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December 11, 2018 54 mins

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

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
First things first, the U s Military has so much money.
It's only tangentially related to our episode today. But if
we're looking at a hard number. In Seen alone, the
US military's budget was around a little over six hudred
and ten billion dollars, then that can't be true. It's true. No,

(00:46):
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 of right now, but I think you've
spent some time around military type things. That's true in
my other life. And uh, our super producer, Casey Pegram
has also to our knowledge, not been involved in the

(01:07):
military or cannot admit to anything. He's more of a
sleeper agent type. You know. I always had impegged 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

(01:31):
and governments drive a lot of technological innovation right there.
A lot of things that are now common in the
civilian world started out as military initiatives for the purposes
of waging war. It's right, and there's always kind of
a disconnect where you think, oh, that's like crazy future technology,
but turned out the military was doing it like twenty
years ago, and then it kind of gets when they're

(01:52):
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. And this this is something
that's been on our collective minds for some time, both
in this show and other shows that we've done. So
we were over the moon when our good pal friend

(02:12):
of the show, Christopher Hasciotaes 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 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,

(02:35):
thanks for having me, and then we all hugged, and
then we all hugged again and again and again. We've
been hugging this whole time and doing light handholds. Yeah,
so Christopher, of course, thank you for returning to the show.
If anyone listening through some gross miscarriage of cosmic justice

(02:57):
hasn't had the chance to check out your appearance on
our Louie Louis episode, I would say, I don't know
what you think. No, 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? There are, as you mentioned, You know,
the military contribute so many things to society in terms

(03:18):
of technolological 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 gotta
break a couple what nuclear bombs eggs to make to
make a We're gonna stretch this metaphor out to make
some sort of omelet of death and destruction, and yeah, yeah,

(03:43):
I like that. 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 you probably a

(04:03):
lot of you out there listening have been in a
situation where you know 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. And sometimes bosses like to throw
out big, wild ideas to justify their existence, you know,

(04:24):
in the hopes that it'll like be a big splash,
but a lot of time it just kind of fizzles.
And today we're gonna talk about some good fizzles, fizzles, splashes, kabooms. Yeah,
all the onomatopia out there, that's true. Yeah, And we
have we have compiled some of our favorites. We do
have to say from the beginning, we're not going to

(04:47):
get to every single spectacular, strange, hilarious failure. Now we're
gonna do to a piece. Yeah, we're going, 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 guy's Christopher centur Our guest today, would you like

(05:11):
to do the honors and kick off the first invention? Guys,
just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a
tale of a fateful trip that departed from Russian ports
upon a rounded ship. Sailing man, I'm sorry, I can't
not do that. Yeah, I don't know what's Gilligan and Russian.

(05:35):
Comrade Ben, I know you've got a Russian accent cold.
I love it, I love it. Yeah. 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 v C. Admiral Popov and
the Novgorod. Now, these were coastal defense ships. You have

(05:55):
to think back to the time of the Russian War.
So Russia had just suffered some defe eats at the
hands of France and some of their allies, and 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
Kirch Straight Now that's the if you think back to
your geography class, the part of the world right between

(06:17):
the Black sea and the Sea of asof So you've
got a little straight where ships passed through and they
need to defend it. And this task of creating a
defense was given to Vice Admiral pop Off. 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. Degrees of protection, floating platforms, kind of

(06:40):
tank like, not not intended for quick fleet battle, but
just intended to defend. 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 too,
you know, uh, and then we'll talk about the rest.
So I want you to picture just a circular platform

(07:03):
a couple feet across, six propellers on the back, two
cannons on the top. Now let me ask you. Have
you guys been canoeing? Yes? Yeah, kayaking? Kayaking? Okay, So
have you ever been kayaking and just rode just on
one side you kind of go around in circles. Yeah.
Now imagine you're just firing a cannon just on one

(07:26):
side and then it accelerates your spin. Yeah, and you're
a completely circular boat. So this wasn't moored in any
way to the sea floor. 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

(07:47):
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 in the opposite direction of
the firing. Uh, it just didn't work. And it just
came down to a severe misunderstanding and or just just
playing ignoring the physics on the part of Admiral pop Off.

