October 11, 2025 • 55 mins
As Ben and Noel hit the high seas, they're celebrating with a special week of their favorite Classics. It's true that the world's militaries often pioneer technological innovation -- but don't let all those great successes fool you! The world's militaries have at least as many failures as they do breakthroughs. Join Ben, Noel and special guest Christopher Hassiotis as they explore some of humanity's most hilarious military missteps, from round ships to rocket bullets and ball tanks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Filler, ridiculous historians, We get a we get a classic
for you that just keeps coming back to our mind.
We brag about our friend Christopher hasiotis constantly because he
is just that cool and uh, just here in spirit.
He is always with us. And uh, Christopher came to
us a while back and said, hey, guys, do you
(00:24):
think the military does dumb stuff?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Sometimes? Not a chance, not a chance, They're all it's all.
It's all thriller, no filler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And Christopher, you know, knows us well, and he probably
if I had, if I had to guess, Christopher probably
knew that we had been working on some hilarious stuff
they don't want you to know, historical missteps or some
ridiculous history. Weird ideas like the government the world's governments
(00:56):
pitch all kinds of crazy stuff. They'll see a cat
walking around and then and I'll say, can we turn
this cat into a spy?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
What if? Yeah, let's just mount to some lasers on
the heads of these dolphins. That was doctor Evil. But
you get the idea. If I'm not mistaken, then this
episode on idiotic military prototypes involves like a thing that
was like a pedal driven helicopter under a dome like
it was trying to be sort of like a War
of the World sort of space vehicle like Jetson's type thing,
(01:25):
but just it could not stay aloft. And I'm probably
misremembering some of the details there, But that's the kind
of stuff you're in for on this episode, and we
can't wait to roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. First things first,
(02:08):
the US military has so much money. It's only tangentially
related to our episode today. But if we're looking at
a hard number, in twenty seventeen alone, the US military's
budget was around a little over six hundred and ten
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Ben, that can't be true. It's true.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
No, it's true, And you have to wonder where all
this money goes. We have not been in the military ourselves,
that we're aware.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Of, right, No, No, but I think you've spent some
time around military type things. That's true in my other life.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And our super producer, Casey Pegram has also to our knowledge,
not been involved in the military or cannot admit to anything.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
He's more of a sleeper agent type, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I always had him pegged as that as well, and
I mean that as a compliment, Casey, every time that
we are looking into strange stories for ridiculous history, we
have a pretty high likelihood of running into some shenanigan
by one military or another. Because militaries and governments drive
a lot of technological innovation, right, There are a lot
(03:19):
of things that are now common in the civilian world
started out as military initiatives for the purposes of waging war.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It's right, And there's always kind of a disconnect where
you think, oh, that's like crazy future technology, but terns
out the military was doing it like twenty years ago,
and then it kind of gets when they're like done
with it, then it gets leaked out into the public
sphere and you can kind of you know, get a
thumb drive or like a PlayStation or whatever, or a
GPS system exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, and this this is something that's been on our
collective minds for some time, both in this show and
other shows.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That we've done. So we were over the moon when
our good pal friend of the show, Christopher Ahasiotis hit
us up earlier and said, Hey, what what do you
guys think about weird military weapons that never quite made it?
We said, something to the effect of holy smokes, will
(04:10):
you please hang out with us on air? And by
golly by gum he agreed. Welcome back to the show,
Ridiculous Historians. Christopher hasiotis, Hey, thanks for having me. And
then we all hugged, and then we all hugged again
and again and again.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
We've been hugging this whole time and doing light handholds. Yeah, yeah,
So Christopher, of course, thank you for returning to the show.
If anyone listening through some gross miscarriage of cosmic justice
hasn't had the chance to check out your appearance on
our Louie Louie episode, I would say, I don't know
(04:46):
what you think, nol. I would say, pause this episode
and listen to that. It's one of my personal favorite
episodes we've ever done. So, Christopher, what inspired you to
think about this topic?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
There are, as you mentioned, You know, the military contributes
so many things to society in terms of technological innovations,
lots of great stuff that we've gotten out of, you know,
the minds behind military weaponry. But to get to those successes,
you know, sometimes you got to break a couple what
nuclear bombs eggs to make a god we're gonna stretch
(05:18):
this metaphor out to make some sort of omelet of
death and destruction and death omelet.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Right, Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But yeah, there are just a lot of examples of
really strange things out there where you would think this
is an Internet hoax the first time you hear about it,
or you would think surely someone on some committee would
have said, guys, wait a minute, that's that's just not
gonna work. But I probably a lot of you out
there listening have been in a situation where you know
(05:50):
your boss has an idea, and your boss really loves
the idea, and you're thinking, I know that's not a
good idea, and everyone around here knows that's not a
good idea, but the boss really wants to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And sometimes bosses like to throw out big, wild ideas
to justify their existence, you know, in the hopes that
it'll like be a big splash, but a lot of
time to just kind of fizzles. And today we're going
to talk about some good fizzles.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, fizzles splashes kabooms uh puts. Yeah, all the onomatopeias
out there.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
That's true yet, and we have we have compiled some
of our favorites. We do have to say from the beginning,
we're not going to get to every single spectacular, strange,
hilarious failure.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Now we're going to do to a piece. Yeah, we're going.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
We're gonna We're gonna, maybe, if the winds at our
back and everything goes according to plan, hit up a
total of six. But we have curated these, and we
want to know what you think. You know, what do
you think about this?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Christopher Sinture our guest today, would you like to do
the honors and kick off the first invention?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Guys, just sit right back and I'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip that departed from a
Russian port upon a rounded ship.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Was a mighty sail in. Man, I'm sorry, I can't
not do that.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, I don't know what's Gilligan and Russian Comrade Ben,
I know you've got.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
A Russian accent, uh Coln Red gilgelf I love it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The first thing I want to talk to you about
are the round ships of the Russian Navy. We're talking
eighteen sixties technology. Two ships in particular, the Vitzi Admiral
Popov and the Novgorod. Now these were coastal defense ships.
You have to think back to the time of the
Russian War. So Russia had just suffered some defeats at
the hands of France and some of their allies, and
(07:46):
they had actually been banned from building and maintaining battleships
in the Black Sea. But Russia still needed to defend
their land and their sea, and specifically we're talking about
the Kerch Strait. Now that's the if you think back
to your geography class, the part of the world right
between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. So
you've got a little straight where ships passed through and
(08:06):
they need to defend it. And this task of creating
a defense was given to Vice Admiral Popov. He said,
I'm gonna make you some ships to defend the waters.
He said, I'm gonna make you some round ships to
defend the waters. Next, it's three hundred and sixty degrees
of protection RW floating platforms kind of tank like, not
intended for quick fleet battle, but just intended to defend
(08:30):
more like death bullies. Yeah, so he came up with
this circular boat. He wanted to build ten of them,
but the Russian Navy said, let's let's go, let's build two,
you know, and then we'll talk about the rest. So
I want you to picture just a circular platform, a
couple hundred feet across, Okay, six propellers on the back,
(08:50):
two cannons on the top. Now let me ask you.
Have you guys been canoeing?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yes? Yeah, no, kayaking? Kayaking?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Okay, So have you ever been kayaking and just road
just on one side?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
You kind of go around in circles like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Now imagine you're just firing a cannon just on one side.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And then it accelerates your spin.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, and you're a completely circular boat.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So this wasn't moored in any way to the seafloor.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So this was a ship. It was a monitor, which
is a type of small light warship defined by kind
of oversized guns. So you've got this round ship, two
guns on top, and anytime one gun would fire, it
would just spin the ship around in a circle. And
they tried and tried and tried to figure out a
way to counterbalance this. They tried to run the propellers
(09:40):
in the opposite direction of the firing. It just didn't work,
and it just came down to a severe misunderstanding and
or just plane ignoring the physics on the part of
Admiral Popov. Well, isn't there a vodka named after I
don't know if it's named after him, but it is
named that. Okay, Well, maybe maybe there was vodka vodka
(10:01):
best forgotten from the it's no mister Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
You know, I know it's pretty low shelf.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
But so maybe those were his two big ideas. Round
warships and you know, low rent vodka.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, he thought that if you if you created a
really shallow round broad boat, it would float really well
on the water.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And it did.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It floated fine. But the problem is what makes boats
so successful is the shape. They're sort of long. They
cut through the water.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
When you have a wide broad boat with six propellers
trying to push forward, you're pushing the entire mass. There's
a lot more drag. It just does not work. And
nobody said, hey, Popov, let's not do this. So the
ships were built, we're talking eighteen seventy. They actually, despite
their ridiculous nature, were put into service defended the straits.
(10:53):
Didn't do it particularly well.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So they did these embarrassing tests and they tried to
fix it, but they realized they couldn't, but they just
went ahead and forged on.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, the thing is is the tests themselves weren't that embarrassing.
We're still in early days of tank testing. And by
tank I mean a giant tank of water. You know,
it takes a lot to build a ship, and you
don't want to just put it out on the water and.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Because then there you are. So they did models.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Right, Well, they built a big tank of water, built
some models, and you know, these tanks were still water,
and that's one of the things. These ships worked fine
in still water. But let me read you a little
bit about this ship from the book World's Worst Warships,
a very specific book out in two thousand and two
from Anthony Preston. He said the Vita Admiral pop Up
(11:37):
and the Novgorod were quote too slow to stem the
current and proved very difficult to steer. In practice. The
discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out
of control and even contra rotating. Some of the six
propellers were unable to keep the ship on correct heading.
They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything
more than a flat calm and could not aim or
load their guns under such circumstances.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So wouldn't that throw off the trajector of the shot
as well? Right, So it would not only screw up
the navigation of the boat in the direction, it would
like be completely impossible to aim.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, I think you would have to just be really
lucky or hit the broadside of a boat that's nearby,
or try to shoot it, I don't know, at the
water as a warning. Basically, these were in serve. These
two boats were in service for about three decades. They
just kind of floated there, they did their thing. Ultimately,
they were put into storage in eighteen ninety three, and
right before the First World War kicked off.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
They were just scrapped.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Because they figured they could use the materials for something
a little bit less cartoonishly ineffective.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Or it was just wasting everyone's time. You know, you
had better things to do than to just keep a
giant round boat that Honestly, it looks like a toy.
It looks like a child's toy that you would float
in a bathtub. So it doesn't even look scary, No,
it looks perfect circle.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah no, I yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And we've got some photos we can share on ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
What's the logic though, is it? What's this pop off
fellow thinking, like, is he trying to cut corners? Oh? Wow,
literally cut all the corners.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, he really just want to come up with a
really smart idea, you know, it's the kind of thing
you want to be the one who solves the problem. Yeah,
and he just didn't. There were other round boat proponents
at the time. There's a guy in England in eighteen
fifties who was really all about the roundhul People thought
it would add stability to the ship, and it added
(13:19):
stability in certain circumstances, but in rain, in wind, in
choppy waters, you know, the kind of things that happen
when you're at sea.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
No dice.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So one important note for everyone listening who's thinking maybe
the same thing I initially thought, which is, well, okay, sure,
this ship rotates wildly anytime the gun is fired. The
guns are fired. Rather, why don't they just make these
weapons of absolute chaos and have the guns fire quickly?
