The Devastating History Of Big Guns | Secrets Of War | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show next on secrets of war from germany's big birth and world war one to iraq's top secret project babylon they are the ultimate projection of force secret cannons designed to strike their target from miles away handheld rifles that pack the power of the atom and super guns capable of launching satellites into space super guns is next on secrets of war [Music] um [Music] take [Music] it has been said that national boundaries are drawn in one of two ways with pens or with guns [Music] unfortunately the 20th century saw more of the latter as warring nations used guns as their principal means to project power in secret laboratories and on military proving grounds the world over engineers have sought to make these guns more powerful more accurate and more deadly of all weapons in the artillery arsenal perhaps none is more awe inspiring than the big gun these are the super cannons on the field of war shooting higher and farther forever changing the course of battle and history the story of super guns dates back more than 500 years when cannons first appeared on the battlefield it must have made a tremendous impression the first time people who were used to bows and arrows found themselves being attacked by projectiles that didn't need muscle power to throw them but was thrown by this new chemical device which was gunpowder as cannons grew larger and more accurate improvements in gunpowder increased their range but the mechanics of artillery remained virtually unchanged for more than 500 years the standard guns of the american civil war were loaded aimed and fired much the same as were its ancestors from the 14th century as the 19th century came to a close however artillery changed dramatically the two key events of the 19th century as far as artillery is concerned one is breach loading the other is rifling small grooves in the inside of a gun's barrel called rifling caused artillery rounds to rotate improving their range and accuracy rifling also allowed for heavier more streamlined shelves breach loading made refilling quicker and recoil systems allowed a gun to be fired without repositioning and re-aiming after every shot the first world war saw modern large-caliber breech-loading artillery wreak destruction on a scale unimaginable in previous conflicts the first world war was the great artillery wall it was a huge conflict a struggle between two sides who had all of the technology of both their societies arranged behind them in the volatile political climate in europe at the end of the 19th century belgium recognized its vulnerability and built a series of forts designed to withstand the most powerful field artillery of the day behind these forts the small country was convinced of its security the belgians had no idea germany was building a super gun beyond what anyone thought possible big bertha took its name from baroness berta croup the granddaughter of alfred group the german gunmaker originally designed as a coastal gun the 42 centimeter howitzer weighed in excess of 40 tons [Music] it was so immense that it had to be transported in pieces and assembled on site in august of 1914 the germans transported their super gun to the outskirts of the belgian town of liege where 12 state-of-the-art forts guarded the border although nobody ever talks about the kaiser's secret weapon those 42 centimeter howitzers certainly were a secret weapon and the fact that the germans not only had two guns but deployed them with a field army guns of that size was astonishing the thing about the fourth two centimeter howitzer is that it fired a shell which is equivalent in weight to a small car to a range of between six and seven miles at high angle so that at the peak of its trajectory the shell had the added assistance the force of gravity and if you can imagine the impact of that upon a brick building it would probably pulverise it into small little bits of dust belgian forts were no match for the german super gun within three days those that hadn't been destroyed were surrendered the big bertha was a very effective weapon in smashing forts and it shocked everyone on the allied side because these forts were considered artillery proof from liege the massive guns moved through belgium and into france with the same devastating effect five big berthas were eventually built and continued to rain destruction down in the allies until the end of 1917 when their limited range made them targets for allied counter battery attacks still the germans had another super gun in the works and it would change everybody's idea of the limits of artillery at 7 18 on the morning of the 23rd of march 1918 the peace in paris was shattered by an explosion the citizens thought it was an air raid but no airplanes had been seen or heard at the end of the day there were 22 such explosions 15 people lay dead another 36 were wounded only when shell fragments were found and analyzed did french officials realize that airplanes were not responsible for the destruction perez had been the victim of a terrifying new weapon a long-range super gun it's understandable that this conclusion wasn't arrived at sooner the best land artillery of the day had a range of about 23 miles and the front was nearly 80 miles away more than three years earlier the german advance had stalled in the war ground to a bloody stalemate the opposing armies dug in casualties mounted the german military commanders wanted to strike at the heart and soul of the enemy not just their men at the front aerial bombing of paris had proved costly and ineffective in the autumn of 1916 the dilemma was taken to croup the same company that made big bertha in an amazing feat of engineering a revolutionary long-range gun was made suitable for testing by the spring of the following year the kaiser wilhelm geschutz known as the paris gun was fashioned by inserting a 21 centimeter liner into a 38 centimeter naval gun under this the smooth board extension