As a veteran of the South African army in the 1980's I can tell you from first hand experience that the G5 cannon with the ERFB shell was a game-changer in the Angolan bush war. I can still remember one dark night watching these shells being fired from about 5km behind our lines. They looked like giant tracer rounds arcing from the horizon to above the cloud line.
Do you know if the base bleed charge has a delay on it? Otherwise this seems like a bit of a design flaw for counterbattery spotting if it lights up as soon as it leaves the barrel.
i met Bull in the late 70s, definitely an interesting person, all he wanted to do was study artillery. The site at North Troy Vermont was littered with gun barrels. In Barbados, i was told the chickens would not lay eggs and the cows wouldn't give milk. He bought LST 854renamed NORTH POINT for the Barbados government for a Caribcon Project and it caused a change of government in Barbados. Bull liked big guns, SRC archives should have a paper called THE GUN LAUNCHED ORBITER, where he describes how a gun launched satellite could be done with guns up to 3 feet in diameter and bigger. The last I talked to him was about three weeks before he died.
Woow.. isn't it amazing how politicians vs engineering egotism clash.. Examples 1. Christie with the tank Design 2. Howard Hughes 3. Elon Musk Never heard of Bull but an good example
Yeah, 3 weeks before he was assassinated. It is also amazing how many engineers who came up with working clean hydrogen burning engines that basically used water have been murdered or died "mysteriously" just before they could bring their inventions to market. They never seem to take into account all the people in government and industry who WILL even commit mass murder to protect their profits and power.
I have gone and looked at the remnants of the HARP project in Barbados, including one of the 16 inch barrels. My brother in law, a Barbados resident tells me that when a HARP firing was due, the locals were pre-warned so that they could open their windows to stop the pressure wave breaking the glass.
My late father worked with an engineer who was Gerald Bull's assistant in Brussels. Unfortunately I never met him, but was told that on hearing the news he went directly to the airport and left the country, hoping to fade into obscurity. He said that he was utterly terrified for a long time.
@@Calum_S Exactly, if you like this channel, Fort Nelson will be paradise. Don't miss the tunnels. It's free to visit, just need to pay for car parking
I’m a Canadian who became fascinated by the story of Gerald Bull quite some time ago. Upon having the good fortune to be posted to Brussels, I took the opportunity to find his apartment building and walked over to it one day. Looking at the door handles that both he and the Mossad used that day was a little surreal.
@@Halal_Dan "No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.” --Isaiah 54:17
@@Halal_Dan They were engaged in conflict with ancient Egipt, with Persia, with Seleucid empire, with Roman empire, etcetera, ad nauseam. Where are all those mighty enemies now?
My cousin worked for Sheffield Forgemasters at that time and he always wondered what the things were that he was working on due to the precise specifications. They turned out to be super gun barrel sections.
If I'm not mistaken the Iraqis contracted them under the guise of manufacturing sewage pipes, so given my manufacturing background I can imagine the strange looks that were had when they were told how tight the tolerances were for alleged sewage pipes.
One of my all-time favorite teachers was one of the G2 guys who did the original evaluation on the one-five-five field piece. Bless you Mr. Smith, some of us still remember.
Yes - the real concern was the other work he was doing for Iraq on Scuds and EFBR shells, rather than on Project Babylon. The bit about a supergun etc was just for public consumption - just one part of the BS they were already putting around about "Saddam's WMD" and which was eventually turned up to 11 to justify a war built on false pretenses.
Firing things into space is still an avenue being investigated, for shooting something like a Starlink satellite into space, or eventually parts for moon mining vehicles etc makes a lot of sense, waaay cheaper than firing them up on rockets, Very unfortunate that a talent like Mr Bull couldn't have been harnessed to civilian applications of his ballistics expertise, and sort of bonkers that someone thought he was dangerous enough to warrant actually having him murdered in the centre of Europe. Great video as ever, this channel rarely disappoints.
Yeah. Satellites, nah. We have too many of them up there. But shooting fuel, and parts to assemble interplanetary craft, that's where the immense advantages of a Space Gun are. 🤔🧐🤓
@@user-pk4hn1uz1kWho did kill him, I don't believe the assassin/s were ever formally identified? If it was the Israelis, seems very heavy handed for a non threat, I would imagine they would want to avoid annoying Europeans by doing hits in flipping Brussels! That's a bit close to home!!
@@paulelephant9521 It's the sort of brazen, arrogant stuff they do (and are doing somewhere now) because their people control the monetary/tax system in every western country. What are you going to do about it? Complain? Lmao.
