These are not dead or wounded soldiers being pulled out of the battlefield!
They are alive and well, and in fact heading into combat while lying inside torpedo shells!
This is the bouncing bomb, and rumor has it, it was feared even more than … a bouncing tire.
Then there was the flying platform to get soldiers high up in the
sky. I mean, why slide when you can fly?! And why bounce, when you can roll, like the wheel
of death that almost killed the same admirals that were there to give the project a thumbs up.
And finally the first aircraft that could both hover like a chopper and
fly like an airplane, except for no one dared to fly it.
Here are 5 inventions that don’t slide, bounce, fly, roll and hover anymore!
During World War II, General John O'daniel, the commander of the 3d infantry division,
came up with what he thought was an ingenious idea! Torpedoes captured from Italians were cut
in half and attached to form sleds to pull 12 soldiers behind a tank. O’Daniel called
them “Battle Sleds” and they were to be used to transport troops into heavily defended positions.
Instead of running behind a tank, an infantry squad could accompany the
tank without being exposed to small firearms, similar to the armored sleds of the Red Army,
where a single sled could carry soldiers over snow and also be used by 3 or 4 people to take cover.
But O'Daniel’s Battle Sleds had more functionality.
Soldiers were pulled forward in the paths made by the tank's tracks, which would eliminate
the risk of stepping over anti-personnel mines. Most importantly, in an area with tall bushes,
they could be transported into the battlefield without being noticed.
One soldier in the front could simply pull a release wire, which would detach
the sleds from the tank, allowing soldiers to remain hidden until they ambushed the enemy.
Even though all 360 sleds produced saw battle in 1944, there were some problems.
Rough terrain and ditches made the ride impossible, and the failure of the release
mechanism in some instances made the battle sled not reliable. These issues and the introduction
of Armored Personnel Carriers forced the Battle Sleds to slide into history books.
But why drag soldiers inside sleds on the ground, when you could make them fly!
In the early 1950s, the US Army was looking to develop a flying
machine to be used as a reconnaissance platform,
where soldiers could quickly rise up for observation, and even to shoot at the enemy.
But there was a problem. At the time, the US Army didn't have the required government permits to run
its own aviation development programs. So the project was overseen by the US Navy’s Office
of Naval Research. This is why some prototypes were marked as “US Navy”, and some as “US Army”.
With funding from the Army, the Hiller Aircraft Company developed VZ-1 Pawnee which first flew in
1954. The platform's innovation was the duct surrounding its counter-rotating propellers.
The air drawn over the rim of the duct provided 40% of the aircraft's thrust with the remaining
60% created by the propellers inside. The steering was also revolutionary. The pilot
could simply lean to one side or the other in order to move the platform in that direction.
But after evaluations, the US Army considered the platform to be impractical as a combat vehicle.
It had limited speed and could only fly with help from ground effect, which meant it could only fly
so high. I think it was also a certified death trap! Easy targets for the enemy,
since both the platform and the pilot were quite vulnerable to being shot at.
But the VZ-1 wasn’t the only vertical take-off and landing
craft with counter-rotating propellers that the US Navy was involved in.
Before the invention of short take-off and vertical-take-off aircraft like F-35s and
Harriers, the US Navy was interested in a propeller-driven fighter aircraft that could
be launched from a small warship. The result of their cooperation with Convair was XFY Pogo – a
delta-wing propeller plane, powered by a turboprop engine, which would fly and land on its tail.
It had counter-rotating propellers so that the engine wouldn’t turn the airplane instead.
Being an unusual experimental airplane, no pilot wanted to risk flying it.
But a Convair engineering test pilot and Marine reserve officer,
Lieutenant Colonel J. F. "Skeets" Coleman volunteered for the job. He
had to use a special ladder to get into the cockpit, and then sit in, facing the sky.
Pogo’s first test flight happened in August of 1954, where the airplane only took off
vertically, hovered about 20 feet off the ground, and landed back on its tail.