was added the resulting barrel was some 34 meters long and weighed in excess of 140 tons the gun was so long that a superstructure had to be erected to keep it from drooping in the quiet woods near the small french town of krepe the germans built this gun emplacement the remains of which are still visible today an immense amount of pressure was needed to propel the shells 76 miles south to paris now that powder was so hot and the pressure was so high that every time the gun fired it wore away because the flame temperature of the cartridge was hotter than the melting point of the steel so each shell gradually increased in size and each shell was numbered deterioration of the barrels was so severe they had to be replaced each month the allies tried desperately to silence the big guns railroad artillery was brought closer to attempt counter fire and air raids were called in but no avail the guns were well camouflaged and moved periodically between concrete emplacements that held them and the other interesting question is if you're firing at a target 76 miles away deep in enemy country how do you know if you've hit it and that was what was worrying the allies after the war it was discovered that german spies in paris were relaying details on where each of the shells landed through operatives in switzerland and back to germany with this information the gun crews could adjust their fire from march to august of 1918 the super guns fired some 350 shells into paris killing 256 citizens and wounding over 600 more after the war the allies rushed to the woods of crepey to retrieve the german supergun one of the great secrets of world war one was just exactly what happened to the paris cachettes when the french got in there it was gone the german government treated as a state secret for well after the war and actually locked some of their citizens up for technicians up for releasing anything about it in 1926. the world may never know what became of the guns all that remains are these concrete emplacements mute witnesses to their mysterious disappearance but 70 years later the paris guns would inspire the design of the greatest super gun of the century the destruction wrought by big guns in the first world war echoed throughout the second [Music] once again both sides deployed large caliber artillery in the form of naval weapons coastal guns and railroad guns but none could compare to the massive weapon secretly developed by the crook factory for the third route as an infantryman in the first world war adolf hitler had observed the destructive capability of big guns firsthand he was a firm believer in the power of artillery shortly after he was elected chancellor he asked the croup company for a super weapon to penetrate the maginot line france's deeply entrenched heavily fortified first line of defense at more than 1 300 tons gustav remains the heaviest gun ever made two trains were required to move the massive weapon in pieces when it arrived on site four specially designed railroad tracks had to be laid to accommodate the gun and the crane needed to assemble it while this was going on two anti-aircraft trains were parked to protect it a company of infantry were dispersed it needed 1 250 men to man these trains put the gun together and everything else they took three weeks doing it gustav could fire either a 4.7 ton high explosive shell to a range of 29 miles or a specially designed 7-ton concrete piercing shell 24 miles but the engineering of such a colossal weapon system was more difficult than crook estimated and gustav was not completed for hitler's push into france [Music] it didn't see action until the siege of sevastopol russia in 1942 and the most spectacular one was when the anti-concrete shell went straight down into an underground magazine naval ammunition magazine outside sebastopol and blue looking sky eye one shot after sevastopol gustav was sent to leningrad but arrived too late to take part in the siege there is little evidence that it ever saw action again if you come right down to it to spend millions of marks on a 1 300 ton cannon which in the course of a five-year war fired 25 shots you're not really looking at something you call cost effective are you gustav like the paris gun before it mysteriously disappeared parts were reportedly found in russia and at the croup factory proving grounds but after the war all that remained was a spare barrel and some ammunition by the fall of 1943 germany occupied all of western europe only england stood between hitler and total domination of the continent less than a hundred miles from the coast of france london was a tempting but unreachable target for conventional artillery and therefore the driving force behind the development of another german secret weapon the high pressure pump gun was a a gun that had firing chambers on both sides of the main barrel and the idea was that you started the round down the barrel and as the round would clear each one of these chambers on the side it would fire adding more and more gas pressure behind the round thereby kicking the round out to very very very long ranges [Music] the v3 also known as the busy lizzie or the millipede was designed as a terror weapon nearly 500 feet long the guns couldn't be moved or aimed they had just one target london in september of 1943 construction was begun in secret on a massive gun installation deep in a mountain side near mimiak's france [Music] we are here in the railway tunnel that extends 600 meters inside this tunnel you have an underground railway that measures 300 meters and was accessible by 11 galleries each one 100 meters long at the end of these galleries there is a parallel tunnel 300 meters long and on the other side of this tunnel where five of these galleries meet there are five launching sites inclined at 50 degrees the cannons were 127 meters long [Music] the shells for the v3 were small by heavy artillery standards still each gun had an expected rate of fire of up to four rounds an hour in all the guns at the site could have hit