Most Terrifying Weapons of World War 2

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World War Two was undoubtedly the deadliest and  most brutal conflict this world has ever seen.  

Even if massive battles with millions of  casualties, genocide, and the mass suffering  

of hundreds of millions of people were not enough,  there were various weapons employed by all sides  

that magnified the carnage  by an immeasurable magnitude. 

Ethics aside, these weapons are included in this  list due to their known ability to cause damage,  

with a list of theoretical weapons reserved  for another time. What makes any particular  

one of these weapons so terrifying is either  through the suffering they caused the victims,  

their effectiveness on the battlefield, or  their ability to defeat countermeasures.  

But without further ado, here are some of  the most terrifying weapons of World War Two. 

Kamikazes As the war in the Pacific turned ever worse  

for Japan, they turned to increasingly desperate  measures to stem the tide of the American Navy.  

Though all sides had undertaken suicide missions  by individual pilots in the war to some extent,  

the Japanese were the ones to employ this  horrifying tactic regularly. In October of 1944,  

the American and allied navies began to face an  enemy deadlier than any other encountered before. 

The premise behind a kamikaze attack was simple.  Load an aircraft with as many bombs and explosives  

as possible, find a high-value target like an  aircraft carrier, and keep going until you hit it.  

Though it might seem that kamikazes would have  been easy to defeat, you would surely be mistaken.  

In conventional air attacks, if the flak is too  heavy or too many enemy aircraft approaching,  

pilots concerned with preserving their  lives would break off and return to base.  

That was not the case for kamikazes. What made these men so terrifying was  

not only the weapon they piloted at US ships at  hundreds of miles an hour, but their training  

before even stepping into the cockpit. Though most  of the early kamikazes were already experienced  

veterans, most of the ones that flew later on were  raw recruits. Receiving little flight training,  

these men instead went through intensive religious  and ideological classes to further increase their  

conviction for the cause. That way, by the  time they took off for that final time,  

they were more determined than ever  to deliver their deadly payload. 

Even though the US did develop tactics such  as increasing air patrols, building defense  

in depth with picket ships, and developing better  time-delayed fuses, kamikaze attacks were still  

devastating. During their debut in the Pacific  theater, kamikazes obliterated an American task  

force steaming for the Philippines sinking seven  ships and damaging another 40. These attacks would  

continue with intensity through the battle of  Okinawa, which saw 36 ships sunk, 386 damaged,  

and almost 5000 sailors killed, making it the  deadliest battle of the war for the US Navy. 

The Schu-mine 42 Mines are a great way to deter  

enemy movement or funnel them into areas where you  can bring preplanned fire on them. They are also  

an excellent delaying tactic since it forces  an advancing enemy to slow down to carefully  

prod for these devices since, unlike most other  mines, the Germans made these mines out of wood! 

As its name would imply, the shoe mine was  an anti-personnel mine that the German Army  

first developed in 1942. Due to the increasing  number of ways to detect and destroy mines,  

they wanted something that allied troops could not  detect. Additionally, due to the wartime shortages  

of metal, the Germans wanted to conserve as much  as possible. With millions of these mines being  

produced, the cost savings proved significant for  the German war machine but where the mine really  

paid off was the fear brought into the hearts  of allied soldiers hoping not to step on them. 

The shoe mine was not designed to be an extremely  large or complex mine. It was composed of a simple  

wooden box with a detonator and some explosives.  Its primary purpose was to maim soldiers,  

and the war diaries and official records of  allied troops can attest to their effectiveness. 

Due to their small size and inability  to be detected with a metal detector,  

the only sure-fire way to identify these  little buggers would be to probe the ground  

with a knife or bayonet manually. However,  such methods proved impractical when the  

Germans placed them on roads or other areas  that allied troops had to cross under fire. 

Not wanting to be defeated, some allied troops  came up with ingenious methods to defeat them.  

