Bullets ricochet off of the wall. Explosions fill the streets. A soldier is pinned down by the
enemy; this could be the end for him. Luckily, he has his Krummlauf attachment allowing him
to fire around any corner. But the weapon jams. Next, he pulls out his heat ray to fry the enemy,
but with a little sunscreen, it is rendered ineffective. It is time to get the hell out of
dodge. The soldier hops in his Rotabuggy, hits the accelerator, and switches on the propeller
system to fly off into the sunset. But like all of the other weird weapons in his arsenal,
this one fails as well. It’s fair to say that he’s having a bad day.
These weapons sound like something out of a bad spy movie,
but each one was constructed and tested for combat. However, due to design flaws,
none of them are still in use. Let’s find out which weird weapon was the worst of the worst.
Since humans could walk there has been conflict. In the early days of war,
elephants were the tanks of the army. These massive creatures posed a huge
problem for generals that needed to be overcome, so, in the second century BCE,
the Romans came up with what they thought was an ingenious plan to stop enemy elephants in
their tracks. In order to do this, they did something really awful to a bunch of pigs.
The Romans knew that elephants didn’t like hogs. For whatever reason, the fast-moving,
squealing animals frightened the large elephants, causing them to rear up and throw their handlers
off of their backs. But the Romans wanted to take things up a notch. They would cover the pigs in
tar and light them on fire. The pigs would then become a primitive form of antitank missiles.
However, this biological flaming missile ended up being a terrible idea. The pig couldn’t be aimed
and it did not last very long before it died. This meant that when the pigs were released,
they ended up running away from the battle and dying in a smoldering heap without so
much as passing by the enemy. There were even cases where the flaming pigs backfired by
running through the ranks of Roman soldiers setting them on fire instead of the enemy.
All in all the flaming pig missiles were an epic fail.
The next weapon didn’t go up in smoke like the pigs but froze to death instead.
Project Habakkuk seemed like such a terrible idea it’s amazing how far it actually got.
The Habakkuk was conceived of by a British engineer named Geoffrey Pyke
during World War II. His idea was to build an entire aircraft carrier out of pykrete,
a mixture of ice and wood pulp. That’s right, Pyke wanted to construct a Naval ship out of ice.
It isn’t hard to guess what problems led to the failure of this vessel.
The Habakkuk was supposed to be a way to launch aircraft from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to
combat German U-boats. One of the reasons aircraft carriers were rare during the war was because they
required a massive amount of resources. Steel and other metals were necessary to build tanks, guns,
and aircraft, so using them to build giant ships was not always cost-effective. Pyke
proposed making whole ships out of ice to combat the supply chain problem. The pykrete mixture
was around 86 percent water and 14 percent wood pulp, both of which were plentiful at the time.
However, constructing an entire aircraft carrier out of mostly ice had its problems.
A 1,000-ton model was constructed in Canada to show that the ice ship was a viable option,
but they ran into some issues. The most prominent was that the entire hull began to melt. The
pykrete needed to be kept around zero degrees Fahrenheit, which was much more easily said than
done. The air temperature rarely was that low, and the water temperature was never that cold. This
meant the engineers needed to develop a way to install air conditioning systems across the ship.
Clearly, this wouldn’t be cost-effective and also
led to hundreds of other problems. It became clear that an aircraft carrier made out of ice
would not be the future of the Royal Navy. The entire project was deemed a failure,
and the British continued to build steel ships the old-fashioned way.
But the Habakkuk was not the only embarrassing failed ship in military history.
Russia also created a strange-looking vessel that was a complete disaster.
The Novgorod was a circular ship that looked like a giant floating dinner plate.
The Russians thought it was a brilliant design, but they would soon come to find it was a big,
round mistake. The hull was just over a hundred feet in diameter and was mounted
with large guns that could be used to defend the ship or fire onto land.