london thousands of times a day [Music] when secret aerial reconnaissance photographs showed train loads of material disappearing into a mountain near maniacs the allies became suspicious without knowing the exact nature of the project they initiated a massive bombing campaign on the site the elder brother of the future u.s president john f kennedy joseph kennedy jr participated in the raids he flew one of the planes packed with 10 and a half tons of explosives bound for the site near mimeix [Music] he and his co-pilot's mission was to fly the plane at a certain altitude jump out with parachutes and have the plane continue on autopilot to fly to its destination where it would then destroy the structure the plane however for reasons unknown then blew up in the air many people suggest this was caused by a short circuit in the plane ironically by the time this attack took place on the 12th of august 1944 the structure had already been destroyed by an earlier bombing raid the allies were not aware that the first mission had been successful left intact the v3 could have been one of the most devastating weapons of the war if it had worked london would have been in ruins can you imagine 200 150 pound 180 pound shells dropping on london every hour day and night the place would have been devastated thank god it didn't work germany wasn't the only country engineering giant cannons the united states built a super gun of its own [Music] little david was a 914 millimeter mortar designed for operation olympic the top secret plan for the invasion of japan the americans felt that an extremely heavy mortar would be necessary to root out deeply entrenched japanese positions it took two tractors to tow the huge gun into position one hauled the barrel the other the steel mounting box a hole was dug in the ground and the mounting was inserted with earth packed around it then a crane lowered the massive barrel into place like the guns of a bygone era little david was a muzzleloader once the massive round was inserted the barrel had to be raised to seat it in place and off with this 3700 pound bomb with i think about three quarters of a ton of explosive inside it to a range of about ten thousand yards something like this now can you imagine three quarters of a ton of explosive landing on top of a pill box or a bunker or something like that you would just remove it operation olympic was set for november of 1945 but before little david could prove itself in battle the war with japan came to an abrupt end atomic bombs would dramatically influence the design of the next generation of super guns [Music] for all intents and purposes the close of the second world war marked the end of the supercut the advances of long-range heavy aircraft rendered massive super guns obsolete [Music] still the advent of atomic warheads suggested a new use for heavy artillery first proposed in 1944 plans for an atomic cannon were abandoned when the war ended but as the cold war heated up the weapon was needed to combat the massive numbers of tanks being produced by the soviet union these mechanized forces threatened to overrun europe had they been deployed they may have faced the 280 millimeter howitzer known as atomic annie commissioned into service in the mid-1950s atomic annie could lob its nuclear charge up to 18 miles a specially built tractor with twin cabs gave the 75-ton gun surprisingly good mobility but when they deployed this thing on exercises in germany it never got a chance for the tires to cool down before the enemy air were over it and there was the great drawback you can't deploy an old-fashioned it has to be admitted it is an old-fashioned cannon of large size against an enemy or has tactical air short-range missiles aerial photography you can't conceal it it's impossible as an early weapon it was a very effective weapon but rapidly was overcome by technology because the round was shrunk so that you could put an atomic warhead into an eight inch gun round or a one five five round july 1962 these troops forming a special task force were the first in our army's history to engage in a tactical exercise supported by live nuclear firepower this once top-secret u.s department of energy film declassified in late 1997 shows maneuvers featuring the davy crockett 11 inches in diameter and just 51 pounds the warhead was the smallest lightest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the united states [Music] with a range of up to two and a half miles and an explosive punch the equivalent of about ten tons of dynamite davy crockett was a potent secret weapon to confront the soviet tanks then attorney general robert kennedy was on hand to observe what would be the last atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon to take place at this nevada test site the davy crockett is probably the worst weapon system ever devised i could only think of one thing worse that would probably be an atomic hand grenade you had to point the weapon you had to dig a hole you fired the weapon you jumped in the hole because you were in the blast radius of the atomic warhead this is not a good idea more than 2 000 of the weapons were produced between 1956 and 1963 with the power of the atom in the hands of a soldier davy crockett was the ultimate super god but there was still one man who thought the greatest gun was yet to be built and one day he would build the most colossal super gun of them all born in ontario canada in 1928 gerald vincent bull was one of the century's greatest artillery designers after the death of his mother he was raised by an aunt who encouraged him in his studies at school young gerald went on to become a brilliant student he always saw math as his area and went to the university of toronto and again just excelled and excelled and excelled and in fact graduated with a phd at the age of 23 the youngest phd that canada had ever produced by the time he was 31 gerald bull had already designed a powerful gun that shot small rocket models as an alternative to expensive wind tunnel testing [Music] on the 4th of october 1957 soviets launched their first satellite sputnik into orbit the russian satellite would have a profound effect on bull he wanted to launch a satellite for canada there was no way the canadians could come up with the money to launch a satellite using rocketry he felt that it would be possible to launch one with a gun with a huge super gun in 1962 dr bull was given an opportunity to test his super gun idea as a professor at mcgill university in montreal he secured american military support for a joint u.s canadian feasibility study named haarp for high altitude research program on the island of barbados and in the desert sands of arizona bull began to push the limits of artillery he was soon firing light projectiles up to 45 miles from small 5-inch guns harp's 7-inch guns fired up to 62 miles bull then focused his attention on a super gun the harp gun was initially fashioned by welding together two 16-inch battleship guns more than a hundred feet long it was the biggest gun in the world although it was capable of firing a three thousand pound shell lightweight projectiles called martlets were these space vehicles dr bull had in mind he employed an ingenious method to house the small eight-inch wide martlets inside the gun barrel the gap between the martlets and the barrel wall was filled in by wooden sabos that encapsulated the projectile in a shape similar to an artillery shell both the martlet and the sabos were protected by a base plate when the gun was fired the wood and the base plate fell off freeing the projectile tail fins stabilized and prolonged the martlet's flight i remember as a child going there and having a lot of fun you just see it fire and you just stay quiet it takes you by shock even though you hear the countdown and you say three two one you're expected and then you see the flash it just takes you by surprise and then a few seconds later you you hear the bang and that's a second shock for you on the 19th of november 1966 bulls arizona gun fired a 185 pound marklet [Music] 112 miles high u.s director of project harp charles murphy supervised the firing the record of 112 miles is the guinness book record which is still standing it's the highest a gun has ever fired although the flight of the 16 inch gun was 112 miles straight up in the air if we had wanted to try for a horizontal range record and brought it down to an elevation of about 50 degrees the range that would have been achieved would have been 250 miles the 16-inch harp gun was to be the launch pad for a small three-stage rocket to boost 20-pound payload into space but before it could be developed the canadian and u.s governments in 1967 terminated harp funding dr bull was initially devastated despite the setback though he was more convinced than ever that guns could launch payloads into space at a fraction of the cost of large rockets he would eventually find a well-heeled sponsor who would finance his dream a middle eastern dictator named saddam hussein in 1967 dr gerald bull retreated to his private compound on the border of quebec and vermont he also quietly entered the arms business as a means to continue his research on super guns the man who had fired his super gun higher than anyone else began to tinker with conventional artillery pieces instead of altering the guns bull simply redesigned the ammunition they fired if you picture a shell it seems wonderfully streamlined at the front but of course it's flat at the back and the turbulence is a partial vacuum at the back end of a shell and the sucking of air inevitably slows down the shell and limits its ultimate range gerald bull had a great idea of actually designing a system by which you would bleed gas into the space at the back of the shell so that it was no longer being as it were sucked back by this eternal semi-vacuum void that formed at the end dr bull applied some of the project harp advances to a conventional 155 millimeter shell he made it thinner and more streamlined he then added small fins as stabilizers to keep the slender shell steady inside the gun they also helped the shells to glide farther the new gc45 shell was nothing short of revolutionary by lengthening the 155 millimeter gun barrel slightly the shells were soon capable of flying one and a half times farther than conventional nato shells when you've increased the range of the gun the benefit is this you can put your own guns back where they're safer or you can fire deeper into enemy territory and because one gun can command more ground you can fire cover the area with less number of guns before long artillery guns based on bull's designs appeared all over the world the israelis used them to protect the golan heights during the iran-iraq war the iraqis bought over 500 artillery cannons based on bull's design and they were used to devastating effect in 1984 bull teamed with dr charles murphy to publish a book about super guns during his research he became obsessed with the long-range paris gun he managed to get many of the secret german documents on the paris gun project from friends of the crew factory using computers bull ran calculations to learn all he could from the design and wartime employment of the gun during this time he immersed himself in the subject of world war one he often toured the battlefields outside his office in brussels belgium and read poetry written by soldiers during the war he would walk through the graveyards reading the little crosses and reciting his poetry sometimes on his own sometimes with one of his sons who went with him and he would cry and great many of them are marked known only unto god there's no name no one knows who lies there the reason is that they were blown to pieces by artillery the very sort of the very work that he was involved in and i really think that he did not make that jump of realizing that the pieces he was producing was producing new little crosses on some other land he was producing many weeping widows and mothers as had been produced in the first world war when the