From watching some shotgun RUclips channels that shoot viewer made bullets I was inspired to design a similar looking round to the one that you are presenting in this video. It is nice that someone had some parallel ideas to mind, and actually got a chance to make them.
@@20chocsaday yes, similar to the gun Germany built to delivery artillery shells to London. Also makes service access to the barrel much easier and adds options for higher speed
The Babil gun barrel would have been concealed inside a tunnel drilled in the side of a mountain. The only vulnerability would be a one metre hole, the muzzle, on the surface. It would have been very hard to destroy. Also, it was adjustable a few degrees for line, at the breech end, and range could be altered by changing the propellant charge. Two were to be built, one pointed at Tehran, one at Tel Aviv. Two shells a day, containing a ton of HE or other filler, could be fired from each gun. Look up the history of the German V3 weapon in WWII for its ancestor. You are quite wrong to write the idea off as impractical. It would have been very effective as a terror weapon, and short of a nuclear device, nothing would have touched it. The V3 was destroyed by a ten ton Grand Slam bomb, of the kind we no longer make.
A few parts of the barrel of Bull's supergun were seized by Customs in the port of Antwerpen, Belgium. They were still there in the early 1990's, quietly forgotten in a corner of a warehouse of abandoned cargo. I have personally seen them in that warehouse.
in my youth I was fascinated by this sort of subject and was under the impression that Dr Bull had used the German fixed ‘Super Guns” that they had started installing to fire at the British Isles from Europe. If my old memory serves still, I recall that those devices didn’t merely use an explosive propellant at the the breach but were also assisted by a series of gas-powered percussions along the barrel as the projectile progressed up the barrel. Or did I dream that?
You didn't dream that. It is described in a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia contributors. (2024, September 4). V-3 cannon. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:39, September 9, 2024, from en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-3_cannon&oldid=1243930773
Thanks for the video. Prior to this I had only read bits and pieces of information about Gerald Bull and always assumed the mechanism he used to extend the range of artillery shells involved providing those shells some sort of additional propulsive force, and that he had invented the technology behind it. Turns out both of these assumptions were wrong. Thanks again. Very interesting info.
It's too bad that the larger supergun models were never built (I'm looking at you Mossad) the technology is really interesting and could allow us to put satellites in orbit MUCH more cheaply. Bull just wanted to see his dream realized and didn't really think about the repercussions of working for Iraq.
Idk man, in the end most if his work was on scuds, not cannons. He wasnt the pained visionary von braun was, he was an engineer for hire with a pet Project
The numbers given in the video are not realistic. Any space gun needs a kickstage to reach orbit, and since Big Babylon would have been a single stage gun, it would need quite a sizeable one. 200kg to LEO is far more realistic than the 1000kg stated in the video. Given the need for 9 tonnes of specialised propellant and the 2 ton guided kickstage (and the amortization cost of the gun), it's hard to believe it would be much cheaper than modern small satellite launchers (Rocket Lab's Electron has a payload of 300kg to LEO, weighs 12.5 tonnes and costs 7.5 million dollars per launch). Working together with dictatorships is also inexcusable. In that regard, the comparison with Werner von Braun is probably more accurate than one would think. The production of the V-2 missiles killed more people in forced labor camps than at their impact sites. Both of these men had grand visions, but they both stopped at nothing to reach them.
@@lukasdimmler2622 there were a number of designs including additional offset chambers with more propellant in each and firing rockets that would ignite at their apogee. The designs mentioned in the video certainly wouldn't have but some of the others or some combination of them may well have. It's unfortunate that all we got to see was the infancy of the technology
There's an interesting "alternate history " (well, lite alternate, historical events were barely affected) novel by Forsythe named "Fist of God" as to the real reason the gun was planned.
A fascinating video. I had no knowledge that I can recall on Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull. Your excellent abridged version shows his genius and ability to think outside the box. Thanks for your videos.
I too am obsessed with Dr. Bull. I'm waiting for those idiots who are trying to build a trebuchet to launch satellites into space to realize Bull was RIGHT. A really big gun laid on the side of a mountain should actually work. 🙄😂
Thank you for this video! Like you, I am fascinated by Gerald Bull. He was a remarkable engineer. One item that may merit discussion is that, although Iraq knew how to strap several Soviet Scuds together, they did not have the technology for the re-entry vehicles. Bull provided this knowledge, and this is ultimately what signed his death warrant. The Super Gun was almost trivial in this saga (though not for Bull). But the ability for Iraq to have an effective long-range ballistic missile system was very worrying for Israel. Thus, his assassination was sealed. Gerald Bull was a genius whose time unfortunately came to an early end. But he was betrayed by the Americans and the British.