(08:10):
Isn't there a vodka named after him? I don't know
if it's named after him, but it is named that. Okay, well,
maybe maybe there was vodka vodka best Forgotten from the
it's no Mr Boston, you know, it's pretty low shelf.
But so maybe those were two big ideas. Round warships
and uh, you know low Well, he thought that if

(08:32):
you if you created a really shallow round broad boat,
it would float really well on the water. And it did.
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. Right. When you have a wide
broad boat with six propellers trying to push forward, you're

(08:52):
pushing the entire mass. There's a lot more drag. It
just does not work. And nobody said, hey, pop off,
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. Uh, didn't do it
particularly well. So they did these embarrassing tests and they

(09:15):
tried to fix it, but they realized they couldn't, but
they just went ahead and forged on. Well, the thing is,
is the test 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 uh, because
then there you are. So they did models, right, Well,
they built a big tank of water, built some models,

(09:35):
and um, 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 two from Anthony Preston.
He said the Vita Admiral pop Up and the Novgorod
were quote too slow to stem the current and proved

(09:58):
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 repellers were unable
to keep the ship on correct heading. They were prone
to rapid rolling and pitching and anything more than a
flat calm, and could not aim or load their guns
under such circumstances. So wouldn't that throw off the trajectory
of the shot as well? Right, So it would not

(10:19):
only screw up the navigation of the boat in the direction,
it would like be completely impossible to aim. 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 insert These two boats were
in service for about three decades. They just kind of
floated there, they did their thing. Ultimately they were put

(10:41):
into storage and right before the First World War kicked off,
they were just scrapped because they figured they could use
the materials for something a little bit less cartoonishly ineffective,
or it was just wasting everyone's time. You know, you
have 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 would float in
the bathtub. So it doesn't even look scary, No, it's

(11:02):
it looks perfect, perfect circle. Yeah. Yeah, and we've got
some photos we can share on ridiculous historians. What's the
logic though, what is it? What is this pop off
fellow thinking, like, is he trying to cut corners? Literally
cut all the corners? He really did 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, and he just didn't. Uh. There

(11:26):
were other round boat proponents at the time. Uh, there's
a guy in England in the eighteen fifties who was
really all about the round hall. People thought it would
add stability to the ship, and it added stability in
certain circumstances, but in rain and wind, in choppy waters,
you know the kind of things that happened when you're
at sea, no dice. So one important note for everyone

(11:49):
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 style firing on all sides.

(12:09):
The problem, I believe is the loading time right, because
every shot was so these were right type round. Yeah,
this is still e seventies, eighteen eighties, so we don't
have machine gun technology on a boat like this, and
they can't load it while it's spinning. Yeah, exactly. So
I would be very curious to find out how long

(12:31):
it took them to shoot, get back to a calm,
stable state, and then reload and shooting it. I guess
in theory, if you fired both cannons that precisely the
right time, it would stabilize itself. But that seems so
so unlikely, and it was a wasting a shot because
obviously your targets only gonna be on one side or
the other. Chances are so you gotta coordinate and be like,

(12:51):
all right, guys, we gotta three to one. Go. Oh yeah,
this is comical. Yeah. I mean, in Popoff's defense, he
was trying to solve problems and gnoring 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

(13:13):
it just kind of ignored with the failings. All right,
I think we can definitely call that a military fail. Yeah.
As it was known the type of ship they would,
they named it after him, to his glory and Ora
maybe in glory. Yeah, 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, go

(13:35):
for rocket bullets? Yes, okay, rocket bullets. That's fun, right, Yeah.
So one of the first questions would be aren't all
bullets propelled? What makes these different? Well? These these are
propelled using rocket fuel? Nice or jet fuel. Let's let's
let's be fair. Um. Yeah, so this is uh, this

(13:56):
might sound like something out of a James Bond movie,
and as it turns out, it act really is. Um.
This weapon called the gyro jet made by two gentlemen
named Robert Mainhardt and Arthur T. Biale who started a company,
an arms company called MBA, which was short for Manheart
and Ble Associates. Um. They decided they wanted regular guns

(14:16):
just weren't cutting it for them. They want to do
something a little more futuristic because this is the time
when we wanted to rocket size everything. And so that
their company was NBA, right, yeah, NBA, and I should
have been like Magic Bullet Association or something. Thank you,
thank you. Um. 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

(14:37):
the thing that was cool about rocket bullets, so I'm
gonna keep calling them um, 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
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.