So this stuff is just sort of spinning Tasmanian Devil
(13:50):
style firing on all sides. The problem, I believe is
the loading time, right, because every shot was so these
were order type rounds.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, this is still eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, so we
don't have machine gun technology on a boat like this.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And they can't load it while it's spinning. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So I would be very curious to find out how
long it took them to shoot, get back to a calm,
stable state, and then reload and shooting.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I guess in theory, if you fired both cannons at
precisely the right time, it would stabilize itself. But that
seems so so unlikely and.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
A wasting a shot because obviously your target's only going
to be on one side or the other chances are
so you got to coordinate and be like, all right, guys,
we got a three two one go oh yeah, this
is comical. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I mean, in Popov's defense, he was trying to solve
problems and ignoring the problems generated by his supposed solutions.
The ships that were round like this could be much
more heavily armored so they could withstand more attacks. So
he did solve that problem, but it just kind of
ignored with the failings.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I think we can definitely call that a military fail.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yes, Popovka as it was known, the type of ship
they named it after him, to his glory and or
maybe in glory.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, what's next? Do I get to go? Do you
want to go? I do, because I really want to
say these two words. Yeah, I go for it. Rocket bullets, yes, okay,
rocket bullets. That's fine, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So one of the first questions would be aren't all
bullets propelled?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What makes these different? Well? These these are propelled using
rocket fuel? Nice or jet fuel, let's let's be fair. Yeah,
so this is uh, this might sound like something out
of a James Bond movie, and as it turns out,
it actually is. This weapon called the gyro Jet made
by two gentlemen named Robert Mainhart and Arthur T. Beal
(15:51):
who started a company, an arms company called MBA, which
was short for Manhart and Bell Associates. They decided they
wanted regular guns just weren't cut for them. They want
to do something a little more futuristic because this is
the time when we wanted to rocketize everything.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
And so their company was NBA, right, yeah, NBA, and
I should have been like Magic Bullet Association or something.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Thanks, thank you. So the first thing they worked on
was something called the fin Jet, which shot these tiny
little needle type rocket bullets out of this weapon. And
the thing that was cool about rocket bullets that so
what I'm gonna keep calling them is they were self propelling.
They didn't need that much complicated mechanisms in the gun
itself because these bullets literally had a rod of jet
(16:34):
fuel running through them and a little element that could
get hit by the hammer didn't even need a firing pin,
and then it would propel itself out of the muzzle.
And I actually saw a really great video where some
guys with a YouTube channel got ahold of one of these,
the Gyrojet model, and you can see they did slow
motion photography where the bullet exits the muzzle and then
a little ways out it gets rocketized, so when it
(16:57):
comes out initially it's actually going quite slow. So one
of the issues with this gun was it didn't work
very well at point blank range because you know, people
would joke that you could stop it with your hand,
and you know, it might break some bones in your hand,
but it certainly would not penetrate your skin.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And its range. If you fired a bullet that's moving
not slowly, its trajectory wouldn't stay constant.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, that's the thing about it. It used a technology
called spin stabilization, which I'm a little foggy on the
exact because I'm not like a ballistic specialist or anything.
But the bullets had these three holes drilled in the
back of them that when it would cause them to
rotate really really fast, and they would achieve such an
(17:39):
incredible speed once they actually got to their maximum velocity,
And a lot of that had to do with the
fact that they came out of the barrel like spinning.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So it's sort of like a rifling technology exactly like that,
but not because the barrels were smooth. They didn't actually
have that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That's what a regular gun it has bored out kind
of like little whatever you call it, markings or kind
of grooves exactly. That caused the bullet to do that,
because otherwise it would just go wild and not be
accurate at all. Turns out, it still wasn't very accurate
because of the fact that this rocket fuel would burn
at pretty unpredictable rates and you could never quite predict
(18:16):
what it was going to do. So this video that
I saw, which is really really worth checking out, if
you just searched testing gyrojet rocket guns, why were they
a commercial failure? On YouTube you can find these guys
that do this amazing test of this. You can't find
these anymore because the parts don't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, I imagine that they look kind of like a
like a bottle rocket, you know, where they just sort
of spin off wildly you can't quite decide which way
it's going to go.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
No, they were much more stable than that, Yeah, but
they certainly were not as stable as a traditional gun.
They did some tests where they measured how, you know,
how accurate they were compared to a regular gun, and
it wasn't insane, but it was just very unpredictable. And
there's one part where it just kind of like went
up all of a sudden and like shot the GoPro
camera off of the dummy that they were firing at. So,
(19:02):
but they had other models. They had a more of
a rifle with a scope on it, and they had
something that kind of looks like a machine gun, a carbine,
but these were they loaded one bullet at a time
and it was semi automatic, so you could fire one
after the other, but it certainly wasn't fully automatic and
this is pretty neat in order to keep the rocket
fuel from like leaking out or to keep it contained properly.
(19:24):
These guys were super innovative. They figured out that titanium
oxide was the best chemical for containing this stuff so
it didn't accidentally ignite, just like in the casing. And
they just went down to the local paint store and
bought the white paint that had the most titanium oxide content,
And so you can actually see they got these rocket
(19:44):
fuel rods in these long kind of like almost like
big thick pencil lead and then they lathed it on
like an actual lathe to get it cut down to
the right size to fit these bullets, and then they
spray painted them white on the outside and then put
them in the casing and it did discharge a shell.
It shot the whole thing out. So that's what made
them different.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
To question, Yeah, how much did these costs and did
the cost play a role in their failure other than
they're completely hilarious.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, lack of reliability and this maybe is a very
good military one because it doesn't feel like they were
developed for the military, but it was too good of
like a weaponry fail to not throw in here and
especially the fact that it was very much featured in
You Only Live Twice, the James Bond movie, because of
the fact that you look at them, they look like
a cool like spy gun.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely that. I mean, given that it's full
of rocket fuel, I wouldn't want to carry that around
in my pocket. But it's a it's a cool looking gun.
It is a cool looking gun. Not to mention that
apparently they could engineer the bullets so that they would
dissolve in the human body.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Cool wow, And that was a big part of it,
I believe in the Bond film because that way you
would leave no trace and there would be no forensic
evidence to tie anybody to it. To the mice bullets exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But I think that they did at least get tested
by the US Army, if not specifically this brand of
rocket bullets, something something like this. They had a gyro
jet had an assault rifle that the Army tested briefly.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I didn't run across that myself. It
was a very bit of a blip in the history
of these weapons. But I mean, the Army's gonna get
wind of any new fangled device. They'll give it a go,
they'll throw a little money at it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
But if you're going to miniaturize something, I mean you might.
You could. You could load that thing with little tiny
explosives in the tip. You could have like a tiny
little ballistic missile. And it's interesting. The weapons failed because
of largely they were expensive and they were a pain
to make because to drill those holes I was talking
about that that created the spin, they had to have
these tapered drill bits which had to be custom machined themselves,
(21:51):
and they would always break. So to make that the
ammunition was very expensive because again the guns themselves only
really had a hammer and the firing pin was fixed
because it actually would push the hammer would push it backwards,
and then the firing pin would pierce the little primer
that would then set off the chain reaction that would
like the rocket fuel, but you would see it come
(22:11):
out of the gun and it wouldn't start shooting a
little rocket tail out of it until it was about
halfway to the target. So, I mean, it's it's pretty fascinating.
But the company NBA actually went on to make a
lot of non lethal ammunition like beanbag shot, and they
made little pen guns like little pen projectile things that
were that were used in the military.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So cool, pretty cool, right, yeah, And that's ridiculous. I mean,
I don't know. I think it's more interesting, but it's
just a very roundabout way of doing something that was
already done pretty well, sort of like but but but
these use rocket fuel. These use rocket fuel. Guys, have
you heard about rocket fuel?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I like to think in the future, when humanity is
gone and the world is overtaken by let's say, mice,
U super smart intelligent mice. Yeah, absolutely, they're going to
find the guns and these will act like giant bazookas
or missile launchers. I'm just picturing a cute little mouse
holding one of these guns on its shoulder, launching rockets
at you know cats.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I love that image. And last thing I do want
to say that in the video that I saw, the
ammunition they had was was very, very old and it
all worked, you know, And I would have thought that
the fuel would have degraded or something would have happened
to make it not function properly, or it would just
explode in the gun and not do what it was
supposed to do. And it wasn't perfectly accurate, but It
(23:29):
definitely reached the target every time and didn't just like
zoom off somewhere else entirely. It just didn't, you know,
keep a perfect bead, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, you know what the answer is to all this, that,
the expensive, boring tips and all that. Lasers. Lasers, Yeah, always, yeah.
I am not a scientist, I am not a ballistics expert.
But as with all things in life, the answer is
probably just lasers.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And you are. You are a well known laser enthusiast. Yeah,
why not.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's one of the first things people told me about
you when we started working together.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
They're just neat, They're great. Oh man.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We used to have a very like an industrial class
laser at the office years and years ago. It mysteriously disappeared.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Would it make a cool laser sound? Like in the
really cheesy techno songs?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I feel like every time we played around with it
and we were literally just playing with a dangerous laser,
one of us was making sound making. Yeah, because it
was better than the click click.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Why did you Why did you have this to what
was it? What was it for? You know, just to
learn about stuff? Lasers are cool?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, it wasn't powerful enough. To physically cut things. But
it was one of those lasers that would do permanent
damage to your eye. Got it and if you shot
it towards someone's eye, and we do some good for kids,
good for great for children.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was at a Black Crows concert once and someone
had one of those laser pointers and was shooting at
the singer guy, and he got very upset. He threatened to,
uh take it away from him and put it someplace
like uh yeah, Poughkeepsie in his pocket. Yeah, it was
gonna confiscated, not give it back. It sounds a very
substitute teacher vibe there. So we've talked about an amazing ship.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We've talked about some uh some I would say, very
innovative bullets. Both of those things on the offset seem
like they are worth investigating, right, I'd like to give
you one that I'm on the fence about, especially because
in my past life hosting car stuff, I learned to
love ridiculous vehicles. Have you ever looked at a jeep
(25:38):
and thought I would get one of these if it
was also a helicopter? Because if you have been thinking
about this, I want to introduce everyone to the Hafner
Rota Buggy. It is a British experimental aircraft that looks
kind of doofy.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So it looks like exactly what you said. It looks
like a helicopter truck. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And what's ridiculous to me is there's having the rotors
and the wheels.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It's sort of transit wise. It's kind of like wearing
Paris suspenders and a belt. So the Rota Buggy came
about as as a solution to the problem of air
dropping off road vehicles and a guy named Raoul Hafner
of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment created this after they
(26:31):
had an earlier invention that had some success, which was
the Rota shoot. They took this rotor thing and ran
with it. It was an experimental one person kit rotor thing.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So it's kind of like a helicopter that you sit
on that is sort of like a segue with blades.
It just seems that seems dangerous. It looks like a
wind sock or something like that. Yeah, it's hovering behind this.
Is it tethered to that truck bed?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
It is tethered. They though they were probably be picking
up speed and then the air would catch here. It's
a kite essentially with.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
It's like a giant kite or like a big rudder
that flies behind your back, but also you have helicopter
blades on your head.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I think the emphasis was to look whimsical in this,
but it enjoyed some, as we said, some success, which
led to the creation of the Rota buggy. I think
similar to the way you feel about rocket bullets. No,
I think I just like saying Rota buggy.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Rotabuggy's fun. But Ben, do you think they were trying
to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies with whimsy.