Alternatively you could look at him as an arms seller without morals who got what was coming to him. Dude sold arms to SA, Iraq and communist china for crying out loud!
@@thekinginyellow1744 I would not characterize him as an idiot savant. I was no idiot. Savant? Genius, for sure. Still, the Americans did betray him. The Canadians, too. His knowledge was very specific and perhaps a bit too niche. Artillery is still a viable weapon, But the Supergun was really a folly. It was the knowledge of re-entry vehicles that was the final straw. Yes, he ignored warnings. Yes, he made some bone-headed decisions. Still, Gerald Bull was a genius of nearly unique abilities. As is too often the case, when his genius was no longer useful, he was discarded by the Americans. And so chose to ply his trade with the South Africans and then the Iraqis. Not terribly clever, perhaps. But the SA G5 and the G6 were brilliant designs. He should not have died at the hands of the Mossad. But good intentions can (and sometimes do) have unintended and unfortunate consequences. Still Gerald Bull is a hero to me.
@@chemwrite Not using the medical definition, but rather the cultural one. If you want a more strict medical definition, I would go with monotropism to at least some degree. So focused on his own goals that he totally ignored the bigger picture. Do I think he should have been murdered? No. Do I think he should have known that he would be murdered if he continued on his current course? Yes, Absolutely.
@@thekinginyellow1744 Gerald Bull was a complex man. Likely, I would not have liked him, had I met him. However, I do admire him as the greatest genius of artillery in the modern era. I am writing this time, not to talk about Gerald Bull, but to question you. Your moniker and your sigil are somewhat disturbing. The tale of the yellow king is...well, while I am aware of it, it is not something that I would be drawn to. And your sigil, while maybe reminiscent of the Isle of Mann, does bear an all too similarity to that which has been adopted by members of what are euphemistically known as the alt-right. On that topic, I can only remind all of us that The United States fought the Civil War and the Second World War and defeated those who would espouse those repudiated philosophies. If that is your predilection, I'd kindly advise you to reconsider your stance. Being on the losing side of history is a poor place to raise a flag.
I highly recommend visiting Beautiful Barbados! 🇧🇧 Not only for the HARP Gun 😉 I have walked to the site two years ago, it is massive, and people there remembering it shook the whole Island! Sadly the Concorde Experience at BGI is closed now, had visited that couple of years earlier.
I'm pretty sure Barbados has officially crossed to line to being a high-income country now; the quality of governance and public services is supposed to be pretty good.
I pray i never have to experience artillery shelling, ive read alot of war memoirs and all say its the most terrifying thing. You have to fight every urge to jump and run, like lightening striking all around you and the ground becoming not solid with every explosion, tossing your entire body up and down left and right.. alot of guys cracked, jumped out of their hole and got ripped apart by blast, shrapnel or enemy fire. Terrifying..
I'm also terrified of hundreds of flying 2"-6" long pieces of razor sharp jagged steel from exploding artillery shells. A 4" inch piece of a supersonic flying steel would tear through a human shoulder or cut a limb 10 times faster than a cleaver hacking a beef steak. I told a doctor once, I'm not allergic to penicillin but I'm allergic to exploding things and flying sharp metal 😆😁
I'm sure there will be someone to comment about artillery barrages from the receiving end, thank heaven I'm not one of them. I did see, from 20km distance through field glasses what the impact area looks like when a six-gun battery fires a three-round (per gun) time-on-target mission. Each gun fires three rounds in quick succession, at a different elevation for each round, timed to that all the shells impact at approximately the same time, in this case it was eighteen shells exploding at about 20 meters (if I remember correctly) above ground within one second. The intent is to maximize the destructive capability of a single artillery battery and give the enemy no time to react and get under cover. It was just an exercise, but seeing the chaos that ensued, from over 10 miles away, was sobering, to say the least.
Truly a fascinating video in every way; thank you. Also I absolutely love the explanation of that gas booster; I never would have imagined something like that- very interesting.
According to the US Army website, they are getting inquiries from private satellite companies about using the HARP gun at Yuma as a launch platform. The gun has been restored to museum state and would take only a little effort to restore to full operation. It's probably too small to launch an unassisted projectile into orbit, but since assisted projectiles are a thing, it is a real possibility. The question is then more about hardening instruments against the enormous G-load, about what orbits it can reach, and whether the economics make sense compared to a rideshare on a conventional launch platform.