(15:00):
And I actually saw a really great video where some
guys with the YouTube channel got ahold of one of these,
um the gyro Jet model and you can see they
did slow motion photography where the bullet exits the muzzle
and then a little ways out it gets rocket sized,
so when it comes out initially, it's actually going quite slow.
So one of the issues with this gun was it

(15:20):
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. If you
fired a bullet that's moving not slowly, it's trajectory wouldn't
stay constant. That's the thing about it. It used a
technology called spin stabilization, which I'm a little foggy on

(15:44):
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
incredible speed once they actually got to their max velocity.
And a lot of that had to do with the
fact that they came out of the barrel like spinning,

(16:04):
sort of like a rifling technology exactly like that, but
not because the barrels were smooth. They didn't actually have that.
That's what a regular gun has board out kind of
like little whatever you call it, um markings or kind
of grooves exactly that causes the bullet to do that,
because otherwise it would just go wild and not be
accurate at all. It turns out it still wasn't very

(16:25):
accurate because of the fact that this rocket fuel would
burn at pretty unpredictable rates and you could never quite
predict what it was gonna do. So this video that
I saw, which is really really worth checking out. If
you just searched testing gyro jet 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

(16:46):
find these anymore because the parts don't exist. 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 know they were. They were
much more stable than that, 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

(17:06):
compared to a regular gun, and it wasn't insane, but
it was just very unpredictable. And there's one part where
um 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 um, 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 um carbine,

(17:26):
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 um. In order to keep the
rocket fuel from like leaking out or to keep it
contained properly, these guys were super innovative. They figured out
that titanium oxide was the best chemical for containing this

(17:48):
stuff so it didn't accidentally ignite, just like in the
casing um, 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 fuel rods in these long kind
of like almost like big thick pencil lead and then
they laced it on a like an actual lathe to

(18:09):
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 not discharge a shell. It shot the whole
thing out. So that's what made him different to um questions, Yeah,
how much did these costs and did the cost play
a role in their failure other than they're completely hilarious? Yeah,

(18:31):
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 failed to not throw in here and especially
the fact that it was very much featured in You
Only Live Twice, the James Bond movie. Um, because of
the fact that you look at them, they look like
a cool, like, uh spy gun. Yeah, yeah, absolutely that.

(18:53):
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. To mention that, apparently they could engineer
the bullets so that they would dissolve in the human body.
Cool 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 uh tie anybody to the to the bullets exactly.

(19:15):
But I think that they did at least get tested
by the U. S. Army, if not specifically this brand
of rocket bullets, something something like this. They had. Gyro
Jet had an assault rifle that the Army tested briefly. Yeah,
I I didn't run across that myself. It was a

(19:35):
very a bit, a bit of a blip in the
history of this these weapons. But I mean, the Army
is going to get wind of any new fangled device.
They'll give it a go. They'll for a little money
at it. And 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 have like
a tiny little ballistic missile. And it's interesting. The weapons

(19:56):
failed because of largely they were expensive and they were
a pine to make because to drill those holes I
was talking about that that creative the spin, they had
to have these tapered drill bits which had to be
custom machine themselves, 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

(20:16):
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 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 n b A

(20:37):
Actually went on to make a lot of non lethal
ammunition like bean bag shot and um they made little
pen guns like little pen projectile things that were that
were used in in the military. So pretty cool, right, Yeah,
it's ridiculous. I don't know. I think it's more interesting.
But it's just a very roundabout way of doing something