A few years after its completion, the Novgorod was put to the test during the Russo-Turkish War
of 1877 and 1878. The Novgorod was sent down the Danube river to aid in battle. However,
when it unleashed its cannons, something embarrassing happened. The turrets on the
vessel were placed on turntables so that they could be adjusted to aim at different targets.
However, due to loose locks, when the cannons fired they spun around on their turntables
and the crew would need to wait for them to stop spinning before reorienting
and firing again. This would later be fixed by reinforcing the locking mechanism but it
was enough to create a persistent myth about how the entire ship would rotate whenever it fired.
Its circular shape also made the Novgorod bulky and extremely hard to maneuver. This
meant it needed to move slowly, and by the time it was positioned correctly,
the battle would already be over. The Russians got so fed up with the failings of the Novgorod
that they decided to tie it up at the dock and just leave it. The circular ship seemed
to be more amusing to watch than helpful during a fight. After the war, the Novgorod was retired.
One of the biggest fears for a soldier is being out in the open during combat.
This next failed military device literally put the soldier in the worst position of all.
The VZ-1 Pawnee was a flying platform that would carry a soldier up into the
sky using a helicopter-like propeller system. The idea seems pretty cool as
the soldier would be able to hover in mid-air. But when you think about it,
all the flying platform did was make the soldier an easy target.
The device was developed in the 1950s by Hiller Helicopters. It had two rotors contained within
the platform that allowed it to fly and hover while a soldier stood on top of the
contraption. There were no wings, and the rotor was fixed, meaning the only way for the soldier
to move the VZ-1 Pawnee was by shifting his body weight from side to side. This could put him in a
precarious position as he tried to return fire at the enemy while controlling the platform.
It also didn’t help that it would only take one or two direct hits from enemy bullets to damage
the device and send the soldier plummeting to his death. The VZ-1 Pawnee was cool to
look at and must have been fun in testing, but it just didn’t make any sense in combat.
This led to the whole thing being scrapped before anyone was sent flying into battle on them.
The VZ-1 was not the only failed flying contraption of the time, however. In fact,
during World War II, the British tried to make a flying car. But the whole thing ended in disaster.
There were no bad ideas when it came to machines that could defeat the Nazis. However,
the designers of the Hafner Rotabuggy may have taken this sentiment a little
too far. The Hafner Rotabuggy was supposed to be a flying Jeep, which allowed soldiers to
cross over rivers, minefields, and enemy positions with the flick of a switch.
The Jeep was equipped with a rotor and tail fins, giving it some maneuverability but
not much. The whole thing weighed a ton meaning the fuel tank would drain almost instantly,
resulting in the craft crashing to the ground. Also, a Jeep is not the most aerodynamic vehicle,
which made controlling it in flight rather tricky. The whole project was eventually scrapped,
and the British decided to use plane-towed gliders to deliver land vehicles instead.
Ready for a dad joke about weird failed weapons? The Active Denial System was
such a horrible idea the military is in denial that they ever tried it.
The Active Denial System was basically a heat gun used to give enemy soldiers and unruly crowds
intense burns. The weapon was built to look similar to a satellite dish and would focus
radiation towards someone as a deterrent. This would make them incredibly uncomfortable and could
cause entire crowds to disperse. The thought was that the high-frequency waves hitting the person
would make them feel like they are in a microwave, causing burns, nausea, and extreme discomfort.
The Active Denial System was built in 2010 and had a price tag of around $40 million. It lasted
about a month in the field and was quickly recalled—the reason why made the R and D team
shake their heads in shame. Instead of causing massive discomfort to whoever it was aimed at,
the heat gun just gave them a slight sunburn. This might have been beneficial for breaking up
crowds of people, but the heat gun would have very little effect if you shot it at an enemy
in battle. In fact, anyone wearing sunscreen would have barely noticed the heat gun at all,
as it would protect them from the high-frequency waves.
Just as a reminder, the Active Denial System was a weapon designed by the U.S. military,
meaning this failed weapon was your tax dollars at work. But this was nothing
compared to the next failed weapon. It could literally blow off the user's head.
