Cindy Claveau

I'm a refugee from the "Is my born date intimidating" thread". Apparently, technical discussions of military weapons just isn't that interesting to SOME people.

Fine. We don't have a military section so I'll post it here. Cindy's nominations for "Craziest weapon ideas" throughout history. Additions are welcome.

Here's my #1 favorite "loony idea":

Japanese balloons and bats! - Aircraft of World War II - Warbird Forums

Next!

Charlemagne Allen

The Davey Crockett, aka the nuke gun....



/head-desk

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

However, this gun does have an awesome cameo in Metal Gear Solid


Some people are really, really poor losers.

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Cindy Claveau

Who the fuck wanted to stand there and push the trigger?!?

Of course, they did get a few thousand troops to sit in trenches while they set off bombs.

"Sit here, we wanna see how fast you fry."

Briar Bing

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Dancien Graves

It depends Cindy. I'd have to ask myself "Exactly how pissed off am I at that guy?"

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Cindy Claveau

Surely this belongs in the Top 5:

Ohka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "Baka bomber" - Baka being Japanese for idiot, it was actualy called the Ohka, or "Cherry Blossom".

The problem was that these things were virtually unsteerable. But when your pilot doesn't come back you have no way of knowing that. It wasn't discovered until tests conducted after the war.

Aimee Weber

I'm fond of Leonardo da Vinci's Assault Chariot with Scythes

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Charlemagne Allen

You know what's really retarded idea? The whole US miitary circa 1960 saying, "Hey, dogfighting is dead! Let's not put machine guns on our interceptors and stick to these guided missiles that are untested in combat!" And then all the hi-tech American Thunderchiefs get shot down by Migs....

/face-palm

io Kukulcan

Submarines.
lol
Fine, fight underwater, fucking coward.
Land mines too.

Cindy Claveau

Not just the missiles, but going away from the bubble canopy. That's why the fighter jocks were so geeked when the F15 came out with the full bubble cockpit to replace the F4 Phantom.



And they're sticking with the idea in the F22 Raptor:

Coyote Teardrop

Right here at 0:43.

Trout Recreant

OK. It's not real. But the gravity gun is the single greatest weapon EVAR.

Rev Eponym

There was a PBS doc years ago that had an old pilot telling that story, where the 'experts' had decided that dogfighting was dead. I think they though the only people with fighter jets were the Russians.

The retired Air Force general says that one day during Vietnam, he got into his plane with his young co-pilot and said, "We're going to go in low over the Delta, and we'll probably get hassled by some MiGs, but don't worry, I have it on good authority that this is not happening!"

There was another Crazy Weapons thread once, the winner was the Russian Bomb Dog. I'll let someone else dig that story up, but it's a beaut.

Another to put here would be the 'Ontos' tank-killer of the 60s, a simple concept of 'bolt as many guns as you can to one vehicle!'




Cindy, your Sexy Quotient just shot way, way up (it was high enough already!) when you started talking about fighter plane canopies. Srsly!
.

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I'm Charlemagne Allen and I approve this message.

io Kukulcan

Lucifer Baphomet

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Lucifer Baphomet

Project Pigeon:
A pigeon-guided missile

During World War II, Project Pigeon (or Project Orcon, for “organic control”) was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner’s attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.

The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile’s flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb’s direction by majority rule.

Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner’s plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was apparently too radical for the military establishment; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously. The program was cancelled on October 8, 1944, because the military believed that “further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have more immediate promise of combat application.”

Phoenix Psaltery

The Death Star.



P2

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Aimee Weber

Oh PFFT! If Phoenix can choose the Death Star, then I choose the Wave Motion Gun.

Lucifer Baphomet

Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons - tech - 15 January 2005 - New Scientist

THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals". The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.

Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.

io Kukulcan

The Aztecs were said to have thrown bee-hives at the Conquistadors, while they were leveling Tenochtitlan.
Imagine, you're in your armor with 30 lbs. of gold, and a cloud of bees or wasps are chasing you.
lol

Trout Recreant

Well, at least we rejected the ideas and didn't try them out.