(20:58):
that was already done pretty well. It's sort of like
but but but but but these use rocket fuel. Please
use rocket fuel, guys, have you heard about rocket fuel?
I like to think in the future when humanity is
gone and the world is overtaken by let's say, mice, uh,
super smart intelligent mice. Yeah, absolutely, they're going to find
these guns and these will act like giant bazookas or

(21:19):
missile launchers. I'm just picturing a cute little mouse holding
one of these guns on its shoulder launching rockets. Uh at,
you know, cats, I love that image. The last thing
I do want to say that in the video that
I saw, um, the 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

(21:40):
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 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? Well, you know what the answer is
tall this that the the expensive boring tips and all that. Lasers, lasers, las. Yeah.

(22:02):
I am not a scientist, I'm not a ballistics expert,
but as with all things in life, the answer is
probably just lasers. And you are. You are a well
known laser enthusiast. Why not. It's one of the first
things people told me about you when we started working together.
They're just neat, They're great. Oh man. We used to
have a very like an industrial class laser at the

(22:24):
office years and years ago and mysteriously disappeared. I wouldn't
make a cool laser sound like in the really cheesy
Technico songs. 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 because
it was better than the click click Why did you
Why did you have this too? What was it? What

(22:44):
was it for? You know, just to learn about stuff?
Lasers are cool. 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 and shot it
towards someone's eye when some good for kids, good for
great for children. I was at a Black Crow's concert

(23:04):
once and someone how when I those laser pointers and
was shooting them at the singer guy, and he got
very upset. He threatened to uh to take it away
from him and put it someplace like, uh, pick keepsie
in his pocket. Oh yeah, he's gonna confiscated, not give
it back. So it's very substitute teacher vibe there. So

(23:30):
we've talked about an amazing ship. We've talked about some, uh, some,
I would say, very innovative bullets. Both of those things
on the offset seemed 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

(23:54):
at a jeep and thought I would get one of
these if it was also to a helicopter, Because if
you have been thinking about this, I want to introduce
everyone to the Haffner Rota Buggy. It is a British
experimental aircraft that looks kind of doofy, so it looks
like exactly what you said, it looks like a helicopter.

(24:18):
And what's ridiculous to me is there's having the rotors
and the wheels. It's sort of transit wise. It's kind
of like wearing in Paris suspenders and a belt. So
the rotor Buggy came about as as a solution to
the problem of air dropping off road vehicles, and a

(24:39):
guy named Raoul Haffner of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment
created this after they had an earlier invention that had
some success, which was the rotor shoot. They took this
rotor thing and ran with it. It was an experimental

(24:59):
one person kite rotor thing. Wow. 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. Yeah,
it's hovering behind this like is it is it tethered
to that truck? But it is tethered. They they they

(25:20):
would probably be picking up speed and then the air
would catch Here, it's a kite essentially with it. 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. I think the emphasis was to look
whimsical in this, but it enjoyed some, as you said,

(25:41):
some success, which led to the creation of the road
of buggy. I I think similar to what you feel
about rocket bullets. No, I think I just like saying
road a buggy buggies 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 and their enemies. Yeah, So
here's the crazy thing. It's so unerodynamic, looks so poorly

(26:04):
designed because jeeps and helicopters have two very different ways
of transporting people and uh, two very different footprints design wise.
But their initial test, we're we're pretty promising because they
weren't testing it stem to stern, soup to nuts, an
entire operation. They were testing aspects of an operation. They

(26:26):
started by dropping it from around eight feet or so,
and then they say, okay, well it can just drop
eight feet it will be fine. And things didn't really
go wrong until November when they tried to tow it
to get enough speed to get the Rodo buggy into
the air. It didn't. It didn't work the first time

(26:48):
on the sixteenth of November, and it wasn't till the
twe 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 for, you know, for
for a totally not aerodynamic object, a jeep with a helicopter.

