes tens of meters, and they had nothing that could stop four barrels. When 20 mm shells hit the hedge, something terrible happened. High explosive fragmentation shells exploded on contact with branches and trunks, turning the shelter into a deadly trap. The wood was scattered by secondary fragments.

 Those who hid behind the greenery died not from direct hits, but from thousands of wooden needles flying at bullet speed. The brick walls of farmhouses, which seemed to be a reliable shelter, crumbled under a hail of shells in seconds. The combat report of the 53rd Heavy Tank Battalion recorded this in dry military language.

 The flack firing vehicles demonstrated outstanding effectiveness in ground combat. Behind the bureaucratic wording lay a simple reality. The Wble Wind had become a mop-up machine. 800 rounds per minute, aimed not at the sky, but horizontally along hedges into the windows of houses, anywhere where infantry could be hiding. A combat load of 3,200 shells allowed it to fire longer than any enemy could withstand.

 The anti-aircraft gun designed to protect tanks from the sky became one of the most effective close combat weapons of World War II. A paradox perhaps, but war always finds uses for weapons that their designers never imagined. The verbal wind was good, but good machines are not enough to win a war. 100 units on two fronts meant that most German divisions never saw this machine in action.

 Tank columns continued to burn under the blows of ground attack aircraft. Infantry continued to die without anti-aircraft cover. The WBLE wind was a drop of water in the desert and that drop could not quench the thirst of a dying army. The 12th Hitler Youth Division in which Krauss served paid the full price for the summer of 1944. The division entered the battle with more than 20,000 men in its ranks.

 They were volunteer boys averaging 18 1/2 years of age, fanatically devoted to the regime. By the end of the Normandy campaign, only about 300 combat ready soldiers remained in the division. Not thousands, hundreds. 98% of the personnel were killed, wounded, or captured. On the 14th of June 1944, division commander Brigade of Furer Fritz Vit was at his headquarters in the village of Venoui.

 A 15-in shell from a British battleship fired from the sea many kilometers from the coast hit the building directly. Wit was killed instantly. He was 36 years old. No verbal wind could protect him from naval artillery. No anti-aircraft gun could shoot down a shell weighing a ton. Kurt Meyer, nicknamed Panzer Meyer, took command of the division.

 At 33, he became the youngest division commander in the German army. Meyer was one of those officers who led soldiers into battle personally, standing in the open hatch of a tank. His bravery bordered on recklessness, but his tactical skill offset it. However, even he could not change the arithmetic of war.

 The Allies landed thousands of soldiers every day. Their factories produced aircraft and tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them. Every Thunderbolt shot down was replaced by two new ones. Every Sherman tank that was knocked out was replaced by three new ones. Germany was fighting against the industrial might of the entire world and no miracle weapon could change that.

 In September 1944, Meyer was captured by Belgian partisans and handed over to the Canadians. He was later tried for war crimes related to the execution of Canadian prisoners of war. He was sentenced to death, then given a life sentence instead and released in 1954. He died in 1961, never reaching old age. Krauss was luckier.

 He surrendered to the Americans, was interned until June 1946, and then returned to civilian life. Hitler’s former bodyguard and creator of the Verbal Wind lived until 2001 and died at the age of 90. The metal he invented proved to be less durable than its creator. The war was over. Germany lay in ruins. Most of the verbal wind were destroyed in battle, abandoned during the retreat, or dismantled for scrap metal in the post-war years.

 It seemed that the history of this machine was over. However, a few examples survived. One stands at the Canadian Armed Forces Base in Bordon, Ontario. A trophy brought back from Europe and preserved as a museum exhibit. The ninesided turret is rusted. The paint is peeling and the barrels have not fired in a long time, but the silhouette is still recognizable.A biscuit tin that once concealed death.

Another example is the Minster Tank Museum in Germany. Another is in a private collection. No more than five vehicles have survived worldwide. Five out of the hundred that were built. The other 95 became rust, memories, and lines in archival documents. But the idea did not die. The concept of a mobile anti-aircraft gun on a tank chassis capable of protecting armored columns from air attacks survived the Third Reich.

 The Soviet Union created the ZSU57-2. Then the legendary Shilka with its four 23mm barrels. West Germany, reborn from the ashes, developed the Gayard, which is still in service with several armies worldwide. The Americans built the M163 Vulcan with a sixbarrel cannon. All these machines are conceptual descendants of the Wblewind.

 Mobility, armor protection, rate of fire, and the ability to open fire instantly. The principles that Krauss formulated in the field conditions of Normandy became the standard for post-war anti-aircraft systems. Japard, by the way, is now fighting in Ukraine. A machine whose roots go back to the ideas of an SS officer of the 1940s protects Ukrainian cities from Russian drones and cruise missiles.

 History loves such twists and turns. It was created to protect tanks from being shot down from the sky. Four barrels aimed at the clouds, 800 shells per minute, armor on all sides, and then it lowered its barrels to the ground. It became one of the most terrifying weapons of infantry destruction that World War II had ever seen.

 A paradox, absolutely. But in this story, the paradox runs deeper than just a change of targets. Carl Wilhelm Krauss spent five years in the shadow of the most destructive political movement of the 20th century. He stood behind the man who unleashed a war that claimed tens of millions of lives. And then Kra himself created a machine whose engineering principles still protect people from death from the sky.

The bodyguard became a designer. The shadow took on a form of its own. The boys of the Hitler Youth Division believed they were fighting for a great cause. Most of them did not live to see their 19th birthday. Their first commander was killed by a shell that flew in from beyond the horizon. Their second commander survived the war, but never shook off its stigma.

 And the man who invented their protection from the sky lived to a ripe old age, outliving his machine, his era, and almost everyone who fought in that machine. The Worble Wind was born out of desperation. Germany was losing the war, and its engineers were looking for any way to delay the inevitable. They found an elegant solution to a specific problem.

They created a machine that worked. However, no machine could save a regime doomed by its own madness. Today, at the Bordon Museum, children look at the rusted turret and do not understand what they are looking at. To them, it is just an old tank, one of many. They do not hear the roar of four barrels.

 They do not see the Normandy hedge being torn apart. They do not know how many people died on both sides of this armor. That could be for the best. Metal rusts. People die. Wars end. Only the stories we tell each other remain. And in these stories, there are no winners. There are only those who survived and those who remember. Worble wind. Whirlwind.

100 tanks. Millions of shells. Countless lives and the silence of the museum hall where all this has finally found peace.