Imperial War Museum - Weapon of Mass Destruction?

He did try to build a super cannon.

Best Regards Tom.

No-one disagrees that he did - except that this was before the 1991 Gulf War, not after the main sanctions were put in place.

It was built in Sheffield and described for camouflage as being "petrochemical equipment". There's a chunk at the Duxford museum (IWM aircraft), not sure if you meant that one or if there's a piece at the London IWM too?

Yes - if it's of the low pressure / multiple chambers design (Hitler's V3) and fires a smoothbore projectile, such as a finned dart.

That was rather the point to its design looking as it did.

Interesting searches for the background to it would be "Gerald Bull", Mossad, "Iraqi supergun", "Sheffield Forgemasters" and "Matrix Churchill"

He unfortunatley died of Mossa..er..lead poisoning.

Gunner

Not lead poisoning at all. He was his usual charming self when something went snap...

==================== And herein lies the problem. What exactly does WMD mean? This is now used like the US "gun banners" use the term "assault rifle." There is also the problem of hypocrisy in complaining about Saddam's WMD after the US sold him the technology and many of the parts.

As far as the "super gun" goes, it appears that Israeli intelligence was concerned enough to assassinate Gerald Bull who heading up the project.

3 times as I recall

Gunner

>

Well the Mosad did try to warn him off a time or two.

Wes

I tend to think the NEA is a weapon of mass destruction. As far as 'assault rifles' I think NFA 27 ended that.

Wes

True in Brussels where Space research had their offices. I knew one of his design engineers, who also worked on that project. Now based in the States. The company I worked for at the time also had contract engineers over there.

Wayne....

In Belgium. So much for international law.

Don't you remember the German company shipping special large diameter pipe sections - he was building a super gun under the design of an expert.

That was one of the target toys. It was aimed directly at Israel. It was built in-place since it was so big. It was more pipeline looking but was special in the fittings to be smooth. I want to say the expert was an American there and got in a bit of a jam. The German company begged off on the charges - don't know if they got busted or not.

It was on TV during the discovery of planes and stuff under sand...

Martin

Mart> I visited the IWM in the UK last year and there was an exhibit proving

That says a lot.

Looks like what I recalled was either bad or cover story. Steel from the UK. Thought it was German.

Martin Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

Louis Ohland wrote:

IIRC, they did sub-caliber experiments, firing 13 inch projectiles from a 16" gun. 130 nautical mile range.

I believe Bull was also > That says a lot.

Valier-Oberth Moon gun In the 1920s members of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt amused themselves by redesigning Jules Verne?s Moon gun, the Columbiad. In 1926 rocket pioneers Max Valier and Hermann Oberth designed a gun that would correct Verne?s technical mistakes and be capable of firing a projectile to the Moon. The projectile would be made be of tungsten steel, practically solid, with a diameter of 1.2 m and a length of 7.2 m. Even using the latest gun propellants, a barrel length of 900 m would be necessary. To eliminate the compression of air in the barrel during acceleration, it was proposed that the barrel itself be evacuated to a near-vacuum, with a metal seal at the top of the barrel. Residual air would provide enough pressure to blast this seal aside before the shell exited the gun. To minimize drag losses in getting through the atmosphere, it was proposed to put the mouth of the gun above most of Earth?s atmosphere: it would be drilled into a high mountain of at least 4,900 m altitude.

Those were quite a different concept (search for "Project HARP"). Although it was a big gun aiming for sub-orbital capabilities, it was fairly conventional in terms of design. The barrels were simply two

16" naval barrels, joined end to end. The propellant and chamber were almost conventional, albeitt oversized. Funding was US/Canada military joint. AFAIR, it was ostensibly run by a US university, but there were some political complexities about them "borrowing" battleship armament that took some legalistic paperwork.

Part of the concept was the use of a sabot. A large diameter projectile was accelerate down the barrel, then a smaller diameter low- drag projectile took flight. For this reason the barrels were vacuum pumped before firing and sealed by a diaphram tompion across the muzzzle.

Bull's intention was to reach orbit. Although they never really approached this, they did apparently do useful and cost-effective research in supersonic re-entry vehicle research, at less cost than using rockets.

For the record, I'm none of the above.

Ship prop shafts and couplings between steam turbines and generators need bolted couplings, most likely to similar levels of precision.