Here are the weirdest weapons ever invented!
Find out exactly what this super long gun is actually used for!
10 - Harmonica Gun On the surface this sounds super weird.
A harmonica gun?
What is it?
Some kind of instrument and weapon mixed into one?
Well, if you ever need to defend yourself while you’re playing the harmonica at some
hipster bar…...this is your perfect weapon!
Okay okay, maybe not.
This was actually just a regular gun with a really strange loading mechanism.
Rather than the rotating chamber most pistols have, the harmonica gun has this crazy looking
chamber off to the side.
And it just so happens to look like the famous wind instrument.
While they were somewhat popular during the early to mid-19th century, how, we don’t
know, these guns weren’t actually that good.
Apparently they were hard to aim, as they had a bunch of extra weight on the side.
There’s a reason why revolvers, and not harmonica guns, are still used today!
9 - Gustav Rail Cannon For a long time, trains were extremely important
in life and war.
And even as technology improved and the need for trains declined, the Germans still made
this gun.
One of these weapons was called the Schwerer Gustav, which is basically a massive cannon
mounted on a train car.
The idea for this massive cannon was that it could take out French forts located near
railways and destroy Allied trains transporting supplies and soldiers.
This thing was huuuuge.
It was the largest caliber rifled weapon ever used in battle!
Weighing close to 1,500 tons, the Gustav rail cannon was more than 155 feet long and almost
40 feet tall!
Even the ammo for it was incredibly large.
The shells alone were taller than two men and weighed 20,000 pounds each!
And they were almost 3 feet wide!
It took several men just to load one into the barrel However, only two were ever made
and they both pretty much sucked.
These guns were way too slow to maneuver around and even harder to operate.
More than 100 soldiers were needed to operate the Gustav!
Even though smaller railway guns were pretty useful, these guns proved virtually useless
to the Germans!
8 - Duck Foot Pistol This weapon was nicknamed the duck foot pistol
because, well…….just look at it!
It’s design was based off of volley guns, which were guns with multiple barrels.
But unlike many of its predecessors, this gun was meant to take on more than one enemy
at close range.
Designed during the 18th century, it was often used by sea captains to fend off pirates and
mutineers.
Bank Tellers and jailers also were quite fond of this pistol.
The Duck Foot Pistol was actually quite powerful, as it can fire off 45 caliber bullets in rapid
sequence from all four barrels.
However the problem here is, they’re very inaccurate, and you can probably guess why.
No barrel truly pointed straight ahead, which meant they were really hard to aim.
A shotgun probably works much better!
But really, why didn’t they make at least ONE barrel that pointed straight ahead?!
7 - Lipstick Pistol You might know it as the lipstick pistol,
or maybe, you don’t know about it at all.
Either way, this odd little weapon was used by the KGB during the Cold War.
This tiny pistol was concealed inside of a lipstick tube that was probably used during
covert assassinations.
The caliber was 4 and half millimeters, so not too shabby for what it is.
The Lipstick Pistol is believed to have been designed sometime during the 60’s.
It was first detected at a border crossing into West Berlin.
Since it was used secretly by Soviet operatives, it’s not really clear how often this weapon
was used or how effective it was.
But it was part of an effort by both the U.S and the Soviets to create clever ways to disguise
weapons.
And to be honest, the Soviets probably took things a bit far at where they would hide
these guns!
That’s probably the ultimate conceal and carry!
You gotta hand it to their agents though, that took some dedication to their country
to carry it where the sun doesn’t shine.
6 - Dog Bombers Who would take man’s best friend and turn
them into bombs?
The Soviet Military, that’s who!
Known as Anti-Tank destroyers, these dogs were initially trained by the Soviet military
during the 1930’s.
They unfortunately saw combat during WW2 from 1940 until 1941.
The idea was that dogs strapped with timed bombs would run towards German tanks and destroy
them.
Although the original dog training routine was to leave the bomb and retreat so that
the bomb would be detonated by the timer, this original routine failed over and over.
The new plan implemented an impact detonation routine instead.
However, this method still proved to be ineffective.
Dogs were easily spooked by all the commotion created by war, and would often run off when
deployed.
Good for them!
Also, the dogs were trained to find the tanks using their sense of smell.
But, there was just one little problem.
The Soviets screwed up by training them using their own diesel fueled tanks, while the Germans
were using gas powered tanks.
The dogs were essentially seeking out their own tanks to destroy!
The practice was adopted by other countries such as the U.S. and Japan, and research and
training for the method actually continued all the way until 1996!
Thank goodness this has finally stopped.
