10 Weirdest WWII Stories You Probably Haven't Heard

In 1940, after defeating and occupying most of Western Europe, Hitler turned his attentions towards the last bastion of resistance to his unstoppable Nazi war machine: Britain. He knew that before any kind of ground invasion could begin, he would have to defeat the Royal Air Force. Following heavy losses with daytime raids, the Luftwaffe decided to switch tactics and commenced night operations.

Step forward Flt Lt John Cunningham. As the Luftwaffe continued with their night raids, they kept coming up against a pilot who seemingly had x-ray vision. How is this possible, they thought? The RAF then released a series of posters advising people to eat plenty of carrots as this would improve your night vision. Of course, this had nothing to do with the fact that Britain had tons and tons of carrots! This eventually made its way to Goering's desk.

Luftwaffe commanders started to wonder how this was possible. Obviously the first idea they had was drugs; since the entire blitzkrieg strategy was fuelled by Pervitin (we know this as crystal meth) it really wasn't much of a stretch. With the Luftwaffe completely sold on the deception, the secret was safe.

What Britain had developed was a super weapon, but one they wanted to conceal this from the Germans for as long as possible. Oddly, radar was born of the failure to develop a death ray (Yes, I did just say death ray!) Robert Watson-Watt, while working on this research gave birth to something even more important. His invention was called Radio Direction and Ranging, we call it radar. It enabled the RAF to have advance warning of any incoming German planes, making the odds of intercepting infinitely higher.

So, the next time to tell your kids to eat their carrots, just remember that it helped win the war.