(27:10):
But yeah, but okay, so what when did it all
go south? Batman? That all go south? So would you
believe me if I told you in the parking lot
of our office. Now I'm kidding, I wish I could
take us out of road a buggy ride it went,
It went severely south. Um. As they continued testing, there
were huge problems with vibration and speed and uh, you know, instability,

(27:36):
and they kept improving it. They got it to a
flight speed of seventy miles an hour or a hundred
and thirteen kilometers, and the last flight on September of
nineteen UM it broke a record for itself. It was
able to fly for ten minutes and it was described
as highly satisfactory. And the thing is that the British

(27:59):
arm you probably would have continued trying to make road
of buggies if it were not for the introduction of
large gliders that could carry vehicles. So gliders like the
airspeed horsa which are just they look like planes, but
they're gliders. These things, if you see the picture, can

(28:20):
carry vehicles. 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.
The laser disc conundrum. Yeah, I mean, but can't you
just drive a jeep out of the back of an
airplane and having like like a jeep parachute like and

(28:40):
fastened and furious 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. That's true. And maybe this this, uh,
this jeapicopter could then speed up and take off again

(29:00):
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 cheap acopter for a while.
It does sound like fun, take a cheapicopter ride see
the grand can see the world. It sounds like a
like a nice whimsical holiday thing. I would just prefer though,
if like the blades like folded up like in a

(29:21):
really cool way with like a sound effect like you're
talking about transformers. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
You know a lot of flying cars do that now,
or flying car prototypes. This was in a minute. We
have flying we have flying car prototypes, as in like
one to two copies of something like Terrafugias, like Finally
in the future. It's weird. So we're all good friends

(29:43):
with our pal Scott Benjamin. He'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. Look. I get that they're dangerous.
I understand that. I get there it would be disastrous
to have flying cars, But I don't want everyone to

(30:05):
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. 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 they

(30:27):
were flying cars just willy nilly, there would be a
lot of air mid air collisions. I think, yeah, but
we figured it out right. I mean, I imagine there's
a podcast from the late eighteen hundreds on whatever format
the podcasted in back then saying would you have an
automobile horses? You know what, what would happen if you

(30:47):
had ten people in a town with a car. That
would be madness. I think they just etched podcasts right
into wax cylinders. Yes, absolutely so, there we are the
Road of Buggy. I I get if you are rhada
bugged that you have missed this period in history, do
not despair. The last thing you'll say about it is
you can go to a town with an amazing name.

(31:09):
You're gonna love this noole Middle Wallop. And in the
Middle Wallop there is a museum of Army Flying that
has a replica of a road of buggy, as well
as a road a tank, which is the same thing,
but a tank that seems like you would need much
bigger blades to keep a tankle off. Yeah, it was
a weird idea, but this is the kind of thing
where if if any ridiculous historians are listening at home,

(31:31):
and you're enjoying the show with your who knows you know,
your your daughters, your sons, you could make a little
toy road a buggy. You know, just go buy a
toy helicopter, snap off the blades. That's called a transformer. No, no, no,
I'm taking it by two things, gloom together, make your
own toys, have a little Roada Buggy warfare thing going
on at home, toy mash up. I like, so, what's

(31:55):
what's next, Christopher? Well, I started off with with with
some wildly propulsive cannons, and that is where we're headed again,
but this time we're staying stateside. We're not going to Russia.
We're in the United States. Wow, let me correct that
we're in the Confederate States of America or in the
lead up to what would become that. You've seen a

(32:16):
double barreled cannon. I feel as if I can picture
it in my mind, popped words. Yeah, double barreled cannon. Right,
you've got think of a shotgun, double barrel shotgun shots
out twice as much shot. But can't you unloaded one
barrel at a time as well? You can't, Yeah, because
there's like a little compound trigger, right, Yeah, but you

(32:37):
don't want to do that with a double barrel cannon,
was wondering. Yeah, 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 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

(32:58):
was put into action though, in eighteen sixty two by
a man named John Gilliland. Now Galleland was a mechanic
and dentist living in Athens, Georgia. All yeah, not too
far from where we are. We're here in Atlanta recording.
So about an hour and a half up the road,
Galiland said, I'm gonna take two cannons, put them together

(33:18):
in one sort of one molded entity. They've got two
side by side boars in a three in 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. I have heard of this.
That sounds dangerous. Well, you know, think of the what