I think they were trying to strike whimsy into their
heart of their enemies. Yeah. So here's the crazy thing.
It's so un aerodynamic.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It looks so poorly designed because jeeps and helicopters have
two very different ways of transporting people and two very
different footprints design wise. But their initial tests were were
pretty promising because they weren't testing it stemmed to stern,
soup to nuts, an entire operation. They were testing aspects
(28:08):
of an operation. They started by dropping it from around
eight feet or so, and then they say, okay, well
it can just drop eight feet it'll be fine, and
things didn't really go wrong until November nineteen forty three,
when they tried to toe it to get enough speed
to get the Roto buggy into the air.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It didn't work the first time on the sixteenth of November,
and it wasn't till the twenty seventh of November that
they got a Bentley auto to pull it, and this
unwieldy machine was able to become airborne and it reached
gliding speeds of forty five miles an hour, which is
surprisingly good, you know for.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
A totally not aerodynamic object.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
A jeep with a helicopter button. Yeah, but okay, so
what when did it all go south? Ben? When did
it all go south?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
So would you believe me if I told you in
the parking lot on our office. Now I'm kidding, I
wish I could take us out of a Rota buggy
ride went? It went severely south. As they continued testing,
there were huge problems with vibration, speed and instability, and
(29:19):
they kept improving it. Nineteen forty four they got it
to a flight speed of seventy miles an hour or
one hundred and thirteen kilometers, and the last flight in
September of nineteen forty four.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It broke a record for itself.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It was able to fly for ten minutes and was
described as highly satisfactory. And the thing is that the
British Army probably would have continued trying to make Roda
buggies if it were not for the introduction of large
gliders that could carry vehicles. So gliders like the air
(29:55):
speed horsa which are just they look like planes, but
they're these things if you see the picture, can carry vehicles.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
So it's the kind of situation where whoever came up
with the road a buggy solved a problem pretty well,
but as they were doing that, someone else is working
on the same problem and just totally surpasses that.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
The laser disc conundrum. Yeah, I mean, but can't you
just drive a jeep out of the back of an
airplane and have it like a jeep parachute, like in
Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
One would one would think. I guess what they were
grappling with was a failure of material science at the
time too, because then you would have to build a
fabric strong enough and resilient enough not to just break.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
That's true, and maybe this, uh, this cheepicopter could then
speed up and take off again and return. So like
let's say you were attacking a little island, you could
drop them all off, they could come back. You could
have a cheepicopter for a while.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It does sound like fun.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, take a chepicopter ride, see the Grand Canyon, see
the world. It sounds like a like a nice whims
a holiday things.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I would just prefer though, if like the blades like
folded up, like in a really cool way with like
a sound effect.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Like so you're talking about transformers.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It and a
lot of flying cars do that now, or flying car prototypes?
This was eight minute.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
We have flying what do you know that we don't?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We have flying car prototypes, as in like one to
two copies of something like Terrafugia.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So it's like, finally it's the future. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So we're all good friends with our pal Scott Benjamin,
who's a wonderful, brilliant aerodype man, but he hates flying cars,
and for the better part of the last six years
he and I have been very beefed up about this.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Look.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I get that they're dangerous. I understand that I get
that it would be disastrous to have flying cars. But
I don't want everyone to have flying cars. I just
want one because as long as there's only one, things
are going to be relatively fine. You guys are cool.
Would you guys want one? I think we could get
the number up to four without we just wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well, there's a whole conundrum that goes into flying cars.
I mean, you ever heard of airplanes. We have to
have a whole system of air traffic controllers and you know,
coordinated takeoffs and landings. And if there were flying cars,
just willy nilly, there'd be a lot of air mid
air collisions. I think.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, but we figured it out right. I mean, I
imagine there's a podcast from the late eighteen hundreds on
whatever format they podcasted in back then, saying, would you
have an.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Automobile a horseless carriage?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
We have horses. You know what would happen if you
had ten people in a town with a car. That
would be madness.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I think that is etched podcast right into wax cylinders. Yes,
absolutely so, there we are road a buggy. I like it.
If you are a road of bugs that you have
missed this period in history. Do not despair. The last
thing I'll say about it is you can go to
a town with an amazing name. You're gonna love this.
No Middle Wallop. And in Middle Wallop there.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Is a museum of Army Flying that has a replica
of a Roada Buggy as well as a road a
tank which is the same thing, but a tank.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
That seems like you would need much bigger blades to
keep a tank aloft.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, it was a weird idea, but this.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Is the kind of thing where if if any ridiculous
historians are listening at home, and you're enjoying this show
with your who knows you know, your your daughters, your sons,
you could make a little toy Roada buggy, you know,
just go buy a toy helicopter, snap off the blades.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That's called a transformer.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
No no, no, I'm taking it. Buy two things, gloom together,
make your own toys. Have a little Rota Buggy warfare.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Thing going on at home, the toy mashup.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I like to Yeah, So what's what's next, Christopher?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Well?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I started off with some wildly propulsive cannons, and that
is where we are headed again, but this time we're
staying stateside. We're not going to Russia. We're in the
United States. Well, let me correct that we're in the
Confederate States of America.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Oh boy.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Or in the lead up to what would become that
you're seen a double barrel old canon.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I feel as if I can picture it in my
mind popped right in when you see the words.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, double barrel cannon. Right, you've got think of a shotgun.
Double barrel shotgun shoots out twice as much shot.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
But can't you unload it one barrel at a time
as well? You can, yeah, because there's like a little
compound trigger, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
But you don't want to do that with a double
barrel canon.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I was wondering. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So the double barrel canon we're going to talk about
is from the American Civil War, but it's not a
purely American invention. The idea of this goes back to
sixteen forty two so Renaissance Italy, Florence in particular, and
there was an inventor named Antonio Petrini who came up
with the idea of a double barrel canon. It was
put into action though, in eighteen sixty two by a
(34:44):
man named John Gilliland. Now Gleiland was a mechanic and
dentist living in Athens, Georgia. Okay, oh all right, yeah,
not too far from where we are. We're here in
Atlanta recording, So about an hour and a half up
the road, Galliland said, I'm going to take two cannons,
put them together in one sort of one molded entity.
They've got two side by side boars in a three
(35:07):
inch diameter, and you've got these two six pound balls
next to one another. But that's not it. You've also
got a ten foot chain connecting the two balls.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I have heard of this. Yeah, that sounds dangerous.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Well, you know, think of the what are they called
the yeah bolos that gauchos in South America used to
capture birds or horses or whatever. So you've got these
two balls connected by a chain, propelled from a cannon.
Think of the destruction possible, these spinning balls of death
a chain in between them. It's just gonna tear through
(35:41):
the Union soldiers right, just cut you right in half.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You would you would think, imagineah, you think you think?
So it's not quite what happened. Now.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Gilliland was passionate about this idea. He actually put out
a subscription service to raise funds to develop the prototype.
He raised about three hundred and fifty dollars. I don't
know if those were Confederate or Union dollars. And he
built it, he tested it, and reports from the time
say they blasted the cannon two balls a chain, It
(36:10):
tore through a cornfield, it knocked down a chimney, it
killed a cow. But it was just so wild and
uncontrollable that the Confederate Army said, no, no, no, this
is ridiculous. We do not want this.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
In terms of accuracy, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Would have to fire both cannons simultaneously because they're sitting
parallel to one another, but slightly splayed, a slight degree
of difference in the direction in which they propel the ball.
And that's so that the two cannon balls that sit
next to one another, when they fly out of the
cannon will spread out and kind of pull the chain
(36:43):
between them. Okay, but getting that exactly right with the
eighteen sixties technology, you can't be that precise. And so
what happens is even a split second of timing difference
in firing one or the other side of the cannon,
or a little bit of wind or a little bit
of who knows, some material in the barrel will just
send one ball slightly faster than the other, and all
(37:05):
of a sudden you get something that's sort of rip
sawing through the terrain, going in completely the wrong direction. Now,
that could be destructive. It tore down some trees. But yeah,
it's just too risky to bring into warfare.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I got a good idea. What's your idea? Bigger cannons,
bigger balls, bigger balls, longer chains. Well no, not even
just one, just one barrel, one barrel, bigger, So big cannons,
big cannons.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, that's interesting because I heard about the ball and
chain stuff before. But I always thought to your point, Noel,
I always thought that the it was a situation where
there was a single cannon and they loaded the balls
sort of atop each other with the chain hanging out,
and then shot it out that way.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, that seems like that would make more sense than
having two sources of propulsion.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Let's double down.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Did anybody try like a triple barreled cannon.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I think they have that at Burger Cane, right, it
comes with the kid, comes with cheese. Yes, there's a
special sauce but yeah, so this canon, it was just
a total failure. But Galliland believed so passionately in his invention.
He kept trying to make the case to the Confederate army.
The canon was shipped from Athens, Georgia to Augusta, where
it was put into more testing because he really really
(38:19):
thought it would work. Ultimately, no, no, no is what
the Confederates said. It was sent back to Athens. It
was used in battle, but just as a signal, so
kind of a warning shot to let the Confederates know
that the US troops were arriving, so you know, as
canons are used. And you can see that canon today.
It still sits in Athens, Georgia. It was sold by
(38:41):
the city for a while, luckily was not scrapped or anything,
and the city bought it again and it now sits
atop a hill in Athens, Georgia, right next to city Hall.
There's a little plaque. You can kind of go look
at it and say, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Have you seen it? I have seen it. Yeah, See,
I used to live in Athens and this is all
ringing a bell when you were talking about it, and
I feel like I've seen it before.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah, it's at the corner of College Avenue and what not,
West Washington. I think corner of Clayton Street.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Yeah, and it's it's it's on the Northeastern corner. Pointed
straight up at the Yankees. Oh oh wow. Not that
it's a threat or anything. It doesn't work, and it
never worked, but you know, it might as well.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Might as well have the impotent rage represented in a statue.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh that's a good one, Christopher. Yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, if you guys want to take a field trip,
we'll just hop on over to Athens.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Let's go. I'm all about I haven't been back in
too long. It's a good place, all right. Well, I
guess I'm gonna stick with kind of retro futuristic kind
of ones. Cool. This one is. I'm just gonna call
it the hoverboard. Heard of it? Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
(39:54):
It turns out it was real.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So I feel like a lot of what we're talking about,
at least what you guys are talking about, could come
straight out of the back the Future movies. You've got
the flying cars, You've got a hoverboard.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Rocket bullets. Yeah, okay, it's a Hoverboard's a bit of
a misnomer. It's really more like a helicopter platform. Okay,
So this is something that was designed by the Hiller
Company for the US Navy. Originally it was called the
VS one Pawnee and it's basically a disc with fans
(40:23):
underneath it, and it used something called rotor duct technology.
So here's the interesting part about it. I also used
something called kinesthetic control. Can you guys guess what that is?
Controlling by moving your body? That's right, which is why
I think of the hoverboard. So yeah, literally, a person
manning one of these things, or piloting one of these
(40:43):
things rather would be standing atop the strange little disc
in kind of like a cage with no controls except
for a throttle. So all they had control over was altitude.