I saw "A load of Bull" and was almost going to be angry, and then I remembered who "Bull" is. If ever there was proof that geniuses can be idiots, Bull is it.
I have just watched an excellent documentary on Gagarin on another channel, where you were cited as the author: or at least, someone with the same name. You are versatile, and an accomplished writer and communicator.
You want to go deeper with Dr. Bull, look into his designs for the Iowa class guns with submunitions. He had a design of the standard 16" round that would hit out to 39 miles, but that wasn't his only mod for the Iowa guns. He also had a 11" submunition and an 8" submunition with the 8" submunition being able to reach 100 miles.
Hey, the youtube links to the mainpage of youtube for some reason, thanks; tried on multiple browsers and on a VM, might be country blocked or a broken link :)
Depends on the quality of the EW and the operating conditions. It can be quite surgical. Given an excellent platform, robust targeting, and a proper guided shell. If there is not significant EW, you can really do something special with that. Or the BONUS rounds and whatnot. They're absolutely surgical.
Whenever a new technology comes along, their are some engineers who will fixate on forwarding the existing solutions as far as possible, partly because it's what they know, partly because they know the mill monkeys can build it. The all-wood comstruction of the DeHavilland Mosquito is one example. In a day when cruise and ballistic missiles were becoming dominate for long-range fires, Bull proved the gun was still viable. And he achieved some damn impressive performance. BTW, there were 2 more HARP guns made--one at Yuma Proving Grounds and one at Highwater Ridge. Everyone focuses on the Barbados gun because it has pictures.
Those have photos as well. I prefer the one in the Yuma Proving Grounds because it is the only one of the bunch that was maintained in working order to this day...
If you are in England go to the Armouries Museum at Fort Nelson (its free!). Among many excellent exhibits is a section of the Supergun which was found still in the UK Customs store, it is huge. I have never forgotten Bull's assassination - the week before i had bought shares in Astra who had a joint venture with Bull. They lost 90% of their value, i should have paid more attention to the risks.
I'd like to know who signed his non existence chit, and who in oddawa cooperated with this, if Oddawa was in the loop at any point. His demise and lack of interest in a vigorous ongoing investigation by Oddawa has all the hallmarks of 'the disappeared.'
I remember my dad mentioning the Sheffield forgemaster thing as he was an engineer, and quite worried about the implications I believe they were fined or whatever. And as you can see they just look like pipes.
Another great video. I remember seeing a story about Bull on 60 minutes, back when I was a teenager. Foreground was a little out of focus lol. By the way - what was the very large insect crawling around on the floor (right above the back of the shell)? It is just a small speck when the video starts and then slowly gets closer and closer LOL
@@rjmun580 Yes, that is what I thought - but I didn't think they had cockroaches that big in Canada. I've lived in northern Maine near the border and we never saw a cockroach, let a lone one that big. We now are in southern US and they are here.
LOL, anyone else see the roach on the floor behind him on the right at 4:15? It gave me flashbacks to the X-Files episode that had the roach jump scare.
The shape of projectile Bull implemented is good for range but bad for accuracy. There is an alternative solution to use more traditional shape projectile, but fire it at higher velocity and with flatter trajectory. Modern GPS guided MLRS systems are tough competitors to traditional artillery. It's unclear if it is worth using such shape projectiles nowadays or not.
3:11 "The missile was traveling through the air, instead of the other way around." Instead of the air travelling through the missile "...in real life"? When does that ever happen? What!?!?!! Did anyone watch the video? How is no one questioning this?
The nubs do not engage the rifling. They ride over the rifling. The nubs are too wide to engage the rifling. 155 mm guns can shoot standard rounds and ERFB rounds. The nubs keep the projectile centered. The nubs are angled to match the projectile spin caused by the driving bands. The ERFB projectile still uses a driving band, it's just not as substantial as the original driving bands.