Albert Bacon Pratt received patent number 1183492 for a miniature cannon that was
mounted onto a helmet. This seemed like a great idea to Pratt, and he even managed to
get others on board. But in hindsight, the idea of mounting a gun to someone's head
is full of problems. The firing mechanism was ingenious and weird at the same time.
In order for the wearer to fire the weapon, all they needed to do was blow into a tube.
The reason Pratt was so gung ho about the idea was it allowed the wearer to
subconsciously aim at their target just by looking at them. All the soldier needed to
do was turn his head and blow. The really strange thing was that Pratt saw multiple
applications for his helmet gun. He claimed it could also be used in the kitchen. The
whole contraption doubled as a cooking pot with the barrel of the gun being used as a handle.
Regardless of how many uses Pratt’s helmet gun had, there were too many drawbacks to
make the gun a feasible option. Pratt claimed the strong spring that loaded
the next round into the barrel counteracted the recoil of the bullet being fired. However,
this might have been over-exaggerated as some claim the recoil was strong enough to snap
the head of its wearer. Also, there was the problem of jamming. The only way to fix this
problem was by taking the entire helmet off the head and taking it apart. And heaven forbid the
round exploded in the chamber; this scenario would have quickly ended the user’s life.
During World War II, the Allies would try anything they thought might help defeat Hitler,
even if it was as crazy as strapping rockets to the wheels of a giant bomb delivery system.
As the Allies prepared to launch an offensive on the coast of France to reclaim mainland Europe
from the Axis powers, the scientists at Britain’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapon Development
came up with a crazy idea. They would break down Hitler’s walls and defenses by ramming 4,000
pounds of explosives connected to two 10-foot-tall metal wheels. This weapon would be called the
Great Panjandrum. The wildest part about the whole thing is how the wheels would move.
In order to get the 4,000 pounds of explosives moving fast enough to ensure it would reach the
wall before being intercepted, the British scientists attached rockets to the wheels.
These rockets would allow the Great Panjandrum to move at 60 miles per
hour. The main problem with this weapon was that if just one of the rockets failed,
the Great Panjandrum would start spinning in circles or go wildly off course.
As the test runs continued, the engineers believed they could solve the accuracy problem
by adding more rockets to compensate for any that failed. Unfortunately,
the rockets started ripping themselves off the wheels and shooting across the testing field.
This happened multiple times, almost killing the observers of the tests. It was decided the Great
Panjandrum would be too much of a liability in the field of battle and was discarded.
Throughout the history of warfare, there have been a series of delivery methods
for dropping bombs. However, there are a few that you probably never knew existed.
In World War II, a surgeon named Lytle Adams came up with the odd
idea of attaching bombs to animals. His plan was to fasten little bombs to bats
and have them infiltrate enemy bases. The bats would then roost in the buildings,
and the timed bomb would go off, bringing the structure’s roof crumbling down.
Bats seemed like the perfect delivery method since
they can carry more than their body weight in cargo, they’re plentiful,
and they can be relatively cheap to breed if more are needed. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was so intrigued by the idea that he gave it the go-ahead, and the bat bombs were tested.
The military collected hundreds of Mexican free-tailed bats and recruited Louis Fieser—the
inventor of napalm—to design the detonation packs that would be secured to the creatures.
As the war progressed United States Command realized that the bat bombs would work
exceptionally well in Japanese cities where many of the structures were made out of wood,
cloth, and paper. This meant that once the bat bomb detonated, it would not just destroy the
structure itself but could cause a fire to sweep through an entire neighborhood.
Luckily for the bats, this project never was implemented. During a test in Carlsbad, New
Mexico, one of the bat bombs got loose and sought shelter under a fuel tank at the military base.
Later that day, the bomb went off, blowing up the bat and everything else in the vicinity
of the fuel tanker. After several failed training exercises and the deployment of the
atomic bombs in Japan, the bats were retired from military service as they were no longer needed.