iran-iraq war ended in 1988 the iraqi military was looking to rebuild its artillery systems and members of the iraqi government approached gerald bull and in those conversations he began to tell them about his life ambition which was to prove that it would be possible to launch a satellite with a huge gun at a fraction of the cost [Music] no arab country had ever launched a satellite and the notion of an inexpensive gun system that could fire satellites into orbit appealed to saddam hussein at long last gerald bull thought he'd found someone who shared his vision with their financial backing he sat down to develop the greatest gun that anybody would ever have seen it would have weighed 2 100 tons can you imagine the size of that bull borrowed from his harp gun design and opted to build the barrel in segments in all they would stretch 512 feet long nearly one and a half times the length of a soccer field the gun would be so powerful it could fire a two-ton rocket-assisted shell into orbit the iraqis code-named the gun project babylon but there were concerns at dr paul's company iraq was embarking on an unprecedented arms buildup i did disagree with project babylon i said it was a dangerous project my objection to the super gun project were political much more than scientific when his son convinced him that his super gun could be seen as a military weapon dr bull decided to build it discreetly the gun was fabricated in separate parts by factories in england spain holland and switzerland many manufacturers were led to believe they were working on a petrochemical project for the iraqis bull supergun was now a secret gun but he didn't keep it that secret because he talked a lot he didn't understand the dangers of loose lips sinking ships my dad was probably the worst secret keeper in the world he was a very enthusiastic person he would talk as word leaked gerald bull was getting a second chance at his lifetime dream pieces of the gun began to arrive in iraq upsetting the delicate balance of power in the middle east as a component of project babylon dr bull designed and built a smaller gun nicknamed baby babylon as a prototype for the larger super gun this 40 meter long gun was first constructed for horizontal testing in the summer of 1989 the iraqis installed the prototype at a secret site at jabal hamron 90 miles north of baghdad in central iraq the gun was positioned along a mountainside at about 45 degrees an angle which didn't seem appropriate for high-altitude gun research [Music] as long as they kept funding project babylon dr bull agreed to assist the iraqis with other weapons projects these other ventures led him down a dangerous path my dad was a bit politically naive and they tagged that project along they did fund the project okay but meanwhile they were asking increasing things from him [Music] bull designed a number of advanced mobile artillery systems for the iraqis that would use super gun technology perhaps the most ominous project bull worked on was the long-range iraqi scud missile program for saddam hussein the major trouble with his scuds was their restricted range and accuracy like the paris guns of world war one they could hit a city but not an exact target to carry a heavier warhead they also needed more power they did ask him at one time to validate some of their work of a missile program in which they basically took some scuds and put them together they needed uh they felt they needed a long-range missile a missile that could really threaten israel they didn't have that what they did have were large numbers of russian scuds and they felt that if they tied enough of these scuds together they would change them from being a short-range missile into at least a medium range missile and bull agreed with that bull assisted the iraqis with some of the mathematical calculations in their multi-stage skud rocket program it may have been a fateful decision israeli intelligence agents were following the project closely on at least two occasions the iraqis tried to launch one of these um cobbled up tied together missiles and they failed but sooner or later they were going to be successful and the israelis knew that and friends of people that bull had known for years who were associated with the israeli government and certainly some of them in fact were at the time members of the staff of the israeli embassy in paris visited ball in brussels and talked with him at some length in in secret meetings now we don't know what happened at those meetings but bull's colleagues have told me that he emerged from the very worried man i think the israelis realized that he was frightened and that he might stop and they they wanted to encourage that and strange things began to happen to him he lived in a small apartment just out of the center of brussels he arrived home one day and the furniture was rearranged in his apartment there were little gestures you might say nothing that would identify an assailant but enough to unsettle him he did complain about a lot of these things but not in a way to say oh gee somebody's trying to warn me meanwhile dr bull and the iraqis continued to test-fire the baby babylon gun oh became increasingly nervous he was drinking during the day and taking sleeping pills at night his every move was now being watched on the 22nd of march 1990 his assistant dropped him off at his apartment he was carrying 20 000 in cash inside he rode the elevator to the sixth floor and stepped out into this hallway where a killer with a silenced pistol waited in the shadows of an alcove bull turned left to his apartment door fumbled for his keys got his keys out and in fact had put the key in the lock the person who had been standing in the alcove then stepped out behind him and fired five shots in a straight line right up his back he died more or less instantly in a large pool of blood on the floor shortly thereafter gerald bull's body was discovered his money had not been taken it came as a total entire surprise and it's a shock you don't believe you go into denial