It appears from your stats. This shell became orbital via height? Were any actually placed into orbit, I wonder? From memory, many other nations worked on similarly themed shells, such as Germany during WWII, etc.
my mom had a friend named Francis Bull, I think, who was a supply teacher at my primary school...both ladies are gone but I have often wondered if my mom's friend and Dr. Gerald Bull were related
Except ... an unguided shell can't achieve orbit. It can go as FAST as something orbital, but without any sort of motor, the ellipse it follows will pass through the last point where it was given a nudge (in this case, the moment it leaves the gun barrel). The very best you could do would be a shot tangential to the surface of the Earth (firing just above the horizon), but even then the shot would arc out, circle around the Earth, and then enter back into the atmosphere to complete the ellipse (touching the end of the gun barrel). In practice, drag from the atmosphere would keep it from reaching the point where it started ... but without some sort of motor (or drag) to change the orbit, it's always going to pass through the last place where it received any thrust. I suppose they might have been planning to include some sort of small rocket thruster on the shell to tweak the orbit once it cleared the atmosphere, but a GUN is a heck of a lot of impact inertia, and you'd need a guidance system that could handle that launch.
Oh baby. Now your talking my lingo. USMC Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Co. unit in the 80s. My unit was trained to call in Air strikes at night With recon units. We could hear The 105 and 155 going over our heads at night. From 10 miles away. Easily hitting targets 1 to 10 miles away. Accurate within 9m. Few years later in Afghanistan and Falucia they were calling them in going through windows of the target building. Oh well did this with Linsatic compasses you had to light up with flashlight and prc25 radio. Closest phone was in the E club.
As a veteran of the South African army in the 1980's I can tell you from first hand experience that the G5 cannon with the ERFB shell was a game-changer in the Angolan bush war. I can still remember one dark night watching these shells being fired from about 5km behind our lines. They looked like giant tracer rounds arcing from the horizon to above the cloud line.
So the base bleed acted as a pseudo-tracer? Interesting.
@@FirstDagger It's functionally just a weak rocket engine. The aerodynamics of why it works are different, but in practice it's a rocket.
Do you know if the base bleed charge has a delay on it? Otherwise this seems like a bit of a design flaw for counterbattery spotting if it lights up as soon as it leaves the barrel.
@@murica7096 uh, if you can spot an arillery piece firing 40-50km away from you, thats quite an achievement
@@N4CRdude no
Were both of them lied about
Yes
But they told on themselves far more often
i met Bull in the late 70s, definitely an interesting person, all he wanted to do was study artillery. The site at North Troy Vermont was littered with gun barrels. In Barbados, i was told the chickens would not lay eggs and the cows wouldn't give milk. He bought LST 854renamed NORTH POINT for the Barbados government for a Caribcon Project and it caused a change of government in Barbados. Bull liked big guns, SRC archives should have a paper called THE GUN LAUNCHED ORBITER, where he describes how a gun launched satellite could be done with guns up to 3 feet in diameter and bigger. The last I talked to him was about three weeks before he died.
Thank you for your service
You mean killed.
@@sd906238 that is still death, aka "died" it's his fond memory, let him word it how he pleases.
Woow.. isn't it amazing how politicians vs engineering egotism clash..
Examples
1. Christie with the tank Design
2. Howard Hughes
3. Elon Musk
Never heard of Bull but an good example
Yeah, 3 weeks before he was assassinated. It is also amazing how many engineers who came up with working clean hydrogen burning engines that basically used water have been murdered or died "mysteriously" just before they could bring their inventions to market. They never seem to take into account all the people in government and industry who WILL even commit mass murder to protect their profits and power.
Now *this* is a forgotten weapon!
I got wht u did thr.
Ian would be fascinated, for sure.
He hasn't got an example, though....@@Gunners_Mate_Guns
I have gone and looked at the remnants of the HARP project in Barbados, including one of the 16 inch barrels. My brother in law, a Barbados resident tells me that when a HARP firing was due, the locals were pre-warned so that they could open their windows to stop the pressure wave breaking the glass.
My late father worked with an engineer who was Gerald Bull's assistant in Brussels. Unfortunately I never met him, but was told that on hearing the news he went directly to the airport and left the country, hoping to fade into obscurity. He said that he was utterly terrified for a long time.
You fully articulated "Cliff's Notes". I'm impressed.
Gilles ain't no hack 😀
If anyone wishes to view the sections of the 'Supergun' they can be found in the Royal Armouries artillery museum at Fort Nelson nr Portsmouth.
A great day out, especially when they have reenactments going on.
Used to be at the Woolwich Musuem before that closed.
@@Calum_S Exactly, if you like this channel, Fort Nelson will be paradise. Don't miss the tunnels. It's free to visit, just need to pay for car parking
There was one section at the Duxford Imperial War Museum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergun_affair#/media/File:IraqiSupergunIWMDuxford2005.JPG
I’m a simple man, When I see artillery and Gerald Bull I click.