The British, for example, came up with the idea  of placing a garden roller with metal spikes  

on the end of it. A brave volunteer would  kit up in an early version of a bomb suit  

and roll this contraption across the battlefield.  Whenever it hit a mine, it would blow up,  

and the soldier would keep moving to the next one. Though this design was eventually not approved for  

broader use by General Montgomery, it is  an excellent example of how such a simple  

device could defeat every advanced detection  system the allies possessed, causing fear and  

casualties in its wake. Despite lacking official  bodies of research, from contemporary accounts,  

troops noted that this mine, along with  the vaunted MG42 and "screaming memie"  

Neberlwerfer guns, were chief among their least  favorite things to encounter on the battlefield. 

US Submarines German U-boats  

get a lot of the credit for World War Two, and  rightfully so. They sunk almost 15 million tons  

worth of war material and sent tens of thousands  of sailors down to an early watery grave. However,  

even though U-boats are more famously known during  the war, it was actually the US submarine force  

that was much more feared, and for a good reason. Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor,  

the first units that struck back were US  submarines. President Roosevelt ordered that  

a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare would  be brought against the Japanese, and the service  

gladly obliged the order. Pretty soon, without  warning, Japanese naval and merchant vessels were  

being sent to the bottom at an alarming rate. US submarines were so successful at attacking  

Japanese shipping that by the end of 1944,  most submarine commanders reported patrols  

were increasingly difficult not due necessarily  to enemy action but due to a loss of targets to  

shoot! This sentiment can be seen in the data for  Japanese merchant shipping losses, with over 8.5  

million tons of shipping sunk. Those figures  mean that the entire Japanese merchant marine  

was sunk almost twice over compared to its  starting tonnage at the beginning of the war. 

Not only did the Japanese Navy and merchant  marine fear US submarines, but also their  

Army. During the war, historians have estimated  that over 44 Japanese troopships were sunk,  

with over 33 of these causing over a thousand  deaths. Some of these troopships, such as the  

sinking of the Toyama Maru, resulted in the deaths  of over 5000 soldiers. In total, tens of thousands  

of Japanese troops were killed at sea, and the  threat posed by submarines was so bad top army  

commanders were unsure if they would be able  to reinforce their far-flung Pacific outposts. 

If sinking the entire Japanese merchant  fleet, helping cripple the Japanese Navy,  

and preventing the Japanese Army from moving  were not terrifying enough, another way  

that submarines caused even more suffering was  through their blockade of Japan. Since so many  

merchant ships were sunk and so many had to delay  their journeys days or weeks to get into Japan,  

the civilian population suffered immensely. Because Japan is an island nation,  

it relies solely on imports of raw materials,  food, and fuel from abroad to keep it going.  

However, because of the constant attacks by US  submarines, the Japanese war economy greatly  

suffered and the blockade was the main cause  for every type of shortage possible in Japan.  

US commanders would remark after the war that  US submarines were the most critical weapon  

at disabling the Japanese economy and war effort. Sarin Gas 

While many people might be familiar with sarin  gas from its use in modern-day war zones in the  

Middle East, the Germans actually invented it  in 1938. During the research to design a better  

pesticide to kill weevils, German scientist  Gerhard Schrader found that it created a  

combination far too deadly for some afternoon  gardening when he mixed phosphorus with cyanide. 

A loyal Nazi, Gerhard took his findings to  the German military, who quickly embraced the  

concoction. After rigorous testing, the military  produced around 30,000 tons of the stuff. The  

sarin gas was then weaponized by putting it on  specially designed artillery shells that could  

hurl the deadly gas at advancing allied troops. Despite having it available since the beginning  

of the war and against his generals' urging to use  it, Hitler probably made the only correct decision  

in his life by not employing the weapon. Though  conspiracy theories abound as to why Hitler never  

used it, especially as he knew the war was lost  and had nothing to lose, the matter is probably  

more pragmatic than someone would think. Many people claim that due to his survival  

of a poison gas attack in the First World  War, he was scarred for life and refused  

to use it on other people. As anyone with  any knowledge of the Holocaust would know,  

he had no problems using deadly cyanide  against millions of victims. Rather, it is  

likely he believed that doing so would result in  a massive retaliation against his military, which,  

especially with the war going the way that it was,  was probably something he did not want to risk. 