5 - Tsar Tank The Tsar Tank looks more like something that
belongs in an amusement park than a weapon of destruction!
It was built in 1914 as an experimental tank for the Russian army.
Most tanks at the time used the caterpillar tracks design, but the tsar Tank used a tricycle
design instead.
Since early versions of tanks weren’t all that mobile, the hope with the Tsar Tank was
that the larger wheels would make it more agile to overcome obstacles.
The two front wheels were almost 30 feet off the ground, while the back wheel was around
5 feet tall!
But much to the Russian’s dismay, it just didn’t work well at all.
Because of miscalculations in the weight distribution, the rear wheel was prone to getting stuck
in soft ground and in ditches.
The front wheels often didn’t have the traction or the power to pull out the rear wheels!
This proved to be such a problem that the tank never made it out of the experimental
phase.
By 1923 the idea was abandoned altogether and the tank was taken apart for scrap metal.
4 - V3 Cannon This weapon was made by the Germans as a last
ditch effort to destroy London and win the war once and for all.
Stored in a huge bunker in Northern France, this supergun was supposed to be the largest
gun ever built...and it was essentially in London's back yard.
This massive weapon had a barrel that was an astonishing 430 feet in length!
The barrel was inclined at a 50 degree angle and it was supposed to fire shots off at almost
5,000 feet per second.
With London just 100 miles away, many experts believe this weapon could have destroyed London.
Thankfully some design flaws and British attacks on the site proved to be a pretty effective
countermeasure.
Engineers working on the supergun were never able to figure certain timing mechanisms to
make the gun work the way it was intended to.
On top of that, the gun was destroyed during a July 1944 bombing campaign when the British
decimated the German complex where the gun was hidden.
The U.S also attempted to destroy the gun through numerous missions.
Had the gun not been destroyed, the Germans might have destroyed London as planned!
3 - Pigeon Bomb The US military once tried using pigeons as
weapons!
The US Military launched Project Pigeon, an attempt to make pigeons little decision makers.
This project was led by B.F skinner, a behavioral psychologist.
The thinking here was that the pigeons could be conditioned to operate in certain ways.
This was a process called operant conditioning.
Apparently pigeons can process visual information way faster than humans can.
The intent was to train pigeons to act as "pilots" for the bomb, using their cognitive
abilities to recognize the target.
Here’s basically how it worked:
The guidance system consisted of three lenses mounted in the nose of the vehicle, which
projected an image of the target on a screen.
This screen was mounted on pivots, and fitted with sensors that measured movement.
One to three pigeons were trained to recognize the target.
When they saw the target, they would peck at the screen with their beaks!
As long as the target remained in the center of the screen, the screen wouldn’t move.
But if the bomb began to go off track, the image would move towards the edge of the screen.
The pigeons would follow the image and peck at it, which would move the screen on its
pivots and thus move the bomb.
Even though the pigeons did pretty well in simulations, the Army considered the idea
to juuuuuuuuust be a little bit too weird to actually put into action.
They instead stuck with the more conventional method of, you know, using electronic guidance
systems instead!
2 - Goliath Tracked Mine The Goliath Tracked Mines, sometimes referred
to as Goliath Demolition Tanks, were meant to destroy things.
This thing almost looks like a really sophisticated toy, something that you would have given anything
to have as a kid!
And of course they were designed by the Germans.
These things were designed to scoot under things such as tanks or cars and blow them
up!
They were also used to disrupt dense infantry formations, as well as for the demolition
of buildings or bridges.
Goliaths were one-time use vehicles that were destroyed by the detonation of their warheads.
They were steered with a remote control and used in many battles.
Even though more than 7,500 were made, they weren’t all that great.
They were slow, expensive, and easily destroyed.
Seriously, how would you not see these things coming?!
1 - Punt gun Used mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries,
the punt gun was ridiculously big for recreational use!
Its main purpose was to hunt ducks, geese, pelicans or any other kind of bird on the
water.
They often were mounted onto a boat, so when hunters were out on the water, the person
manning the gun would line up some birds and then BOOM!
Because of how big these things were, it took more than one person to carry them.
And we can’t forget about the recoil!
These guns were often able to take out 50 birds at once.
Groups of 8-10 people would go out together with these odd guns.
They probably looked like a poor man’s navy, but with these guns they could take out entire
flocks of birds in minutes!
However, this was a problem because it seriously put a dent in the waterfowl population.
Waterfowl hunting began to be banned in many states during the 1860’s.
And with that came the ban of using punt guns on the birds.
It’s legal to own one today, but it’s still illegal to use punt guns on birds!
Watch this next video to find out the military’s most advanced weapons!