A man and his dream. Mr. Artillery. He loved his craft.
I'm a standard man, When I see artillery and Gerald Bull I click.😆
@@budgiefriend my great-uncle Frank was a navy man. He only drove Oldsmobiles, too. Lol. Smoked cigars and was a shot and a beer guy.
You have just crossed 100K.
There is a reason for this - your channel is fascinating.
I’m a Canadian who became fascinated by the story of Gerald Bull quite some time ago. Upon having the good fortune to be posted to Brussels, I took the opportunity to find his apartment building and walked over to it one day. Looking at the door handles that both he and the Mossad used that day was a little surreal.
Interesting how we all know the crimes of this country but no one is allowed to speak against them.
It's crazy how Israel just got away with murdering him like that
@@Halal_Dan
"No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.” --Isaiah 54:17
@@ЛишняяХромосома-э8ч So why are they currently being engaged in conflict in their area?
@@Halal_Dan They were engaged in conflict with ancient Egipt, with Persia, with Seleucid empire, with Roman empire, etcetera, ad nauseam. Where are all those mighty enemies now?
My cousin worked for Sheffield Forgemasters at that time and he always wondered what the things were that he was working on due to the precise specifications. They turned out to be super gun barrel sections.
If I'm not mistaken the Iraqis contracted them under the guise of manufacturing sewage pipes, so given my manufacturing background I can imagine the strange looks that were had when they were told how tight the tolerances were for alleged sewage pipes.
@@richardmillhousenixon iirc it was declared to customs as petrochemical equipement
The RUclips algorithm quit putting Our Own Devices in front of Me. I’m glad you showed up again. Thank you for the piece on Dr. Bull.
One of my all-time favorite teachers was one of the G2 guys who did the original evaluation on the one-five-five field piece. Bless you Mr. Smith, some of us still remember.
Good point about the gun not being the real concern for those who had Bull eliminated.
Yes - the real concern was the other work he was doing for Iraq on Scuds and EFBR shells, rather than on Project Babylon. The bit about a supergun etc was just for public consumption - just one part of the BS they were already putting around about "Saddam's WMD" and which was eventually turned up to 11 to justify a war built on false pretenses.
Firing things into space is still an avenue being investigated, for shooting something like a Starlink satellite into space, or eventually parts for moon mining vehicles etc makes a lot of sense, waaay cheaper than firing them up on rockets,
Very unfortunate that a talent like Mr Bull couldn't have been harnessed to civilian applications of his ballistics expertise, and sort of bonkers that someone thought he was dangerous enough to warrant actually having him murdered in the centre of Europe.
Great video as ever, this channel rarely disappoints.
Yeah. Satellites, nah. We have too many of them up there. But shooting fuel, and parts to assemble interplanetary craft, that's where the immense advantages of a Space Gun are. 🤔🧐🤓
He wasn't a credible threat, they killed him as a show of force.
@@user-pk4hn1uz1kWho did kill him, I don't believe the assassin/s were ever formally identified?
If it was the Israelis, seems very heavy handed for a non threat, I would imagine they would want to avoid annoying Europeans by doing hits in flipping Brussels! That's a bit close to home!!
@@paulelephant9521 It's the sort of brazen, arrogant stuff they do (and are doing somewhere now) because their people control the monetary/tax system in every western country. What are you going to do about it? Complain? Lmao.
Those people know no bounds in their villainy
So fascinated by this man, you wrote a play about him. What a fascinating person you are! Thank you for your excellent videos.
I love this channel
Here is a Polaroid camera!
Here is an artillery shell!
From watching some shotgun RUclips channels that shoot viewer made bullets I was inspired to design a similar looking round to the one that you are presenting in this video. It is nice that someone had some parallel ideas to mind, and actually got a chance to make them.
TAOFLEDERMAUS, by any chance?
@@somercet1
Yes. Maybe we could get the ballistic machinist to make up some rounds.
@@myperspective5091 and send it to them
156m long barrel is crazy...... i wish such a thing was made just for the coolness of it.
Just managing to keep such a barrel straight in the face of temperature changes is an engineering feat in its own right.
@@RCAvhstape Could it be buried underground to be in a stable environment?
@@20chocsaday yes, similar to the gun Germany built to delivery artillery shells to London.
Also makes service access to the barrel much easier and adds options for higher speed
Oh come one, Bull, forgotten? That man was and is, a legend
Sir, you are a man of multiple talents. I am in awe.