(33:40):
are they called the yeah bolos that 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 the Union soldiers right, cut your
right in half, you would you would think, yeah, you

(34:03):
think so, it's not quite what happened. Now. Galiland was
passionate about this idea. He actually put out a subscription
service to raise funds to develop the prototype. He raised
about three 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

(34:24):
the cannon two balls a chain. It tore through a
cornfield and 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. In terms of accuracy, yeah, you
would have to fire both cannons simultaneously because they're they're
sitting parallel to one another, but slightly splayed, a slight

(34:48):
degree of difference in in the direction in which they
propel the ball. And that's so that the two cannonballs
that sit next to one another when they fly out
of the cannon will spread out and kind of pull
the chain between them. But getting that exactly right with
the eighteen sixties technology, you can't. You can't be that precise.
And so what happens is even a split second of

(35:10):
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 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

(35:33):
into warfare. 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 a big big cannons, big cannons. That's that's interesting
because I heard about the ball and change stuff before.
But I always thought to your point, you know know all,

(35:55):
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. Yeah, that seems like
that would make more sense than having two sources of propulsion.
Let's double down. What did anybody try, like a triple
barreled cannon. I think they have that at Burger King, right.

(36:16):
It comes with comes with cheese, yes, but there's a
special sauce. But yeah, So this cannon, it was just
a total failure. But Galenland believed so passionately in his invention.
He kept trying to make the case to the Confederate army.
The cannon was shipped from Athens, Georgia to Augusta, where
it was put into more testing because he really really
thought it would work. Ultimately, no, no, no, is what

(36:40):
the Confederate 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 let the Confederates
know that the U. S. Troops were arriving. So you know,
as as cannons are used. And you can see that
cannon today. It still sits in Athens, Georgia. It was
sold by the city for a while, luckily was not

(37:00):
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.
Have you seen it? I have seen it. Yeah, see
I used to live in Athens and and this is
this is all ringing a bell when you were talking
about it, and I feel like I've I've seen it before. Yeah,
it's at the corner of College Avenue and uh what

(37:23):
not West Washington. I think corner of Clayton Street. I
think that's right. Yeah, and it's it's it's on the
northeastern corner, pointed straight up at the Yankees. Not that
it's a threat or anything. It doesn't work, and it
never worked, but you know, you might as well. Might
as well have the impotent rage represented in his statue.

(37:44):
Oh good, Christopher. Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, if
you guys want to take a field trip, we'll just
hop on over to Athens. Let's go. I'm all about
I haven't been back in too long. It's a good place,
all right. Well, Um, I guess I'm gonna stick with
kind of retro futuristic kind of ones. Um, this one

(38:05):
is I'm just gonna call it the the hoverboard. Heard
of it? Yes, yes, yes, yeah. It turns out it
was real. 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 to the Future movies.
You've got the flying cars, You've got a hoverboard, rocket bullets. Yeah, okay,
it's a hoverboard is a bit of a misnomer. It's
really more like a helicopter platform. Okay. So this is

(38:29):
something that was designed by the Hiller Company for the
US Navy. Originally it was called the v Z one
Pawnee and it's basically a disc um with fans underneath it.
And it used something called rotor duct technology. So here's
the interesting part about it. I also used something called
kinn esthetic control. Can you guys guess what that is?

(38:51):
Controlling by moving your body, That's right, Which is why
I think of the hoverboard. Um. So yeah, literally, a
person manning one of these things, or um piloting one
of these things rather would be standing atop the strange
little disk uh 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 uh. To navigate,

(39:15):
they have to lean to the left, lean to the right,
lean forward, lean backward, UM. And so it's almost like
a segue in that in that respect. UM. So 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

(39:38):
the kinesthetic controls because it was just so unwieldy. A
group of guys exact exactly now, come back center go.
So they added a seat in to this one in
more traditional helicopter type controls, So there were actually some
steering capabilities on this third one. UM. So this was
in nineteen fifty three. The U. S. Navy's Office of

