Here are the weirdest weapons ever invented!
10 - The Harmonica Gun
On the surface this sounds super weird.
A harmonica gun?
What is it?
Some kind of instrument and weapon mixed into one?
I suppose if you ever need to defend yourself while you play the harmonica, this would be
the perfect weapon.
Well here’s the deal.
It was actually just a regular gun with a really funky loading mechanism.
Rather than the rotating chamber most pistols have, the harmonica gun, which was also known
as the Slide 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, I don’t
know, these guns proved to be not all that effective.
Reports indicate they were hard to aim, as they had a bunch of extra weight on the side.
Revolvers on the other hand, proved to be more reliable, which is why they are still
used today and the harmonica gun made it onto this list.
9 - The Gustav Rail Cannon
For a long time, trains were very important in life and war.
And even as technology improved and the need for trains declined, the Nazis still made
this railborne gun of sorts.
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 a behemoth.
It was the largest rifled weapon ever used in battle.
Weighing close to 1,500 tons, the Gustav was more than 150 feet long and 40 feet tall.
Even the ammo for it was incredibly large.
They fired shells that were 31 feet wide and 12 feet long.
However, only two were ever made and they both pretty much sucked.
They proved to be slow and bothersome to operate.
More than 100 soldiers were needed to operate the Gustav and it took waaaaaaay too long
to operate.
So even though smaller railway guns were pretty useful, these guns proved virtually useless
to the Nazis.
8 - Lipstick Pistol
You might know it as the lipstick pistol, or more than likely, you don’t know about
it at all.
Either way, this odd little weapon was used by the KGB during the cold war.
And I do mean little, it was less than 5 mm long!
This tiny pistol was concealed inside of a lipstick tube, that was probably used during
covert assassinations or something.
The Lipstick Pistol is believed to have been designed sometime during the 1960’s and
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.
The Soviets probably took things a bit far with their rectal guns, which supposedly were
guns that could hidden inside an agent's butthole.
You gotta hand it to them, that’s some ingenuity.
At least America got to the moon first.
7 - Dog Bombers
Who would take man’s best friend and turn them into suicide bombers?
The Soviet Military, that’s who!
Known as Anti-Tank destroyers, these dogs were initially trained by the Soviet military
during the 1930’s, and even saw combat during WW2 from 1940 until 1941.
The idea was that dogs strapped with timed bombs would run towards Nazi tanks and destroy
them, of course killing themselves in the process.
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.
The method, while cruel, was also very ineffective.
Dogs were easily spooked by all the commotion created by war, and would often run off when
deployed.
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 Nazis
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 continued until 1996.
Iraqi insurgents even tried using a similar method in the early part of the 21st century,
but to no avail.
The practice is obscene, cruel and just flat out strange.
6 - The Nazi Supergun
The official name of this Nazi supergun is the V3 Cannon.
This weapon was made by the Nazis as a last ditch effort to destroy London and win the
War for Germany 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 25 barrels that were an astonishing 430 feet long each.
Each barrel was inclined at a 50 degree angle, that could supposedly fire shots off at close
to 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
counter measure.
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 Nazi complex where the gun was hidden.
The U.S also attempted to destroy the gun, and Joe Kennedy Jr, the older brother of John
F. Kennedy was killed during one such mission.
Had the gun not been destroyed, the Nazis might have fixed the problems it had with
it and destroyed London as planned.
Had that happened, things might not look the way they do today…….
5 - Pigeon Bomb
See if you can imagine that the US military once tried using pigeons as weapons.
Keep in mind that this is the most powerful and complex military the world has ever known.
But during World War II, the US Military launched Project Pigeon, an attempt to turn pigeons
into bomb wielding agents of war.
Spearheaded by B.F skinner, a behavioral psychologist, the thinking here was that the Pigeons could
be conditioned to operate in certain ways, a process called operant conditioning.
Apparently pigeons can process visual information way faster than humans.
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, obviously 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 would not 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, pecking at it, which would move the screen on its
pivots, thus moving the bomb.
The National Defense Research Committee contributed some money to the research.
Even though the Pigeons did well in simulations, the Army considered the idea to just 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.
4 - The Goliath Tracked Mine
The Goliath racked Mine, sometimes referred to as Goliath Demolition Tanks, or as beetles,
were meant to destroy tanks.
This thing almost look like a really sophisticated toy, that you would have given anything to
have as a kid.
And of course they were designed by the Nazis...shocker.
Equipped with a sh*t ton of explosives, these things were designed to scoot under things
such as tanks or cars and blow them up!
They were steered with a remote control and were used in many battles during WW2.
Even though more than 7,000 were made, they weren’t all that great.
They were slow, expensive, and easily destroyed.
I mean, how would you not see this thing coming?!
With dumb weapons such as this one, it’s no wonder the Nazis lost the war.
3 - The Duck Foot Pistol
This weapon was nicknamed as the duck foot pistol because, well…….just look at it!
It’s design was based off volley guns with multiple barrels.
But unlike many of its predecessors, this bad mamajama 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 them.
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.
As no barrel truly pointed straight ahead, they were really hard to aim.
I guess the shotgun probably would work much better!
2 - Punt gun
Used mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, the punt gun was absurdly big.
Its main purpose was to hunt ducks, geese, pelicans or any other kind of seabird.
Often times, they could be mounted onto a boat, out on the water, the person manning
the gun would line up some birds and then BOOM!
As you can see, these things were huge, and since it took more than one person to carry
them, and let’s not forget the recoil, they were mounted on boats or skiffs almost all
the time.
They were also super powerful, as they were often able to take out 50 birds at once.
Groups of 8-10 people would even go out together with these odd guns.
They probably looked like a poor man’s navy, but hey, they could take out entire flocks
of birds in minutes.
This was a problem because it seriously put a dent in the waterfowl population, and the
practice began to be banned in many states during the 1860’s.
By 1918 the federal government adopted a few laws to ban the practice nationwide.
Which kind of makes sense.
I mean look at these things, they’re insane.
1 - Tsar Tank
The Tsar Tank looks more like something that belongs as 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...making it sort of look like a massive cannon.
Since early versions of the 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 27 feet high while the back one was 5 feet high.
Mounted on these wheels was a huge cannon that was an impressive 26 feet long, while
the tank was designed to feature space for more weapon.
But much to their dismay the weapon, umm tanked...pun intended.
Because of miscalculations of the weight, the rear wheel was prone to getting stuck
in soft ground and ditches, and the front wheels were oftentimes insufficient to pull
it out.
This proved to be such a problem that the tank never made out of the experimental phase.
By 1923 the idea was abandoned altogether and the tank was taken apart for scrap metal.
Not a great legacy.
Here’s what’s next!