for a little while and then it just sinks in and then you're you're at lost it takes a long while to heal from that the belgian police believe the assassin ran down the stairs walked out through this back garden and into a waiting car most experts believe that it was a government-sponsored execution but which government may never be known some believe the iraqis no longer trusted dr bull perhaps fearful that he gave the israelis details on the super gun or the scud missile program it could also have been the work of israel's secret mossad he had many enemies he international enemies the one that makes the most sense is israel the visits from the israelis fit the timetable he himself felt that it was the israelis who were threatening him and the circumstantial evidence would seem to point to that but you could never prove it acting on an anonymous tip the british customs and excise department seized the final eight sections of the super gun in november 1990 during the persian gulf war israeli concerns over the scud missiles were borne out the iraqis fired their scuds at americans in saudi arabia and israelis in tel aviv after the war united nations inspectors raced to the sites of iraqi weapons of mass destruction and blew up a number of biological and chemical weapons plants when they arrived at the supergun sites they discovered baby babylon still intact there's a secondary system the inspectors went to great lengths to ascertain the capabilities of the super gun the requirement um according to the the iraqi declaration was to fire um a 600 kilogram projectile about a thousand kilometers with that was the if you look back at the work that um gerald ball did in half that's quite achievable with this size caliber and a rocket assisted projectile it could certainly push towards low earth orbit these sections of the super gun barrel were found in a final staging area the u.n team determined that project babylon was a weapons program and destroyed the remains of the guns building a super gun this size may never be attempted again i've got a feeling that general bull was to guns what fenner von braun was to rockets they really wanted to build the biggest and the best and at the end of the day it didn't matter who paid the money so long as they could realize their crazy ambitions in the end one of the tragedies of bull was that he didn't understand that the technology to which he was tied gun technology had passed the day had passed he was very jealous of a development in the united states at lawrence livermore where he knew that they were thinking of building a gun which was would be capable of sending small payloads into space particularly for use with the development of a space station the sharp light gas gun at the lawrence livermore labs in california uses compressed hydrogen to launch an 11-pound projectile to speeds nearly 9 000 miles an hour a methane gas explosion propels a piston down a long pump tube to compress hydrogen to 30 000 pounds per square inch the launch tube is connected to the pump tube at a right angle initially it was thought that this would make it possible to pivot the launch tube to a vertical position but the gun has yet to be pointed skyward still it bears the acronym sharp which stands for super high altitude research project with the space station in orbit an inexpensive means of supply would be an attractive notion suppose you forget some small piece of equipment or suddenly need it how do you get it up there if you send it up with a rocket it costs huge sums but if you could shoot it up with a gun it costs almost nothing [Music] in the last quarter of the 20th century the conventional artillery has become smaller not bigger dr bull's 155 millimeter gun design is now standard in most of the armies of the world what sets the guns of today apart is the super ammunition they fire smart ammunition incorporates sensors that seek out targets and ensure that virtually every shot is lethal [Music] but the super guns of the next century may not fire any sort of projectile along the stuff of science fiction energy and beam weapons are slowly becoming a reality one of the most promising of these new projectilist concepts is the electromagnetic pulse weapon or emp the emp is another byproduct of the nuclear age it was discovered that a nuclear explosion produces a burst of electromagnetic energy which disrupts all electronic activity over a vast area if you can produce the pulse without the embarrassment of having to fire an atomic bomb you have got a very very effective weapon this pulse renders inoperable all electronic equipment in its range disrupting transportation communication and computation and that's one of the things that the the modern army in the in the 21st century is going to have to guard against because everything these days is computer driven there have been reports that the united states army field tested an electromagnetic pulse device during the 1991 gulf war government sources will not confirm this because the consequences of the implementation of such a weapon system are staggering the very existence of electromagnetic pulse weapons is shrouded in secrecy if the electromagnetic pulse weapon can be developed you've put us back to the 19th century we're back to rifles bayonets firing over open sights sending messages by pencil and paper and drummers and flags if you take the electronics out of the modern battlefield that's what you've got left and this is a very frightening prospect but it does mean that artillery will come back the quest to develop the next super gun will continue as it has since the dawn of artillery whether the super guns of tomorrow will be used for war or for more peaceful purposes is yet to be seen

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 448,671

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, big guns, artillery, big bertha, schwerer gustav, schwerer gustav firing, project babylon

Id: pldHV_cY-mU

Length: 50min 51sec (3051 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021