During World War II there were all sorts of technological innovations applied to a new kind of warfare, one that focused on destruction from the seas and skies. A YouTube creators, a Scot named Calum, has covered the subject of one such fascinating failed innovation — the rescue buoy — at length, but now for the first time he gets to actually step inside the lone surviving example. Through the magic of the internet, we get to come along.

Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffle air force pounded the Allied British during the Battle of Britain. The more they bombed, the more resolved the Brits became to stave off the enemy. The bitter fighting over the British Isle made things dangerous for Germany’s well-trained, and expensive, pilots. Germany wanted to protect its investment, so around 1940, the country began tethering hundreds of rescue buoys in the channel and into the North Seas along common travel routes.

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These buoys weren’t simple bobbers knocking around the rough seas of the English Channel — they were mini hotels with everything a sea-stranded pilot might need. These floating hotels would serve as temporary safe houses for any German unlucky enough to find themselves in the drink, but lucky enough to find themselves near one such buoy. Warm, clean clothes, bunks, and even booze and board games were all available to the airmen who managed to scramble up bobbing yellow rescue buoys. Each buoys was made to accommodate four men, and size and shape varied.

Continue here: Jalopnik