With an actual device to navigate, they have to lean
the left lean of the lean four lean backward, and
so it's almost like a segue in that respect. So
(41:06):
they definitely tested these. They had a prototype which was
much smaller than the second one. They kind of made
the whole thing a little bigger, added a little bit
more stability, and then the third one is massive, and
it was so massive that it wouldn't even allow you
to do the kinesthetic controls because it was just so unwieldy.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
They had like a group of guys run exactly now,
come back center go, I know.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
So they added a seat to this one in more
traditional helicopter type control, so there were actually some steering
capabilities on this third one. So this was in nineteen
fifty three. The US Navy's Office of Naval Research essentially
gave this company, Hillar Helicopters, a contract to develop one
(41:52):
of these. It was a twin engined ducted fan VTOL,
which I think we all agree stands for verse takeoff
and landing better. Yeah, no runway, no runway required. That's
that's the one positive thing about this this device.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Well, also I imagined it inspired a lot of Mega
Man villains. To me, it sounds like kind of thing
it's like right out of a nineteen eighties video game,
which is like bad guys fun flying platforms exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Unfortunately, these things were very slow and they couldn't really
figure out like any kind of real practical use for
it in battle. There is in fact a video though,
I'd like to play a clip from of one of
the first flight tests of this thing.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Well, this is quite a machine you have here. I
suppose you've come as close as anyone to operating a
flying carpet.
Speaker 5 (42:44):
How does it feel, Well, it feels fine. And the
nice thing about it's very.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Easy to fly.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
What do you think, phil is a truly revolutionary characteristic
of this machine.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Well, I mentioned earlier it was so easy to fly.
We do it by shifting our weight. Is the way
we control the aircript.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
I say by that, you mean you don't have any
mechanical controls as we normally think of them in then aeroplanes,
such as a stick in the rudder.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
Oh, we have a throttle, which all aircraft have, but
we control it by shifting our weight using our feet.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So yeah, again, he even says the interviewer, like, I
guess it's because it's close to anyone's coming to fly
and cop it. It's all about the future, you know,
it's all about magic and technology. It's great, but yeah,
they don't go very high. They seem a little. The
guy keeps talking about how easy it is to fly,
but it just doesn't seem like you could really get
it to go forward very quickly at all, or be
(43:37):
very precise in your movements on it.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
You know, yeah, And it seems like the kind of
thing where if as you're training people to use it,
you would just break a lot of them. And I
also wonder what the point of it is. I mean,
if it doesn't go that high, it can't be used
for reconnaissance. If it moves as you move, you probably
can't use it like a heavy rifle, because then you might,
you know, throw yourself off, and it'll be like you're
in a round ship. Yeah, exactly. You could even sneeze, yeah,
(44:03):
and just crash.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
So maybe it's more of a proof of concept because
one would imagine there surely there would be ways to
mitigate those issues. Even just fixing one of those issues
would make it a more worthwhile investment by a military,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And of course they did take them out of commission
entirely by nineteen sixty three, but it did offer some
pretty valuable information, of research wise, for technology they would
later use for more practical vertical takeoff and landing planes,
which which are a thing I don't thought that was
kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I agree, Yeah, it's the kind of thing that reminds
me too of technology you know, supposedly coming from Project
Bluebook and that investigation into alien technology in Area fifty one.
This weird flying saucer stuff, it kind of makes me
think of that, and I know it's.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Not real, but oh, I wish I'd done that. Maybe
it could be.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I was having such a tough time off the air
preparing for this episode because there's an extensive list of
ridiculous experiments but also very promising, somewhat space age stuff
that militaries have gotten up to in secret. And I
(45:18):
wanted to find one of the dumbest ideas, not one
that has some promise, not one that's innovative.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Let's try something new.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
The dumbest, a dumbest idea that I found is the
ball tank. The ball tank, the ball tank, tell me
more it We are a family show. It's a tank.
It's been known alternately as the kugle Banzer or the
tumbleweed tank. The thing about this is we'll start with
(45:49):
one story. We'll start with the tumbleweed tank. There's an
inventor in Texas.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
His name is A. J.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Richardson, and in nineteen thirty six he says, you know,
the First World War, which they just called the World
War at that time, no war. Yeah, can you imagine
calling that war the First World War. Back then it was.
He said it was well. He was haunted frankly by
the sheer mass of human suffering and carnage and death
(46:18):
that occurred. And in his estimation, one of the reasons
so many people died in World War One was because
of trench warfare. People couldn't aim very well. They could
just blindly throw mortars toward the enemy's trench and hope
they hit someone who's a soldier rather than a civilian,
(46:40):
rather than medical personnel and all this other stuff. So
he said the best idea would be to send heavily armored,
motorized bunkers across that no man's land that kills zone
between the trenches, because again, I just want to emphasize
this important. Later he thought the main problem was that
(47:00):
you couldn't really see who you were firing at, and
so he decided that he would invent this thing called
the tumbleweed tank. It is a sphere. It has room
for three people. It has each of the three people
are manning one gun. I would like to show you, gentlemen,
a picture of this of this design. I want you
(47:24):
to get a look at it, because the guns you
see the guns you see have a lot of random placement.
There's one pointing toward the air, there's one pointing toward
the ground, and then there's one just out there on
the right, and the one on the right can swivel
by the way.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
It sort of like cars in the newer Jurassic Park movies,
I guess it is.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Yeah, yeah, because those are two seaters. That's two seaters,
so this one is an uncomfortable three seater. And just
from that initial picture you guys saw, the tumbleweed tank
has some problems.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
The kind of thing that should be drawn and then
immediately torn up.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
How is it going to roll if there's random guns
poking out every which way? Do they collapse? It has
a ring it is propelled by uh.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Oh, so it only goes forward and back. Yeah, it
doesn't roll in like, not even three hundred and sixty degrees,
but the entire spherical gyroscopic motion, it just goes straight
back and forward.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Let me let me correct myself there in the diagram,
from what we understand, the actual the sphere wherein the
soldiers are located, that is enclosed within two rotating outer
shells that are each like bowls round the thing, so
it can it can turn a little bit in theory.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
So it's sort of like a deadly gerbil ball kind
of yeah, hamster mechanism with guns, yep, and men.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
And it had some it had some good points.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
It could be very easily sealed against poison gas attacks.
And Richardson also thought it would present a much smaller
target for enemy shells and that they would glance off
of the curved sides. But remember how we mentioned the
part where his primary beef with World War One was
that people were just blindly throwing.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, you couldn't see people. So this was his way
around that somehow.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So the guys sealed inside this tank, Christopher frantically firing
guns in all directions, could not see outside. They had
no idea what was going on.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
So it would maybe work if you could somehow catapult
one of these balls into the middle of your enemy
and just shoot in willy nilly directions. This just sounds
like a terrible, terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
I mean, imagine, yeah, terrible is the right word. Imagine
how terrifying this is for the operators they can't see outside,
how terrifying it is for the enemy.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
What the hell is that?
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Are they even aiming for us? How terrifying it is
for nearby troops who are like, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm
on your side.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
The only way I could imagine this would be worse
is if instead of a track, they all had to
run inside to make it going. You know, like those
big kind of translucent plastic balls you see on America's
fundies home videos or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yeah, sorbian that's what what zorbian zeo or what are
you saying? Is that like furries zorbian zo r B
I n G So like a furbie. It's where you
get inside that giant plastic ball sorbing zorbian Is that
an acronym? And then they fight? Uh they fight? Yeah, yeah,
they've they've fought.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
I don't know if it's I don't know if it's
an acronym. I know it's it's meant to cite the
fact that you're rolling downhill in an orb.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
So like maybe zero gravity or.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
I think there's but I think there's proper gravity. Yeah, yeah,
well neither. Hell, I've also seen them on water. Yes,
you can get inside those on water and just roll
them around aquasorb aquasorbing, but I like that, but you
can see through through those, which I think is key here.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
So aquasorbing, rotocopter, battle, rocket, chip, bullet failure, disaster war.
That's what we're talking at right now.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That's what we're talking Oh, there's one other point.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
We do know that there was at least one other
group of people who thought this balltank idea was just
the top notch military concept of the time. It was Germany.
We know that during World War Two Germany designed that
google poundcer the ball tank, and we don't know what
(51:35):
they meant to do with it. We don't know how
often it was used. Clearly not that much, but we
haven't found any plans or documents about it. Only one
survived the war. It was captured in Manchuria in nineteen
forty five. You can go see it in the Kubinka
Museum's collection of German vehicles. It was apparently used by
(51:57):
some unfortunate German and the Germans, in their part did
include a small visor or small slit so the operator
could see what they were rolling.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
That's nice, that's thoughtful. Yeah, they learned from the tumbleweed tank.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
And that's what they learned is just let them look outside.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Just see.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
It feels like there's a lot more lessons to be
learned from the ball tank.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
This was such a cool idea for an episode. Thank
you for bringing this to us.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Absolutely yeah, always a pleasure to have you in the
studio and kind of kick the ball tank around nice.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Speaking of kicking, if any ridiculous historians want to kick
it with me over on another show this week, you guys, okay,
if I plug something.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Oh please plug away.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
So ridiculous historians. If you're listening to this show, I
know you like learning about stuff in the way back,
So point your podcast machines over to This Day in
History Class. It's one of our sister podcasts here on
the House Stuff Works Network. It's a daily history show,
just really quick, five minute tid bits of one thing
that happened that day in history.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Now.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Normally the host is Tracy V. Wilson, who you probably
know from stuff you missed in history class. She's out
this week, So the week that you are listening to
this in your podcast machine, I'm going to be guest
hosting over on This Day in History Class. So head
over that way and you can find all sorts of
cool weird things that happen every single day of the year,
day by day.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Awesome, congratulations, and we are definitely going to check it out.
We can also go ahead and maybe post a link
to that, yeah, ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah, we'll share that on the Facebook page. Ridiculous Historians
will point you in that direction. It's a great show.
I'm only on it for a week, but you should
definitely take a listen. It'll be going through some cool
changes in the coming year too. I think we're going
to be getting a little more creative, but still a
daily podcast kind of updating you just on the things
you need to know about what's happened in the past
and how that affects our days today.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Awesome, and thank you so much for coming on the show.
This is going to be one of a number of
recurring appearances.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah, we're gonna mean this's a regular thing.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
I'll be around.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Fantastic. Well, let's as always thank our super producer, Casey Pegram.
I think we've already thanked Christopher enough that I'm gonna
do it one more time film for measure. Thank you, Christopher.
Do I have a choice? Doesn't that sound like an
alien overlord character?
Speaker 1 (54:21):
There is a Zorba the Great I think, oh wait,
this works out with you?
Speaker 2 (54:28):
It does? Yeah, thanks to you as well, Ben Hey,
thanks to you looking dapper as ever today, sir.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
And thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track. Thank
you for checking out the show. We hope that you
enjoyed it, and we hope that this is kindled a
spark of inspiration. Let us know what strange military contraptions
were otherwise ridiculous inventions you have run across.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
We will be all ears. We would love to hear
this stuff.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
And you know, we're of course that should go out
saying we're we're not really picking on these inventors. A
lot of these ideas seem very promising, and the only
way you can learn whether or not they're feasible is
to test them, you know what I mean. Rocket Bullets
sounds like a tremendous idea. It sounds really cool and.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
One of my favorite bands and.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
One of your favorite bands, Rocket Bullets. Sure, if they
don't exist yet, they absolutely need to. So please come
and hang out with us next time. When we talk
about flowers as currency or you know, some sort of
like the bitcoin bubble, we'll see you then for more
(55:42):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Filler, ridiculous historians, We get a we get a classic
for you that just keeps coming back to our mind.