We got Ian the Gun Jesus, now we got Artillery Rabbi as well 😂😂😂
The Babil gun barrel would have been concealed inside a tunnel drilled in the side of a mountain. The only vulnerability would be a one metre hole, the muzzle, on the surface. It would have been very hard to destroy. Also, it was adjustable a few degrees for line, at the breech end, and range could be altered by changing the propellant charge. Two were to be built, one pointed at Tehran, one at Tel Aviv. Two shells a day, containing a ton of HE or other filler, could be fired from each gun.
Look up the history of the German V3 weapon in WWII for its ancestor. You are quite wrong to write the idea off as impractical. It would have been very effective as a terror weapon, and short of a nuclear device, nothing would have touched it. The V3 was destroyed by a ten ton Grand Slam bomb, of the kind we no longer make.
A few parts of the barrel of Bull's supergun were seized by Customs in the port of Antwerpen, Belgium. They were still there in the early 1990's, quietly forgotten in a corner of a warehouse of abandoned cargo. I have personally seen them in that warehouse.
in my youth I was fascinated by this sort of subject and was under the impression that Dr Bull had used the German fixed ‘Super Guns” that they had started installing to fire at the British Isles from Europe. If my old memory serves still, I recall that those devices didn’t merely use an explosive propellant at the the breach but were also assisted by a series of gas-powered percussions along the barrel as the projectile progressed up the barrel.
Or did I dream that?
You didn't dream that. It is described in a Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, September 4). V-3 cannon. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:39, September 9, 2024, from en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-3_cannon&oldid=1243930773
You're not the only one obsessed. I'm enjoying this!
Writing a play about Gerald Bull is the kind of thing that gets you put on a watch list.
Thanks for the video. Prior to this I had only read bits and pieces of information about Gerald Bull and always assumed the mechanism he used to extend the range of artillery shells involved providing those shells some sort of additional propulsive force, and that he had invented the technology behind it. Turns out both of these assumptions were wrong. Thanks again. Very interesting info.
It's too bad that the larger supergun models were never built (I'm looking at you Mossad) the technology is really interesting and could allow us to put satellites in orbit MUCH more cheaply. Bull just wanted to see his dream realized and didn't really think about the repercussions of working for Iraq.
Idk man, in the end most if his work was on scuds, not cannons. He wasnt the pained visionary von braun was, he was an engineer for hire with a pet Project
We have reusable rockets now, and honestly, anything that needs to go into orbit is probably too sensitive to survive being fired out of a space gun.
The numbers given in the video are not realistic. Any space gun needs a kickstage to reach orbit, and since Big Babylon would have been a single stage gun, it would need quite a sizeable one. 200kg to LEO is far more realistic than the 1000kg stated in the video. Given the need for 9 tonnes of specialised propellant and the 2 ton guided kickstage (and the amortization cost of the gun), it's hard to believe it would be much cheaper than modern small satellite launchers (Rocket Lab's Electron has a payload of 300kg to LEO, weighs 12.5 tonnes and costs 7.5 million dollars per launch).
Working together with dictatorships is also inexcusable. In that regard, the comparison with Werner von Braun is probably more accurate than one would think. The production of the V-2 missiles killed more people in forced labor camps than at their impact sites.
Both of these men had grand visions, but they both stopped at nothing to reach them.
@@lukasdimmler2622 there were a number of designs including additional offset chambers with more propellant in each and firing rockets that would ignite at their apogee. The designs mentioned in the video certainly wouldn't have but some of the others or some combination of them may well have. It's unfortunate that all we got to see was the infancy of the technology
There's an interesting "alternate history " (well, lite alternate, historical events were barely affected) novel by Forsythe named "Fist of God" as to the real reason the gun was planned.
A fascinating video. I had no knowledge that I can recall on Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull. Your excellent abridged version shows his genius and ability to think outside the box. Thanks for your videos.
I too am obsessed with Dr. Bull. I'm waiting for those idiots who are trying to build a trebuchet to launch satellites into space to realize Bull was RIGHT. A really big gun laid on the side of a mountain should actually work. 🙄😂
does it? When was that? This one wasn't ever fired.
@@marqsee7948 True. Edited original post. 😉
Tremendous work Gilles, thank you.
Link to the RUclips Bull documentary does not work. Can you fix that please.
It works for me. I'm in the U.S.