The Japanese had their own bomb deployment system that was as big a failure as Adams’ bat bombs.
However, it did lead to the only deaths in the continental U.S. as a result of an enemy weapon.
In 1944 the Japanese deployed 9,000 Fu-Gos or “fire balloons” over the Pacific Ocean. Attached
to each balloon were a 35-pound high-explosive and 8 firebombs. The Japanese military planned
for the balloons to float along the jet stream until they reached the coast of
the United States where they would descend and detonate. The ideal situation for the Japanese
would have been the Fu-Gos creating massive wildfires sending the West Coast into chaos.
The crazy thing is that around 389 balloons made it to the United States,
which is a small number compared to the amount launched, but still not insignificant. When the
balloons landed, almost all of them failed to detonate or cause any damage. In fact,
two of the Fu-Gos actually floated back to Japan and fell on their own island.
Sadly, one Fu-Gos did find its way to Oregon, where it fell to the forest floor. Five kids and
a pregnant Sunday-school teacher came across the Japanese bombs right as they went off. Everyone in
the group was killed, making it the “only place on the American continent where death resulted from
enemy action in World War II.” However, killing five kids, a Sunday-school teacher, and her unborn
baby was not the outcome that the Japanese had hoped for with their 9,000 fire balloons. They
were quickly retired as failed weapons, and a year later, Japan surrendered, ending World War II.
The weird Nazi weapon called a Windkanal literally blew so bad that it was deemed an utter failure.
WindKanone translates to wind canon in English and wasn’t one of the Nazi’s brightest ideas.
The way the cannon was supposed to work was rather simple. The 35-foot long metal tube
would be filled with a mixture of hydrogen and ammonium and ignited. This would build up immense
pressure inside of the tube that, when released, would send a shockwave of air up into the sky.
The hope for the Nazis was that the shockwave would hit Allied planes
overhead and knock them out of the sky. In trials, the WindKanone seemed promising
as it could snap wooden planks from 650 feet away. However, when aimed at airplanes moving
hundreds of miles per hour in the sky, the wind cannon quickly became less effective.
Even though on bombing runs, planes dipped as low as 500 feet,
the wind cannons shockwave would barely register as more than slight turbulence to the pilots. The
compressed air didn’t seem to bother the metal airplanes that were built to withstand different
pressures and choppy air while flying. Because of this failure, the Nazis decided to repurpose the
WindKanone and use it on the ground to push away ground forces. But this too ended in disaster.
The weapon was so large that it was easily spotted from the air. This made it a perfect
target for bombing runs or artillery strikes which would have devastating consequences.
The WindKanone was such a failure that the Allies didn’t even know what the contraption
was supposed to be used for until they stumbled across one at a Nazi training facility in 1945.
It was there that Allied intelligence got a closer look at the WindKanone
and finally realized what the purpose of the failed weapon.
The Germans also developed a weapon with an easily identifiable purpose.
The Krummlauf was a machine gun with a slight twist. That twist just happened to be in the
barrel. The Krummlauf was a barrel attachment to the Sturmgewehr 44 machine gun. It was supposed to
allow a soldier to shoot around corners without exposing himself to enemy fire. The Krummlauf
was also designed to be used by soldiers in tanks. They could stick their Krummlauf
out of small holes and fire their gun to fend off enemies placing mines in their path
or armed with anti-tank weapons. This may have seemed like a good idea,
but the weapon came with all sorts of problems.
It should come as no surprise that the barrel did not last long as every time the gun was shot,
it had to take the full force of a bullet and change its trajectory. This put enormous
amounts of strain on the Krummlauf and even caused bullets to shatter on their way out of the muzzle.
The shattered bullet would send tiny shards of shrapnel in all directions making the
gun inaccurate and dangerous to friendly soldiers standing nearby. The Krummlauf
did not see much combat and was melted down to be repurposed into more useful weapons.