We brag about our friend Christopher hasiotis constantly because he
is just that cool and uh, just here in spirit.
He is always with us. And uh, Christopher came to
us a while back and said, hey, guys, do you
(00:24):
think the military does dumb stuff?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Sometimes? Not a chance, not a chance, They're all it's all.
It's all thriller, no filler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And Christopher, you know, knows us well, and he probably
if I had, if I had to guess, Christopher probably
knew that we had been working on some hilarious stuff
they don't want you to know, historical missteps or some
ridiculous history. Weird ideas like the government the world's governments
(00:56):
pitch all kinds of crazy stuff. They'll see a cat
walking around and then and I'll say, can we turn
this cat into a spy?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
What if? Yeah, let's just mount to some lasers on
the heads of these dolphins. That was doctor Evil. But
you get the idea. If I'm not mistaken, then this
episode on idiotic military prototypes involves like a thing that
was like a pedal driven helicopter under a dome like
it was trying to be sort of like a War
of the World sort of space vehicle like Jetson's type thing,
(01:25):
but just it could not stay aloft. And I'm probably
misremembering some of the details there, But that's the kind
of stuff you're in for on this episode, and we
can't wait to roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. First things first,
(02:08):
the US military has so much money. It's only tangentially
related to our episode today. But if we're looking at
a hard number, in twenty seventeen alone, the US military's
budget was around a little over six hundred and ten
billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Ben, that can't be true. It's true.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
No, it's true, And you have to wonder where all
this money goes. We have not been in the military ourselves,
that we're aware.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Of, right, No, No, but I think you've spent some
time around military type things. That's true in my other life.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And our super producer, Casey Pegram has also to our knowledge,
not been involved in the military or cannot admit to anything.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
He's more of a sleeper agent type, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I always had him pegged as that as well, and
I mean that as a compliment, Casey, every time that
we are looking into strange stories for ridiculous history, we
have a pretty high likelihood of running into some shenanigan
by one military or another. Because militaries and governments drive
a lot of technological innovation, right, There are a lot
(03:19):
of things that are now common in the civilian world
started out as military initiatives for the purposes of waging war.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It's right, And there's always kind of a disconnect where
you think, oh, that's like crazy future technology, but terns
out the military was doing it like twenty years ago,
and then it kind of gets when they're like done
with it, then it gets leaked out into the public
sphere and you can kind of you know, get a
thumb drive or like a PlayStation or whatever, or a
GPS system exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, and this this is something that's been on our
collective minds for some time, both in this show and
other shows.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That we've done. So we were over the moon when
our good pal friend of the show, Christopher Ahasiotis hit
us up earlier and said, Hey, what what do you
guys think about weird military weapons that never quite made it?
We said, something to the effect of holy smokes, will
(04:10):
you please hang out with us on air? And by
golly by gum he agreed. Welcome back to the show,
Ridiculous Historians. Christopher hasiotis, Hey, thanks for having me. And
then we all hugged, and then we all hugged again
and again and again.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
We've been hugging this whole time and doing light handholds. Yeah, yeah,
So Christopher, of course, thank you for returning to the show.
If anyone listening through some gross miscarriage of cosmic justice
hasn't had the chance to check out your appearance on
our Louie Louie episode, I would say, I don't know
(04:46):
what you think, nol. I would say, pause this episode
and listen to that. It's one of my personal favorite
episodes we've ever done. So, Christopher, what inspired you to
think about this topic?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
There are, as you mentioned, You know, the military contributes
so many things to society in terms of technological innovations,
lots of great stuff that we've gotten out of, you know,
the minds behind military weaponry. But to get to those successes,
you know, sometimes you got to break a couple what
nuclear bombs eggs to make a god we're gonna stretch
(05:18):
this metaphor out to make some sort of omelet of
death and destruction and death omelet.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Right, Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But yeah, there are just a lot of examples of
really strange things out there where you would think this
is an Internet hoax the first time you hear about it,
or you would think surely someone on some committee would
have said, guys, wait a minute, that's that's just not
gonna work. But I probably a lot of you out
there listening have been in a situation where you know
(05:50):
your boss has an idea, and your boss really loves
the idea, and you're thinking, I know that's not a
good idea, and everyone around here knows that's not a
good idea, but the boss really wants to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And sometimes bosses like to throw out big, wild ideas
to justify their existence, you know, in the hopes that
it'll like be a big splash, but a lot of
time to just kind of fizzles. And today we're going
to talk about some good fizzles.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, fizzles splashes kabooms uh puts. Yeah, all the onomatopeias
out there.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
That's true yet, and we have we have compiled some
of our favorites. We do have to say from the beginning,
we're not going to get to every single spectacular, strange,
hilarious failure.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Now we're going to do to a piece. Yeah, we're going.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
We're gonna We're gonna, maybe, if the winds at our
back and everything goes according to plan, hit up a
total of six. But we have curated these, and we
want to know what you think. You know, what do
you think about this?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Christopher Sinture our guest today, would you like to do
the honors and kick off the first invention?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Guys, just sit right back and I'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip that departed from a
Russian port upon a rounded ship.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Was a mighty sail in. Man, I'm sorry, I can't
not do that.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, I don't know what's Gilligan and Russian Comrade Ben,
I know you've got.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
A Russian accent, uh Coln Red gilgelf I love it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The first thing I want to talk to you about
are the round ships of the Russian Navy. We're talking
eighteen sixties technology. Two ships in particular, the Vitzi Admiral
Popov and the Novgorod. Now these were coastal defense ships.
You have to think back to the time of the
Russian War. So Russia had just suffered some defeats at
the hands of France and some of their allies, and
(07:46):
they had actually been banned from building and maintaining battleships
in the Black Sea. But Russia still needed to defend
their land and their sea, and specifically we're talking about
the Kerch Strait. Now that's the if you think back
to your geography class, the part of the world right
between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. So
you've got a little straight where ships passed through and
(08:06):
they need to defend it. And this task of creating
a defense was given to Vice Admiral Popov. He said,
I'm gonna make you some ships to defend the waters.
He said, I'm gonna make you some round ships to
defend the waters. Next, it's three hundred and sixty degrees
of protection RW floating platforms kind of tank like, not
intended for quick fleet battle, but just intended to defend
(08:30):
more like death bullies. Yeah, so he came up with
this circular boat. He wanted to build ten of them,
but the Russian Navy said, let's let's go, let's build two,
you know, and then we'll talk about the rest. So
I want you to picture just a circular platform, a
couple hundred feet across, Okay, six propellers on the back,
(08:50):
two cannons on the top. Now let me ask you.
Have you guys been canoeing?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yes? Yeah, no, kayaking? Kayaking?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Okay, So have you ever been kayaking and just road
just on one side?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
You kind of go around in circles like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Now imagine you're just firing a cannon just on one side.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
And then it accelerates your spin.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, and you're a completely circular boat.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So this wasn't moored in any way to the seafloor.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So this was a ship. It was a monitor, which
is a type of small light warship defined by kind
of oversized guns. So you've got this round ship, two
guns on top, and anytime one gun would fire, it
would just spin the ship around in a circle. And
they tried and tried and tried to figure out a
way to counterbalance this. They tried to run the propellers
(09:40):
in the opposite direction of the firing. It just didn't work,
and it just came down to a severe misunderstanding and
or just plane ignoring the physics on the part of
Admiral Popov. Well, isn't there a vodka named after I
don't know if it's named after him, but it is
named that. Okay, Well, maybe maybe there was vodka vodka
(10:01):
best forgotten from the it's no mister Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
You know, I know it's pretty low shelf.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
But so maybe those were his two big ideas. Round
warships and you know, low rent vodka.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, he thought that if you if you created a
really shallow round broad boat, it would float really well
on the water.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And it did.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It floated fine. But the problem is what makes boats
so successful is the shape. They're sort of long. They
cut through the water.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
When you have a wide broad boat with six propellers
trying to push forward, you're pushing the entire mass. There's
a lot more drag. It just does not work. And
nobody said, hey, Popov, let's not do this. So the
ships were built, we're talking eighteen seventy. They actually, despite
their ridiculous nature, were put into service defended the straits.
(10:53):
Didn't do it particularly well.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So they did these embarrassing tests and they tried to
fix it, but they realized they couldn't, but they just
went ahead and forged on.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, the thing is is the tests themselves weren't that embarrassing.
We're still in early days of tank testing. And by
tank I mean a giant tank of water. You know,
it takes a lot to build a ship, and you
don't want to just put it out on the water and.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Because then there you are. So they did models.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Right, Well, they built a big tank of water, built
some models, and you know, these tanks were still water,
and that's one of the things. These ships worked fine
in still water. But let me read you a little
bit about this ship from the book World's Worst Warships,
a very specific book out in two thousand and two
from Anthony Preston. He said the Vita Admiral pop Up
(11:37):
and the Novgorod were quote too slow to stem the
current and proved very difficult to steer. In practice. The
discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out
of control and even contra rotating. Some of the six
propellers were unable to keep the ship on correct heading.
They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything
more than a flat calm and could not aim or
load their guns under such circumstances.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So wouldn't that throw off the trajector of the shot
as well? Right, So it would not only screw up
the navigation of the boat in the direction, it would
like be completely impossible to aim.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, I think you would have to just be really
lucky or hit the broadside of a boat that's nearby,
or try to shoot it, I don't know, at the
water as a warning. Basically, these were in serve. These
two boats were in service for about three decades. They
just kind of floated there, they did their thing. Ultimately,
they were put into storage in eighteen ninety three, and
right before the First World War kicked off.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
They were just scrapped.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Because they figured they could use the materials for something
a little bit less cartoonishly ineffective.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Or it was just wasting everyone's time. You know, you
had better things to do than to just keep a
giant round boat that Honestly, it looks like a toy.
It looks like a child's toy that you would float
in a bathtub. So it doesn't even look scary, No,
it looks perfect circle.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah no, I yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And we've got some photos we can share on ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
What's the logic though, is it? What's this pop off
fellow thinking, like, is he trying to cut corners? Oh? Wow,
literally cut all the corners.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, he really just want to come up with a
really smart idea, you know, it's the kind of thing
you want to be the one who solves the problem. Yeah,
and he just didn't. There were other round boat proponents
at the time. There's a guy in England in eighteen
fifties who was really all about the roundhul People thought
it would add stability to the ship, and it added
(13:19):
stability in certain circumstances, but in rain, in wind, in
choppy waters, you know, the kind of things that happen
when you're at sea.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
No dice.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So one important note for everyone listening who's thinking maybe
the same thing I initially thought, which is, well, okay, sure,
this ship rotates wildly anytime the gun is fired. The
guns are fired. Rather, why don't they just make these
weapons of absolute chaos and have the guns fire quickly?