AlterEgoTrip Svenska

My fave weaponry of all time is that of "mass distraction".. kind of like the magician in the performance, pointing one direction while catching everyone by surprise. Playing dumb is a good way to do this.. especially between countries.. playing dead and then walking away unharmed is also a great weapon, and most of all, HOW NOT TO BE SEEN is even better!

no really I was answering this seriously..

Lucifer Baphomet

The V-3 Hochdruckpumpe (aka HDP, 'Fleissiges Lieschen'; 'Tausend Fussler') was a supergun designed by Saar Roechling during World War II. The 140 m long cannon was capable of delivering a 140 kg shell over a 165 km range. Construction began of a bunker for the cannons in September 1943 at Mimoyecques, France. The site was damaged by Allied bombing before it could be put into operation and was finally occupied by the British at the end of August 1944. Two short-length (45 m long) V-3's were built at Antwerp and Luxembourg in support of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944. These were found to be unreliable and only a few shots were fired without known effect.

The V-3 used Baron von Pirquet's concept of sequentially electrically activated angled side chambers to provide additional acceleration of the shell during its passage up the barrel of the gun. This allowed a muzzle velocity of over 1500 m/s. The projectiles of the smooth bore weapon used fins for stability, as would be the case with the Canadian Martlet series 25 years later.

Lyman and Haskell of the US Army had built an unsuccessful prototype of the concept in the 1880's. It was found that the expanding gases of the base charge moved well ahead of the shell and ignited the auxiliary charges before the shell passed them, actually slowing the shell down. But in 1941 an engineer Conders at Saar Roechling proposed the use of electrically-activated charges to eliminate the problem. A 20mm prototype was built at a test site at Misdroy (Miedzyzdroje), Poland and successfully demonstrated in April-May 1943. Hitler was persuaded that this could be a third terror weapon to supplement the V-1 and V-2. Overruling the German military, he ordered fifty of the guns to be built in concrete bunkers in France in order to bombard London. The first installation of five guns was to be built 165 km from London at Mimoyecques, near Calais, under Operation Wiese. The superguns were built at a fixed angle into a 30 m chalk hill, covered by a 5.2 m thick protective concrete dome. Each 140 m long cannon was capable of delivering a 150 mm / 140 kg shell on London.

The angled lateral combustion chambers were spaced every 3.65 m along the bore. The modular weapon could have the lateral chamber sections replaced as they wore out (they would burst after only a few firings).

Hundreds of slave workers began construction in September 1943 by sinking an initial tunnel 30 m below the hill's surface into the chalk. French Resistance informed the Allies of the new effort almost immediately. Bombing raids to destroy the site began two months later. However the bunker proved impervious to Allied bombs, even 5400 kg Tallboy penetrator weapons. The weapons were nearing completion when, on 6 July 1944, three Tallboys happened to make it though the gun shaft openings. They penetrated 30 m to the first level of the complex and exploded, killing dozens of workers. Work on the complex stopped at this point.

The Allies were unaware of this success and searched for new methods to destroy Mimoyecques and other German bunker sites. Under Project Aphrodite (USAAF) and Operation Anvil (USN) radio-controlled, television-guided B-17 or PB4Y (B-24) bombers crammed with ten tonnes of explosives were to be flown by a crew near to the target. The pilot and co-pilot would then bail out while an accompanying aircraft guided the missile to a precision strike. This approach was abandoned in August 1944 after a total lack of success and several crew fatalities (including Joseph P Kennedy, Jr, elder brother of the future president).

By the end of August the Germans completely abandoned the complex in the face of the advancing British forces. Two short-length (45 m long) V-3's were built at Antwerp and Luxembourg in support of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944. These were found to be unreliable and only a few shots were fired without known effect. The British dynamited the Mimoyecques complex on 9 May 1945.

Manufacturer: Saar Roechling. to a: 85 km altitude suborbital trajectory. Standard warhead mass: 140 kg (300 lb). Maximum range: 165 km (102 mi).

io Kukulcan

Luc, didn't Saddam copy that design and build one of those too?