And speaking of dangerous projectiles,
one United States company manufactured a rifle called the Gyrojet that fired mini-missiles.
In 1960 a company called MBAssociates developed the Gyrojet to help soldiers
hit targets from long distances. The plan was to use projectiles equipped with tiny rockets
and a gyroscope to help them maintain their trajectory and course. Once fired, the miniature
missile’s microjets would kick on, allowing it to accelerate and adjust for wind and gravity.
This seemed like a great idea that would make snipers’ lives much easier, but the weapon ran
into all sorts of problems. Since the projectile’s rockets only kicked in once it left the gun,
the Gyrojet was pretty useless at close range—unless it was used as a club.
The intricacies that allowed the gun to fire without blowing up required a lot
of moving parts that jammed frequently. This meant the Gyrojet was incredibly unreliable,
which is not what a soldier wants in their weapons.
In the 1950s, the U.S. military thought they were onto something special when they developed a plane
that took off straight up into the air like a helicopter. The Tailsitter would be a failure
but would pave the way for other successful aircraft like the Harrier jet in the future.
The Tailsitter was designed in the 1950s by the Navy to fix the problem of airplanes taking off
and landing without much runway to work with. They did the best they could with the technology
available to them. The Tailsitter was a tiny plane with a complex propeller on the front,
which allowed it to take off and land vertically, thus eliminating the need for a runway.
However, these planes ran into all sorts of problems. Even the most skilled pilots found
landing incredibly difficult. Taking off and then moving the aircraft into a horizontal position
wasn’t quite as bad. But when it came time to put the Tailsitter back down on the landing platform,
the plane would often tip over. Other times the pilot would not be able to slow down fast enough,
and the back of the aircraft became damaged as it impacted the ground.
The military eventually gave up on the Tailsitter, and it was deemed a failure. To be fair,
the idea for vertical take-off never totally disappeared, and although the Tailsitter never
made it to the front lines, many other aircraft based on the same premise have.
One Cold War weapon was not only a bad idea but had a terrible name as well.
The United States military came up with a satellite that would shoot enemy missiles
out of the sky by launching bowling ball-sized pieces of tungsten at them. The unfortunate
name given to this weapon was Brilliant Pebbles. It seems like the Strategic Defense
Initiative could have come up with something slightly better or a little more ominous than
Brilliant Pebbles for their space-based weapon, but that is what they went with.
Brilliant Pebbles was supposed to work by launching a series of satellites into space
with several projectiles aboard each. These projectiles could then be shot
out of the satellite to intercept enemy missiles flying through the atmosphere.
It is unclear what made the researchers think this was a good idea, or that it would even work,
but they continued to roll with it. In order for Brilliant Pebbles to have any
chance of succeeding, there needed to be at least 4,000 of them in orbit.
This would cost astronomical amounts of money for weapons that would most likely miss their
targets almost every time. After a good long look at the program, the U.S. military scrapped
the idea. It is hard to tell if they were more embarrassed by the weapon’s failure or its name.
A more recent failed weapon was a type of laser. But this was not just any laser;
it was planned to be used while flying through the sky like an X-Wing.
The Flying Laser Canon, also known as the YAL-1 Airborne Laser,
was mounted on the nose of a plane. It made the aircraft look a little like a dolphin,
but that wasn’t the worst part about this failed weapon. Its primary purpose was to shoot
a high-powered beam out of its laser cannon to destroy any missiles or aircraft in its vicinity.
The main problem with the laser was that it required a massive amount of energy to work.
All of this power needed to be produced by chemical oxygen-iodine laser modules,
which are incredibly heavy. The power supply weighed down the entire plane,
causing its fuel efficiency and top speed to plummet. In the end, the flying laser cannon
was more trouble than it was worth, and the military decided to retire the weapon before
it could ever be used for its intended purpose of blowing things out of the sky.
Now watch “Weirdest Military Weapons They Actually Used in WW1.”