So this stuff is just sort of spinning Tasmanian Devil
(13:50):
style firing on all sides. The problem, I believe is
the loading time, right, because every shot was so these
were order type rounds.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah, this is still eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, so we
don't have machine gun technology on a boat like this.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And they can't load it while it's spinning. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So I would be very curious to find out how
long it took them to shoot, get back to a calm,
stable state, and then reload and shooting.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I guess in theory, if you fired both cannons at
precisely the right time, it would stabilize itself. But that
seems so so unlikely and.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
A wasting a shot because obviously your target's only going
to be on one side or the other chances are
so you got to coordinate and be like, all right, guys,
we got a three two one go oh yeah, this
is comical. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I mean, in Popov's defense, he was trying to solve
problems and ignoring the problems generated by his supposed solutions.
The ships that were round like this could be much
more heavily armored so they could withstand more attacks. So
he did solve that problem, but it just kind of
ignored with the failings.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I think we can definitely call that a military fail.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yes, Popovka as it was known, the type of ship
they named it after him, to his glory and or
maybe in glory.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, what's next? Do I get to go? Do you
want to go? I do, because I really want to
say these two words. Yeah, I go for it. Rocket bullets, yes, okay,
rocket bullets. That's fine, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So one of the first questions would be aren't all
bullets propelled?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
What makes these different? Well? These these are propelled using
rocket fuel? Nice or jet fuel, let's let's be fair. Yeah,
so this is uh, this might sound like something out
of a James Bond movie, and as it turns out,
it actually is. This weapon called the gyro Jet made
by two gentlemen named Robert Mainhart and Arthur T. Beal
(15:51):
who started a company, an arms company called MBA, which
was short for Manhart and Bell Associates. They decided they
wanted regular guns just weren't cut for them. They want
to do something a little more futuristic because this is
the time when we wanted to rocketize everything.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
And so their company was NBA, right, yeah, NBA, and
I should have been like Magic Bullet Association or something.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Thanks, thank you. So the first thing they worked on
was something called the fin Jet, which shot these tiny
little needle type rocket bullets out of this weapon. And
the thing that was cool about rocket bullets that so
what I'm gonna keep calling them is they were self propelling.
They didn't need that much complicated mechanisms in the gun
itself because these bullets literally had a rod of jet
(16:34):
fuel running through them and a little element that could
get hit by the hammer didn't even need a firing pin,
and then it would propel itself out of the muzzle.
And I actually saw a really great video where some
guys with a YouTube channel got ahold of one of these,
the Gyrojet model, and you can see they did slow
motion photography where the bullet exits the muzzle and then
a little ways out it gets rocketized, so when it
(16:57):
comes out initially it's actually going quite slow. So one
of the issues with this gun was it didn't work
very well at point blank range because you know, people
would joke that you could stop it with your hand,
and you know, it might break some bones in your hand,
but it certainly would not penetrate your skin.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And its range. If you fired a bullet that's moving
not slowly, its trajectory wouldn't stay constant.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, that's the thing about it. It used a technology
called spin stabilization, which I'm a little foggy on the
exact because I'm not like a ballistic specialist or anything.
But the bullets had these three holes drilled in the
back of them that when it would cause them to
rotate really really fast, and they would achieve such an
(17:39):
incredible speed once they actually got to their maximum velocity,
And a lot of that had to do with the
fact that they came out of the barrel like spinning.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So it's sort of like a rifling technology exactly like that,
but not because the barrels were smooth. They didn't actually
have that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That's what a regular gun it has bored out kind
of like little whatever you call it, markings or kind
of grooves exactly. That caused the bullet to do that,
because otherwise it would just go wild and not be
accurate at all. Turns out, it still wasn't very accurate
because of the fact that this rocket fuel would burn
at pretty unpredictable rates and you could never quite predict
(18:16):
what it was going to do. So this video that
I saw, which is really really worth checking out, if
you just searched testing gyrojet rocket guns, why were they
a commercial failure? On YouTube you can find these guys
that do this amazing test of this. You can't find
these anymore because the parts don't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, I imagine that they look kind of like a
like a bottle rocket, you know, where they just sort
of spin off wildly you can't quite decide which way
it's going to go.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
No, they were much more stable than that, Yeah, but
they certainly were not as stable as a traditional gun.
They did some tests where they measured how, you know,
how accurate they were compared to a regular gun, and
it wasn't insane, but it was just very unpredictable. And
there's one part where it just kind of like went
up all of a sudden and like shot the GoPro
camera off of the dummy that they were firing at. So,
(19:02):
but they had other models. They had a more of
a rifle with a scope on it, and they had
something that kind of looks like a machine gun, a carbine,
but these were they loaded one bullet at a time
and it was semi automatic, so you could fire one
after the other, but it certainly wasn't fully automatic and
this is pretty neat in order to keep the rocket
fuel from like leaking out or to keep it contained properly.
(19:24):
These guys were super innovative. They figured out that titanium
oxide was the best chemical for containing this stuff so
it didn't accidentally ignite, just like in the casing. And
they just went down to the local paint store and
bought the white paint that had the most titanium oxide content,
And so you can actually see they got these rocket
(19:44):
fuel rods in these long kind of like almost like
big thick pencil lead and then they lathed it on
like an actual lathe to get it cut down to
the right size to fit these bullets, and then they
spray painted them white on the outside and then put
them in the casing and it did discharge a shell.
It shot the whole thing out. So that's what made
them different.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
To question, Yeah, how much did these costs and did
the cost play a role in their failure other than
they're completely hilarious.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, lack of reliability and this maybe is a very
good military one because it doesn't feel like they were
developed for the military, but it was too good of
like a weaponry fail to not throw in here and
especially the fact that it was very much featured in
You Only Live Twice, the James Bond movie, because of
the fact that you look at them, they look like
a cool like spy gun.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely that. I mean, given that it's full
of rocket fuel, I wouldn't want to carry that around
in my pocket. But it's a it's a cool looking gun.
It is a cool looking gun. Not to mention that
apparently they could engineer the bullets so that they would
dissolve in the human body.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Cool wow, And that was a big part of it,
I believe in the Bond film because that way you
would leave no trace and there would be no forensic
evidence to tie anybody to it. To the mice bullets exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But I think that they did at least get tested
by the US Army, if not specifically this brand of
rocket bullets, something something like this. They had a gyro
jet had an assault rifle that the Army tested briefly.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I didn't run across that myself. It
was a very bit of a blip in the history
of these weapons. But I mean, the Army's gonna get
wind of any new fangled device. They'll give it a go,
they'll throw a little money at it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
But if you're going to miniaturize something, I mean you might.
You could. You could load that thing with little tiny
explosives in the tip. You could have like a tiny
little ballistic missile. And it's interesting. The weapons failed because
of largely they were expensive and they were a pain
to make because to drill those holes I was talking
about that that created the spin, they had to have
these tapered drill bits which had to be custom machined themselves,
(21:51):
and they would always break. So to make that the
ammunition was very expensive because again the guns themselves only
really had a hammer and the firing pin was fixed
because it actually would push the hammer would push it backwards,
and then the firing pin would pierce the little primer
that would then set off the chain reaction that would
like the rocket fuel, but you would see it come
(22:11):
out of the gun and it wouldn't start shooting a
little rocket tail out of it until it was about
halfway to the target. So, I mean, it's it's pretty fascinating.
But the company NBA actually went on to make a
lot of non lethal ammunition like beanbag shot, and they
made little pen guns like little pen projectile things that
were that were used in the military.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So cool, pretty cool, right, yeah, And that's ridiculous. I mean,
I don't know. I think it's more interesting, but it's
just a very roundabout way of doing something that was
already done pretty well, sort of like but but but
these use rocket fuel. These use rocket fuel. Guys, have
you heard about rocket fuel?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I like to think in the future, when humanity is
gone and the world is overtaken by let's say, mice,
U super smart intelligent mice. Yeah, absolutely, they're going to
find the guns and these will act like giant bazookas
or missile launchers. I'm just picturing a cute little mouse
holding one of these guns on its shoulder, launching rockets
at you know cats.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I love that image. And last thing I do want
to say that in the video that I saw, the
ammunition they had was was very, very old and it
all worked, you know, And I would have thought that
the fuel would have degraded or something would have happened
to make it not function properly, or it would just
explode in the gun and not do what it was
supposed to do. And it wasn't perfectly accurate, but It
(23:29):
definitely reached the target every time and didn't just like
zoom off somewhere else entirely. It just didn't, you know,
keep a perfect bead, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, you know what the answer is to all this, that,
the expensive, boring tips and all that. Lasers. Lasers, Yeah, always, yeah.
I am not a scientist, I am not a ballistics expert.
But as with all things in life, the answer is
probably just lasers.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And you are. You are a well known laser enthusiast. Yeah,
why not.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's one of the first things people told me about
you when we started working together.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
They're just neat, They're great. Oh man.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We used to have a very like an industrial class
laser at the office years and years ago. It mysteriously disappeared.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Would it make a cool laser sound? Like in the
really cheesy techno songs?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I feel like every time we played around with it
and we were literally just playing with a dangerous laser,
one of us was making sound making. Yeah, because it
was better than the click click.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Why did you Why did you have this to what
was it? What was it for? You know, just to
learn about stuff? Lasers are cool?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, it wasn't powerful enough. To physically cut things. But
it was one of those lasers that would do permanent
damage to your eye. Got it and if you shot
it towards someone's eye, and we do some good for kids,
good for great for children.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was at a Black Crows concert once and someone
had one of those laser pointers and was shooting at
the singer guy, and he got very upset. He threatened to,
uh take it away from him and put it someplace
like uh yeah, Poughkeepsie in his pocket. Yeah, it was
gonna confiscated, not give it back. It sounds a very
substitute teacher vibe there. So we've talked about an amazing ship.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We've talked about some uh some I would say, very
innovative bullets. Both of those things on the offset seem
like they are worth investigating, right, I'd like to give
you one that I'm on the fence about, especially because
in my past life hosting car stuff, I learned to
love ridiculous vehicles. Have you ever looked at a jeep
(25:38):
and thought I would get one of these if it
was also a helicopter? Because if you have been thinking
about this, I want to introduce everyone to the Hafner
Rota Buggy. It is a British experimental aircraft that looks
kind of doofy.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So it looks like exactly what you said. It looks
like a helicopter truck. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And what's ridiculous to me is there's having the rotors
and the wheels.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It's sort of transit wise. It's kind of like wearing
Paris suspenders and a belt. So the Rota Buggy came
about as as a solution to the problem of air
dropping off road vehicles and a guy named Raoul Hafner
of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment created this after they
(26:31):
had an earlier invention that had some success, which was
the Rota shoot. They took this rotor thing and ran
with it. It was an experimental one person kit rotor thing.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So it's kind of like a helicopter that you sit
on that is sort of like a segue with blades.
It just seems that seems dangerous. It looks like a
wind sock or something like that. Yeah, it's hovering behind this.
Is it tethered to that truck bed?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
It is tethered. They though they were probably be picking
up speed and then the air would catch here. It's
a kite essentially with.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
It's like a giant kite or like a big rudder
that flies behind your back, but also you have helicopter
blades on your head.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I think the emphasis was to look whimsical in this,
but it enjoyed some, as we said, some success, which
led to the creation of the Rota buggy. I think
similar to the way you feel about rocket bullets. No,
I think I just like saying Rota buggy.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Rotabuggy's fun. But Ben, do you think they were trying
to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies with whimsy.
I think they were trying to strike whimsy into their
heart of their enemies. Yeah. So here's the crazy thing.