(40:00):
Naval Research essentially gave this company, Hiller Helicopters UM, a
contract to develop one of these. It was like twin
engine DUC did fan v t o L, which I
think we all agree stands for vertical takeoff and landing

(40:20):
no runway required. That's that's the one positive thing about
this this device. Well, also I imagined inspired a lot
of mega man villains and to me it sounds like
a kind of thing. It's right out of a Nighties
video game, which is like bad Guys fun flying platforms exactly. Unfortunately,
these things were very slow and they couldn't really figure

(40:41):
out like any kind of real practical use for it
in battle. UM there is in fact a video though.
I'd like to play a clip from UM of one
of the first flight tests of this thing. Oh, this
is quite a machine you have here. I suppose you
have come as close as anyone to operating a flying carpet.

(41:02):
How does it feel? Well, it feels fine. And the
nice thing about it's very easy to fly. What do
you think, phil is a truly revolutionary characteristic of this machine. Well,
I mentioned earlier it was so easy to fly. We
do it by shifting our weight, is the way we
control the aircraft. I say, but that you mean you
don't have any uh, mechanical controls that we normally think
of them in an aeroplane, such as a stick in

(41:23):
the rudder. Oh, we have a throttle, which all aircraft have,
but we control it by shifting our weight using our feet.
So yeah, again, he even says the interviewer, like, I
guess it is because close anyone's coming to the flying carpet.
It's all about the future, you know, it's all about
magic and technology. It's great, um, but yeah, they don't

(41:43):
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 very precise
in your movements on it, 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

(42:04):
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 your round ship. Yeah exactly. You could
even sneeze, yeah, and just crash. So maybe it's more
of a proof of concept because one would imagine there

(42:27):
surely there would be ways to mitigate those issues. Even
just fixing one of those issues would make it a
more worthwhile investment by military, that's right, And of course
they did take them out of commission entirely by nine three,
but it did offer some pretty valuable information of research
wise for technology they would later use for more practical

(42:51):
vertical takeoff and landing planks, which which are a thing
I don't thought that was kind of cool. I agree, Yeah,
it's the kind of thing that reminds me too of
technology you supposedly coming from Project Bluebook and that investigation
into alien technology and area. This beard flying saucer stuff,
it kind of makes me think of that, and I
know it's not real, but I wish I had done

(43:12):
that could be. 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 militarys have gotten up to in secret,

(43:34):
and I wanted to find one of the dumbest ideas,
not one that that has some promise, not one that's innovative.
Let's try something new. The dumbest, dumbest idea that I
found is the ball tank. The ball Tank tell me more,
it's just we are a family show. It's it's it's

(43:57):
a tank. It's been known alternately as the Cougle Banza
or the tumbleweed tank. The thing about this is we'll
start with one story. We'll start with the tumbleweed tank.
There's an inventor in Texas. His name is A. J. Richardson,
and in nineteen thirty six he he says, you know

(44:17):
the First World War, which they just called the World
War at that time. Yeah, can you imagine calling 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 that occurred. And in his estimation,

(44:39):
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 towards the
enemies trench and hope they hit someone who is a
soldier rather than a civilian, rather than a medical personnel
and all this other stuff. So he said, the best

(45:01):
idea would be too 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 is important.
Later he thought the main problem was that you couldn't
really see who you were firing at. And so he

(45:22):
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 to get a
look at it because the guns you see, the guns

(45:47):
you see have a lot of random placement. There's one
pointing toward the air, there's one pointing towards the ground,
and then there's one just out there on the right,
and the one on the right can swivel. By the
way ours in the newer Jurassic Park movies, I guess
it is. Yeah, yeah, because those are two seaters two seaters,
so this one is an uncomfortable three seater. And just

(46:10):
from that initial picture you guys saw, the tumble we
tank has some problems. Yeah. This is the kind of
thing that should just be drawn and then immediately torn
up to roll. If there's random guns poking out every
which way, do they collapse. It has a ring it
is propelled by, so it only goes forward and back.