This was the first free vertical take-off in history done by a fighter plane.
But the first conversion from vertical to horizontal flight took place 3 months
later in November of that year, with over 3,000 officials watching intently. This
was the first flight ever, in which a pilot flew both aerodynamically and in a hover.
The most difficult part was landing Pogo. Once back in vertical position,
the pilot had to rely on the helicopters flying nearby as a guide to adjust his rate of descent
and had to look over his shoulders to spot his landing, which he managed to do perfectly.
Around the same time, the US Air Force was experimenting with something similar,
a VTOL jet aircraft. It was called X-13, which would take off while hanging from a platform,
could then switch from vertical to horizontal flight, and then hang back onto the platform.
The X-13 had a maximum speed well below Mach 1, just like Pogo.
With more testing, even though the concept was proven to work, it wasn’t quite feasible for a
variety of reasons. For instance, the pilot had to look back behind himself during landing to
properly stabilize the aircraft, which could be accomplished only by the most experienced pilots,
not to mention the risks with landing Pogo on a moving ship in the middle of the ocean. On top of
that, regular fighter jets had top speeds that approached Mach 2, and Pogo, with a top speed
below Mach 1 was at a great disadvantage. So only 2 years after its first flight, Pogo was canceled,
but enough about American innovations. It’s time for some British Engineering!
When it comes to launching explosives from water toward land, the Brits had a few tricks
up their sleeve, and the wheel of death, formally known as the Great Panjandrum, was one of them.
The Great Panjandrum was made up of a pair of wheels with rockets attached to them,
like a fireworks pinwheel, but loaded with 4,000 pounds of explosives!
This secret weapon was to be used during D-Day, where hundreds of them would be
launched from landing craft. They would then roll over the water onto the beach,
where they would explode upon hitting fortified German positions along the Nazi’s Atlantic Wall.
Luckily before going all in, the Brits brought a couple of panjandrums to the
beach to test them out, which proved the Great Panjandrum to be completely out of control!
Even though the panjandrum could move at over 60 mph, it was quite sensitive
to the thrust of the rockets. Even if one rocket failed on one side, the panjandrum
would start turning in that direction, which meant it could end up anywhere, and it did!
During its final test, the wheel flipped on its side, made a u-turn and headed toward a
viewing panel, where admirals and generals were sitting, forcing them to run. The Great
Panjandrum never became operational, but it did go down in my books as the only thing that ever
chased a dog on a beach! Which brings us to the next and final British marvel, the bouncing bomb.
The invention of the bouncing bombs goes back to the beginning of WWII,
when the British were looking for a way to destroy enemy dams and battleships. A traditional method
of destroying such targets was to use torpedos, but underwater obstacles like torpedo nets would
prevent such attacks from succeeding. So the British came up with the bouncing bomb,
which was designed to bounce on the surface of water. Upon impacting the dam, the bomb would
sink and explode underwater at a predetermined depth, since underwater explosions can cause
much more damage than a detonation in the air. These bombs could even bounce off the ground.
In preparation for the drop, a 500 rounds-per-minute backspin
was added to the bomb while still inside the aircraft.
Spinning improved the bouncing across the water, but the backspin ensured that after
hitting its target, the bouncing bomb would move back towards the surface as it sank.
But dropping these bombs was very risky, since they had to be dropped about 60ft off the surface.
This put the pilots in danger as the bombs could
bounce back and hit the aircraft before the pilots had enough time to move away.
During Operation Chastise in 1943, the Royal Air Force used bouncing bombs to destroy two
German dams and damage many more, which caused widespread flooding that killed
600 Germans and over 1000 Soviets who were being used as forced laborers.
Out of the 19 Royal Air Force aircraft that were involved in the attacks, only 11 made it back,
meaning that 53 of the 133 aircrew were killed, a casualty rate of almost 40 percent.
None of these inventions are in use today. But if you think any of these,
or any other old prototypes, can be adapted to today’s warfare, we’d love to read your comments.