It's so un aerodynamic.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It looks so poorly designed because jeeps and helicopters have
two very different ways of transporting people and two very
different footprints design wise. But their initial tests were were
pretty promising because they weren't testing it stemmed to stern,
soup to nuts, an entire operation. They were testing aspects
(28:08):
of an operation. They started by dropping it from around
eight feet or so, and then they say, okay, well
it can just drop eight feet it'll be fine, and
things didn't really go wrong until November nineteen forty three,
when they tried to toe it to get enough speed
to get the Roto buggy into the air.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
It didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It didn't work the first time on the sixteenth of November,
and it wasn't till the twenty seventh of November that
they got a Bentley auto to pull it, and this
unwieldy machine was able to become airborne and it reached
gliding speeds of forty five miles an hour, which is
surprisingly good, you know for.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
A totally not aerodynamic object.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
A jeep with a helicopter button. Yeah, but okay, so
what when did it all go south? Ben? When did
it all go south?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
So would you believe me if I told you in
the parking lot on our office. Now I'm kidding, I
wish I could take us out of a Rota buggy
ride went? It went severely south. As they continued testing,
there were huge problems with vibration, speed and instability, and
(29:19):
they kept improving it. Nineteen forty four they got it
to a flight speed of seventy miles an hour or
one hundred and thirteen kilometers, and the last flight in
September of nineteen forty four.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It broke a record for itself.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It was able to fly for ten minutes and was
described as highly satisfactory. And the thing is that the
British Army probably would have continued trying to make Roda
buggies if it were not for the introduction of large
gliders that could carry vehicles. So gliders like the air
(29:55):
speed horsa which are just they look like planes, but
they're these things if you see the picture, can carry vehicles.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
So it's the kind of situation where whoever came up
with the road a buggy solved a problem pretty well,
but as they were doing that, someone else is working
on the same problem and just totally surpasses that.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
The laser disc conundrum. Yeah, I mean, but can't you
just drive a jeep out of the back of an
airplane and have it like a jeep parachute, like in
Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
One would one would think. I guess what they were
grappling with was a failure of material science at the
time too, because then you would have to build a
fabric strong enough and resilient enough not to just break.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
That's true, and maybe this, uh, this cheepicopter could then
speed up and take off again and return. So like
let's say you were attacking a little island, you could
drop them all off, they could come back. You could
have a cheepicopter for a while.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It does sound like fun.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, take a chepicopter ride, see the Grand Canyon, see
the world. It sounds like a like a nice whims
a holiday things.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I would just prefer though, if like the blades like
folded up, like in a really cool way with like
a sound effect.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Like so you're talking about transformers.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It and a
lot of flying cars do that now, or flying car prototypes?
This was eight minute.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
We have flying what do you know that we don't?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We have flying car prototypes, as in like one to
two copies of something like Terrafugia.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So it's like, finally it's the future. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So we're all good friends with our pal Scott Benjamin,
who's a wonderful, brilliant aerodype man, but he hates flying cars,
and for the better part of the last six years
he and I have been very beefed up about this.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Look.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I get that they're dangerous. I understand that I get
that it would be disastrous to have flying cars. But
I don't want everyone to have flying cars. I just
want one because as long as there's only one, things
are going to be relatively fine. You guys are cool.
Would you guys want one? I think we could get
the number up to four without we just wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well, there's a whole conundrum that goes into flying cars.
I mean, you ever heard of airplanes. We have to
have a whole system of air traffic controllers and you know,
coordinated takeoffs and landings. And if there were flying cars,
just willy nilly, there'd be a lot of air mid
air collisions. I think.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, but we figured it out right. I mean, I
imagine there's a podcast from the late eighteen hundreds on
whatever format they podcasted in back then, saying, would you
have an.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Automobile a horseless carriage?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
We have horses. You know what would happen if you
had ten people in a town with a car. That
would be madness.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I think that is etched podcast right into wax cylinders. Yes,
absolutely so, there we are road a buggy. I like it.
If you are a road of bugs that you have
missed this period in history. Do not despair. The last
thing I'll say about it is you can go to
a town with an amazing name. You're gonna love this.
No Middle Wallop. And in Middle Wallop there.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Is a museum of Army Flying that has a replica
of a Roada Buggy as well as a road a
tank which is the same thing, but a tank.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
That seems like you would need much bigger blades to
keep a tank aloft.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, it was a weird idea, but this.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Is the kind of thing where if if any ridiculous
historians are listening at home, and you're enjoying this show
with your who knows you know, your your daughters, your sons,
you could make a little toy Roada buggy, you know,
just go buy a toy helicopter, snap off the blades.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
That's called a transformer.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
No no, no, I'm taking it. Buy two things, gloom together,
make your own toys. Have a little Rota Buggy warfare.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Thing going on at home, the toy mashup.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I like to Yeah, So what's what's next, Christopher?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Well?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I started off with some wildly propulsive cannons, and that
is where we are headed again, but this time we're
staying stateside. We're not going to Russia. We're in the
United States. Well, let me correct that we're in the
Confederate States of America.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Oh boy.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Or in the lead up to what would become that
you're seen a double barrel old canon.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I feel as if I can picture it in my
mind popped right in when you see the words.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, double barrel cannon. Right, you've got think of a shotgun.
Double barrel shotgun shoots out twice as much shot.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
But can't you unload it one barrel at a time
as well? You can, yeah, because there's like a little
compound trigger, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
But you don't want to do that with a double
barrel canon.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I was wondering. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
So the double barrel canon we're going to talk about
is from the American Civil War, but it's not a
purely American invention. The idea of this goes back to
sixteen forty two so Renaissance Italy, Florence in particular, and
there was an inventor named Antonio Petrini who came up
with the idea of a double barrel canon. It was
put into action though, in eighteen sixty two by a
(34:44):
man named John Gilliland. Now Gleiland was a mechanic and
dentist living in Athens, Georgia. Okay, oh all right, yeah,
not too far from where we are. We're here in
Atlanta recording, So about an hour and a half up
the road, Galliland said, I'm going to take two cannons,
put them together in one sort of one molded entity.
They've got two side by side boars in a three
(35:07):
inch diameter, and you've got these two six pound balls
next to one another. But that's not it. You've also
got a ten foot chain connecting the two balls.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I have heard of this. Yeah, that sounds dangerous.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Well, you know, think of the what are they called
the yeah bolos that gauchos in South America used to
capture birds or horses or whatever. So you've got these
two balls connected by a chain, propelled from a cannon.
Think of the destruction possible, these spinning balls of death
a chain in between them. It's just gonna tear through
(35:41):
the Union soldiers right, just cut you right in half.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You would you would think, imagineah, you think you think?
So it's not quite what happened. Now.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Gilliland was passionate about this idea. He actually put out
a subscription service to raise funds to develop the prototype.
He raised about three hundred and fifty dollars. I don't
know if those were Confederate or Union dollars. And he
built it, he tested it, and reports from the time
say they blasted the cannon two balls a chain, It
(36:10):
tore through a cornfield, it knocked down a chimney, it
killed a cow. But it was just so wild and
uncontrollable that the Confederate Army said, no, no, no, this
is ridiculous. We do not want this.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
In terms of accuracy, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Would have to fire both cannons simultaneously because they're sitting
parallel to one another, but slightly splayed, a slight degree
of difference in the direction in which they propel the ball.
And that's so that the two cannon balls that sit
next to one another, when they fly out of the
cannon will spread out and kind of pull the chain
(36:43):
between them. Okay, but getting that exactly right with the
eighteen sixties technology, you can't be that precise. And so
what happens is even a split second of timing difference
in firing one or the other side of the cannon,
or a little bit of wind or a little bit
of who knows, some material in the barrel will just
send one ball slightly faster than the other, and all
(37:05):
of a sudden you get something that's sort of rip
sawing through the terrain, going in completely the wrong direction. Now,
that could be destructive. It tore down some trees. But yeah,
it's just too risky to bring into warfare.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I got a good idea. What's your idea? Bigger cannons,
bigger balls, bigger balls, longer chains. Well no, not even
just one, just one barrel, one barrel, bigger, So big cannons,
big cannons.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, that's interesting because I heard about the ball and
chain stuff before. But I always thought to your point, Noel,
I always thought that the it was a situation where
there was a single cannon and they loaded the balls
sort of atop each other with the chain hanging out,
and then shot it out that way.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, that seems like that would make more sense than
having two sources of propulsion.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Let's double down.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Did anybody try like a triple barreled cannon.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I think they have that at Burger Cane, right, it
comes with the kid, comes with cheese. Yes, there's a
special sauce but yeah, so this canon, it was just
a total failure. But Galliland believed so passionately in his invention.
He kept trying to make the case to the Confederate army.
The canon was shipped from Athens, Georgia to Augusta, where
it was put into more testing because he really really
(38:19):
thought it would work. Ultimately, no, no, no is what
the Confederates said. It was sent back to Athens. It
was used in battle, but just as a signal, so
kind of a warning shot to let the Confederates know
that the US troops were arriving, so you know, as
canons are used. And you can see that canon today.
It still sits in Athens, Georgia. It was sold by
(38:41):
the city for a while, luckily was not scrapped or anything,
and the city bought it again and it now sits
atop a hill in Athens, Georgia, right next to city Hall.
There's a little plaque. You can kind of go look
at it and say, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Have you seen it? I have seen it. Yeah, See,
I used to live in Athens and this is all
ringing a bell when you were talking about it, and
I feel like I've seen it before.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah, it's at the corner of College Avenue and what not,
West Washington. I think corner of Clayton Street.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Yeah, and it's it's it's on the Northeastern corner. Pointed
straight up at the Yankees. Oh oh wow. Not that
it's a threat or anything. It doesn't work, and it
never worked, but you know, it might as well.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Might as well have the impotent rage represented in a statue.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh that's a good one, Christopher. Yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, if you guys want to take a field trip,
we'll just hop on over to Athens.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Let's go. I'm all about I haven't been back in
too long. It's a good place, all right. Well, I
guess I'm gonna stick with kind of retro futuristic kind
of ones. Cool. This one is. I'm just gonna call
it the hoverboard. Heard of it? Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
(39:54):
It turns out it was real.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So I feel like a lot of what we're talking about,
at least what you guys are talking about, could come
straight out of the back the Future movies. You've got
the flying cars, You've got a hoverboard.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Rocket bullets. Yeah, okay, it's a Hoverboard's a bit of
a misnomer. It's really more like a helicopter platform. Okay,
So this is something that was designed by the Hiller
Company for the US Navy. Originally it was called the
VS one Pawnee and it's basically a disc with fans
(40:23):
underneath it, and it used something called rotor duct technology.
So here's the interesting part about it. I also used
something called kinesthetic control. Can you guys guess what that is?
Controlling by moving your body? That's right, which is why
I think of the hoverboard. So yeah, literally, a person
manning one of these things, or piloting one of these
(40:43):
things rather would be standing atop the strange little disc
in kind of like a cage with no controls except
for a throttle. So all they had control over was altitude.