(46:33):
It doesn't roll in like, not even degrees. But the
entire spherical gyroscopic motion. It just goes straight and back
and forward. 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

(46:53):
rotating outer shells that are each like bowls around the thing.
So it can it can turn a little bit in theory.
So it's sort of like a deadly gerbil ball kind
of hamster mechanism with guns and men. And it had
some it had some good points. It could be very
easily sealed against poison gas attacks. And Richardson also thought

(47:18):
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 You couldn't see people. So this was his
way around that somehow. So the guys sealed inside this tank,

(47:40):
Christopher frantically firing guns in all directions I could not
see outside. They had no idea what was going on.
So 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

(48:00):
sounds like a terrible, terrible idea. 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, what the hell is that? Are
they even aiming for us? How terrifying it is for
nearby troops who are like, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm on
your side. The only way I could imagine this would

(48:22):
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 Funny some videos or whatever. Orders orbing, that's
what what zorbeing zero are? What do you think that like? Furries?
Zorbean zero R B I n G. It's where you
get inside that giant plastic ball orbing zorbean? Is that

(48:45):
an acronym? And then they fight? Uh yeah they fight? Yeah, Yeah,
they've they've fight. I don't know if it's I don't
know if it's n acronym. I know it's it's meant
to cite the fact that you're rolling downhill in an
orb so like maybe zero gravity or I think there's
but I think there's proper gravity. Well neither. I've also

(49:08):
seen them on water. Yes, you can get inside those
on on water and just roll them around, but like that,
but you can see through those, which I think is
key here. So aquas orbing, rhodocopter, battle rocket ship, bullet failure,
disaster war. That's what we're talking here, That's what we're talking.

(49:29):
Oh there's one other point. We do know that there
was at least one other group of people who thought
this ball tank 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 pounds or

(49:49):
the ball tank, and we don't know what they meant
to do with it. We don't know how often it
was used, clearly not that much, but we haven't on
any plans or documents about it. Only one survived the war,
was captured in Manchuria. You can go see it in
the Kubinka Museum's collection of German vehicles. It was apparently

(50:12):
used by some unfortunate German and the Germans, in their part,
did include a small visor or a small slit so
the operator could see what they were. Yeah, they learned
from the tumbleweed tank, and that's what they learned is
just let let them look outside. Just it feels like

(50:33):
there's a lot more lessons to be learned from the
ball tank. This was such a cool idea for an episode.
Thank you for bringing this to us. Yeah, always a
pleasure to have you in the studio and kind of
kick the ball tank around. So, speaking of kicking, if
any ridiculous historians want to kick it with me over

(50:54):
on another show this week, you guys, Okay, if I
plug something, please plug away, 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

(51:17):
tidbits of one thing that happened that day in history. Now.
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 happened every single day of the year,

(51:39):
day by day. Awesome, congratulations, and we are definitely going
to check it out. We we can also go ahead
and maybe post a link to that Ridiculous Historians. 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 or two. I think we're going to

(52:01):
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. Awesome, and thank you
so much for coming on this show. This is going
to be one of a number of recurring appearances. Yeah,
we're gonna mean there's a regular thing. I'll be around. Fantastic. Well,

(52:22):
let's as always thank our super producer, Casey pegram Um.
I think we've already thanked Christopher enough, but I'm gonna
do it one more time. Feel mere. Thank you Christopher
going sorb? Now do I have a choice. It doesn't
sound like an Alien Overlord character. There is a zorb
of the great I think, Oh wait, this works out

(52:45):
with you? It does? Yeah, Thanks to you as well,
Ben Hey, Thanks to you looking dapper as ever today, sir,
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

(53:06):
were otherwise ridiculous inventions you have run across. We will
be all ears. We would love to hear this stuff.
And you know we're of course that you go out
saying we're not. 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

(53:28):
Bullets sounds like a tremendous idea. It sounds really cool
and one of my favorite bands and one of your
favorite bands, Rocket Bullets. If they don't exist yet, they
absolutely need to, um so please come and hang out
with us next time when we talk about flowers as currency,
or you know, some sort of like bitcoin bubble. We'll

(53:51):
see you then

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