For the allies, it was definitely good that  he never chose to employ sarin gas in combat.  

Sarin gas is a terrible chemical weapon and  kills by essentially blocking the nerves in  

your muscles from speaking with your brain. As  a result, you begin to convulse and essentially  

suffocate to death since your muscles need  much more oxygen than your body can provide. 

Additionally, it was in the allies' favor  since when American and British troops captured  

stockpiles of the weapon at the end of the war,  they had no idea what it even was, much less  

being able to provide effective countermeasures  against it. So even though it never was employed  

in action, this weapon definitely ranks  among the most terrifying weapons of the war  

due to its potential to be used. Unit 731 Biological Attacks 

The human experiments and torturous murder of  tens of thousands of prisoners are widely known  

and studied in this infamous weapons facility.  Though Unit 731's main complex in northern  

China has garnered the most attention in  Western literature, a little-known yet  

even more terrifying aspect of its methods  includes an organized biological weapons  

campaign designed to defeat the Chinese people. With the war in China raging for over five years  

by 1941, the Japanese Army was looking for  ways to turn the tide of the war and crush  

stubborn Chinese resistance facing them. By this  time, the Japanese Army had already proven that  

they viewed Chinese soldiers and civilians as  less than human and would resort to any means  

necessary to defeat them. When researchers  with Unit 731 approached army officials with  

their plans to test a variety of diseases  to see which ones were the most effective  

at causing a pandemic, they happily obliged. After choosing various diseases such as cholera,  

bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax, botulism, and  dysentery, Unit 731 decided to run live test  

trials of the effects of these deadly diseases by  employing them against the civilian population.  

Throughout the course of 1941, no fewer than 11  Chinese cities were devastated by these diseases,  

as they killed tens of thousands and  sickened hundreds of thousands more. 

Either through dropping specially made  porcelain bombs, crop dusting with aircraft,  

poisoning water supplies, or purposefully  infecting food and clothing heading towards  

civilian population centers, the Japanese  scientists proved their ability to bring  

biological destruction against their enemies.  The Army was more than pleased with the results  

of these tests and soon ordered detachments of  scientists and specially trained army personnel  

to be distributed throughout their forces in China  to be used against the Chinese military as well. 

Though there were many such attacks  throughout the war in China, perhaps  

one of the deadliest and most terrifying was  the May 1942 biological attack on Baoshan.  

Situated near the border with Burma, this area  of southeastern China was vital for the Japanese  

military to control in order to prevent resupply  of Chinese forces in the region from the south.  

After the successful test trials of 1941, the  Army wanted to start conducting biological  

warfare operations in conjunction with  its conventional military attacks. 

Between May 4th to May 6th, 1942, the city was  bombarded by tons of munitions from Japanese  

planes to include numerous bombs filled  with disease-ridden flies. Additionally,  

troops from Unit 731 poisoned local water supplies  with cholera. The Japanese hoped that after the  

successful assault on the city, the remaining  civilians would flee into the countryside and  

infect their countrymen. To the surprise of  the Japanese, it worked better than expected. 

Within weeks a full-blown epidemic  was ravaging southeastern China.  

Entire families were wiped out, and villages were  decimated. This area of China had never once had  

a recorded cholera outbreak, and this added  to the suffering of those exposed who had no  

natural immunity to the disease. Because of this,  by July, some estimates propose that over 200,000  

people died. Even though data is scarce and death  tolls from the attack range widely depending on  

defining the geographic location and timeframe,  this attack is still by far the deadliest  

single biological weapon attack of the war. Thanks again to our sponsor Warpath, free-to-play  

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