With an actual device to navigate, they have to lean
the left lean of the lean four lean backward, and
so it's almost like a segue in that respect. So
(41:06):
they definitely tested these. They had a prototype which was
much smaller than the second one. They kind of made
the whole thing a little bigger, added a little bit
more stability, and then the third one is massive, and
it was so massive that it wouldn't even allow you
to do the kinesthetic controls because it was just so unwieldy.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
They had like a group of guys run exactly now,
come back center go, I know.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
So they added a seat to this one in more
traditional helicopter type control, so there were actually some steering
capabilities on this third one. So this was in nineteen
fifty three. The US Navy's Office of Naval Research essentially
gave this company, Hillar Helicopters, a contract to develop one
(41:52):
of these. It was a twin engined ducted fan VTOL,
which I think we all agree stands for verse takeoff
and landing better. Yeah, no runway, no runway required. That's
that's the one positive thing about this this device.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Well, also I imagined it inspired a lot of Mega
Man villains. To me, it sounds like kind of thing
it's like right out of a nineteen eighties video game,
which is like bad guys fun flying platforms exactly.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Unfortunately, these things were very slow and they couldn't really
figure out like any kind of real practical use for
it in battle. There is in fact a video though,
I'd like to play a clip from of one of
the first flight tests of this thing.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
Well, this is quite a machine you have here. I
suppose you've come as close as anyone to operating a
flying carpet.
Speaker 5 (42:44):
How does it feel, Well, it feels fine. And the
nice thing about it's very.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Easy to fly.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
What do you think, phil is a truly revolutionary characteristic
of this machine.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Well, I mentioned earlier it was so easy to fly.
We do it by shifting our weight. Is the way
we control the aircript.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
I say by that, you mean you don't have any
mechanical controls as we normally think of them in then aeroplanes,
such as a stick in the rudder.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
Oh, we have a throttle, which all aircraft have, but
we control it by shifting our weight using our feet.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So yeah, again, he even says the interviewer, like, I
guess it's because it's close to anyone's coming to fly
and cop it. It's all about the future, you know,
it's all about magic and technology. It's great, but yeah,
they don't go very high. They seem a little. The
guy keeps talking about how easy it is to fly,
but it just doesn't seem like you could really get
it to go forward very quickly at all, or be
(43:37):
very precise in your movements on it.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
You know, yeah, And it seems like the kind of
thing where if as you're training people to use it,
you would just break a lot of them. And I
also wonder what the point of it is. I mean,
if it doesn't go that high, it can't be used
for reconnaissance. If it moves as you move, you probably
can't use it like a heavy rifle, because then you might,
you know, throw yourself off, and it'll be like you're
in a round ship. Yeah, exactly. You could even sneeze, yeah,
(44:03):
and just crash.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
So maybe it's more of a proof of concept because
one would imagine there surely there would be ways to
mitigate those issues. Even just fixing one of those issues
would make it a more worthwhile investment by a military,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
And of course they did take them out of commission
entirely by nineteen sixty three, but it did offer some
pretty valuable information, of research wise, for technology they would
later use for more practical vertical takeoff and landing planes,
which which are a thing I don't thought that was
kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I agree, Yeah, it's the kind of thing that reminds
me too of technology you know, supposedly coming from Project
Bluebook and that investigation into alien technology in Area fifty one.
This weird flying saucer stuff, it kind of makes me
think of that, and I know it's.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Not real, but oh, I wish I'd done that. Maybe
it could be.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I was having such a tough time off the air
preparing for this episode because there's an extensive list of
ridiculous experiments but also very promising, somewhat space age stuff
that militaries have gotten up to in secret. And I
(45:18):
wanted to find one of the dumbest ideas, not one
that has some promise, not one that's innovative.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Let's try something new.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
The dumbest, a dumbest idea that I found is the
ball tank. The ball tank, the ball tank, tell me
more it We are a family show. It's a tank.
It's been known alternately as the kugle Banzer or the
tumbleweed tank. The thing about this is we'll start with
(45:49):
one story. We'll start with the tumbleweed tank. There's an
inventor in Texas.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
His name is A. J.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Richardson, and in nineteen thirty six he says, you know,
the First World War, which they just called the World
War at that time, no war. Yeah, can you imagine
calling that war the First World War. Back then it was.
He said it was well. He was haunted frankly by
the sheer mass of human suffering and carnage and death
(46:18):
that occurred. And in his estimation, one of the reasons
so many people died in World War One was because
of trench warfare. People couldn't aim very well. They could
just blindly throw mortars toward the enemy's trench and hope
they hit someone who's a soldier rather than a civilian,
(46:40):
rather than medical personnel and all this other stuff. So
he said the best idea would be to send heavily armored,
motorized bunkers across that no man's land that kills zone
between the trenches, because again, I just want to emphasize
this important. Later he thought the main problem was that
(47:00):
you couldn't really see who you were firing at, and
so he decided that he would invent this thing called
the tumbleweed tank. It is a sphere. It has room
for three people. It has each of the three people
are manning one gun. I would like to show you, gentlemen,
a picture of this of this design. I want you
(47:24):
to get a look at it, because the guns you
see the guns you see have a lot of random placement.
There's one pointing toward the air, there's one pointing toward
the ground, and then there's one just out there on
the right, and the one on the right can swivel
by the way.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
It sort of like cars in the newer Jurassic Park movies,
I guess it is.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Yeah, yeah, because those are two seaters. That's two seaters,
so this one is an uncomfortable three seater. And just
from that initial picture you guys saw, the tumbleweed tank
has some problems.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
The kind of thing that should be drawn and then
immediately torn up.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
How is it going to roll if there's random guns
poking out every which way? Do they collapse? It has
a ring it is propelled by uh.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Oh, so it only goes forward and back. Yeah, it
doesn't roll in like, not even three hundred and sixty degrees,
but the entire spherical gyroscopic motion, it just goes straight
back and forward.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Let me let me correct myself there in the diagram,
from what we understand, the actual the sphere wherein the
soldiers are located, that is enclosed within two rotating outer
shells that are each like bowls round the thing, so
it can it can turn a little bit in theory.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
So it's sort of like a deadly gerbil ball kind
of yeah, hamster mechanism with guns, yep, and men.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
And it had some it had some good points.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
It could be very easily sealed against poison gas attacks.
And Richardson also thought it would present a much smaller
target for enemy shells and that they would glance off
of the curved sides. But remember how we mentioned the
part where his primary beef with World War One was
that people were just blindly throwing.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, you couldn't see people. So this was his way
around that somehow.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So the guys sealed inside this tank, Christopher frantically firing
guns in all directions, could not see outside. They had
no idea what was going on.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
So it would maybe work if you could somehow catapult
one of these balls into the middle of your enemy
and just shoot in willy nilly directions. This just sounds
like a terrible, terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
I mean, imagine, yeah, terrible is the right word. Imagine
how terrifying this is for the operators they can't see outside,
how terrifying it is for the enemy.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
What the hell is that?
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Are they even aiming for us? How terrifying it is
for nearby troops who are like, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm
on your side.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
The only way I could imagine this would be worse
is if instead of a track, they all had to
run inside to make it going. You know, like those
big kind of translucent plastic balls you see on America's
fundies home videos or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yeah, sorbian that's what what zorbian zeo or what are
you saying? Is that like furries zorbian zo r B
I n G So like a furbie. It's where you
get inside that giant plastic ball sorbing zorbian Is that
an acronym? And then they fight? Uh they fight? Yeah, yeah,
they've they've fought.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
I don't know if it's I don't know if it's
an acronym. I know it's it's meant to cite the
fact that you're rolling downhill in an orb.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
So like maybe zero gravity or.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
I think there's but I think there's proper gravity. Yeah, yeah,
well neither. Hell, I've also seen them on water. Yes,
you can get inside those on water and just roll
them around aquasorb aquasorbing, but I like that, but you
can see through through those, which I think is key here.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
So aquasorbing, rotocopter, battle, rocket, chip, bullet failure, disaster war.
That's what we're talking at right now.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That's what we're talking Oh, there's one other point.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
We do know that there was at least one other
group of people who thought this balltank idea was just
the top notch military concept of the time. It was Germany.
We know that during World War Two Germany designed that
google poundcer the ball tank, and we don't know what
(51:35):
they meant to do with it. We don't know how
often it was used. Clearly not that much, but we
haven't found any plans or documents about it. Only one
survived the war. It was captured in Manchuria in nineteen
forty five. You can go see it in the Kubinka
Museum's collection of German vehicles. It was apparently used by
(51:57):
some unfortunate German and the Germans, in their part did
include a small visor or small slit so the operator
could see what they were rolling.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
That's nice, that's thoughtful. Yeah, they learned from the tumbleweed tank.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
And that's what they learned is just let them look outside.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Just see.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
It feels like there's a lot more lessons to be
learned from the ball tank.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
This was such a cool idea for an episode. Thank
you for bringing this to us.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Absolutely yeah, always a pleasure to have you in the
studio and kind of kick the ball tank around nice.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Speaking of kicking, if any ridiculous historians want to kick
it with me over on another show this week, you guys, okay,
if I plug something.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Oh please plug away.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
So ridiculous historians. If you're listening to this show, I
know you like learning about stuff in the way back,
So point your podcast machines over to This Day in
History Class. It's one of our sister podcasts here on
the House Stuff Works Network. It's a daily history show,
just really quick, five minute tid bits of one thing
that happened that day in history.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Now.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Normally the host is Tracy V. Wilson, who you probably
know from stuff you missed in history class. She's out
this week, So the week that you are listening to
this in your podcast machine, I'm going to be guest
hosting over on This Day in History Class. So head
over that way and you can find all sorts of
cool weird things that happen every single day of the year,
day by day.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Awesome, congratulations, and we are definitely going to check it out.
We can also go ahead and maybe post a link
to that, yeah, ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah, we'll share that on the Facebook page. Ridiculous Historians
will point you in that direction. It's a great show.
I'm only on it for a week, but you should
definitely take a listen. It'll be going through some cool
changes in the coming year too. I think we're going
to be getting a little more creative, but still a
daily podcast kind of updating you just on the things
you need to know about what's happened in the past
and how that affects our days today.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Awesome, and thank you so much for coming on the show.
This is going to be one of a number of
recurring appearances.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah, we're gonna mean this's a regular thing.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
I'll be around.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Fantastic. Well, let's as always thank our super producer, Casey Pegram.
I think we've already thanked Christopher enough that I'm gonna
do it one more time film for measure. Thank you, Christopher.
Do I have a choice? Doesn't that sound like an
alien overlord character?
Speaker 1 (54:21):
There is a Zorba the Great I think, oh wait,
this works out with you?
Speaker 2 (54:28):
It does? Yeah, thanks to you as well, Ben Hey,
thanks to you looking dapper as ever today, sir.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
And thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track. Thank
you for checking out the show. We hope that you
enjoyed it, and we hope that this is kindled a
spark of inspiration. Let us know what strange military contraptions
were otherwise ridiculous inventions you have run across.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
We will be all ears. We would love to hear
this stuff.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
And you know, we're of course that should go out
saying we're we're not really picking on these inventors. A
lot of these ideas seem very promising, and the only
way you can learn whether or not they're feasible is
to test them, you know what I mean. Rocket Bullets
sounds like a tremendous idea. It sounds really cool and.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
One of my favorite bands and.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
One of your favorite bands, Rocket Bullets. Sure, if they
don't exist yet, they absolutely need to. So please come
and hang out with us next time. When we talk
about flowers as currency or you know, some sort of
like the bitcoin bubble, we'll see you then for more
(55:42):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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