Thank you for this video! Like you, I am fascinated by Gerald Bull. He was a remarkable engineer. One item that may merit discussion is that, although Iraq knew how to strap several Soviet Scuds together, they did not have the technology for the re-entry vehicles. Bull provided this knowledge, and this is ultimately what signed his death warrant. The Super Gun was almost trivial in this saga (though not for Bull). But the ability for Iraq to have an effective long-range ballistic missile system was very worrying for Israel. Thus, his assassination was sealed. Gerald Bull was a genius whose time unfortunately came to an early end. But he was betrayed by the Americans and the British.
Alternatively you could look at him as an arms seller without morals who got what was coming to him.
Dude sold arms to SA, Iraq and communist china for crying out loud!
He wasn't betrayed, he was an idiot savant. He deliberately ignored all the warning signs and thus his death was inevitable.
@@thekinginyellow1744 I would not characterize him as an idiot savant. I was no idiot. Savant? Genius, for sure. Still, the Americans did betray him. The Canadians, too. His knowledge was very specific and perhaps a bit too niche. Artillery is still a viable weapon, But the Supergun was really a folly. It was the knowledge of re-entry vehicles that was the final straw. Yes, he ignored warnings. Yes, he made some bone-headed decisions. Still, Gerald Bull was a genius of nearly unique abilities. As is too often the case, when his genius was no longer useful, he was discarded by the Americans. And so chose to ply his trade with the South Africans and then the Iraqis. Not terribly clever, perhaps. But the SA G5 and the G6 were brilliant designs. He should not have died at the hands of the Mossad. But good intentions can (and sometimes do) have unintended and unfortunate consequences. Still Gerald Bull is a hero to me.
@@chemwrite Not using the medical definition, but rather the cultural one. If you want a more strict medical definition, I would go with monotropism to at least some degree. So focused on his own goals that he totally ignored the bigger picture. Do I think he should have been murdered? No. Do I think he should have known that he would be murdered if he continued on his current course? Yes, Absolutely.
@@thekinginyellow1744 Gerald Bull was a complex man. Likely, I would not have liked him, had I met him. However, I do admire him as the greatest genius of artillery in the modern era. I am writing this time, not to talk about Gerald Bull, but to question you. Your moniker and your sigil are somewhat disturbing. The tale of the yellow king is...well, while I am aware of it, it is not something that I would be drawn to. And your sigil, while maybe reminiscent of the Isle of Mann, does bear an all too similarity to that which has been adopted by members of what are euphemistically known as the alt-right. On that topic, I can only remind all of us that The United States fought the Civil War and the Second World War and defeated those who would espouse those repudiated philosophies. If that is your predilection, I'd kindly advise you to reconsider your stance. Being on the losing side of history is a poor place to raise a flag.
Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull was a Canadian.
best video I've seen on RUclips in a very long time. thank you
Very intriguing. Artillery's cool.
Can't find this one on Ebay either, thanks a lot! LOL. Great video again!
Ah, the Bagdad cannon guy - very interesting; thank you! :)
It’s very often forgotten but the US Army was one of the leading military branches in the space race along with the navy!
Thank you for this informative video filling in a lot of the gaps in the story of Bull I hadn’t known.
Wonderful! Another fine episode!
I highly recommend visiting Beautiful Barbados! 🇧🇧
Not only for the HARP Gun 😉
I have walked to the site two years ago, it is massive, and people there remembering it shook the whole Island!
Sadly the Concorde Experience at BGI is closed now, had visited that couple of years earlier.
I'm pretty sure Barbados has officially crossed to line to being a high-income country now; the quality of governance and public services is supposed to be pretty good.
@@augusthoglund6053tru dat! 😉
Lovely on a Sunday morning, thank you.
I pray i never have to experience artillery shelling, ive read alot of war memoirs and all say its the most terrifying thing. You have to fight every urge to jump and run, like lightening striking all around you and the ground becoming not solid with every explosion, tossing your entire body up and down left and right.. alot of guys cracked, jumped out of their hole and got ripped apart by blast, shrapnel or enemy fire. Terrifying..
I'm also terrified of hundreds of flying 2"-6" long pieces of razor sharp jagged steel from exploding artillery shells. A 4" inch piece of a supersonic flying steel would tear through a human shoulder or cut a limb 10 times faster than a cleaver hacking a beef steak.
I told a doctor once, I'm not allergic to penicillin but I'm allergic to exploding things and flying sharp metal 😆😁
I'm sure there will be someone to comment about artillery barrages from the receiving end, thank heaven I'm not one of them. I did see, from 20km distance through field glasses what the impact area looks like when a six-gun battery fires a three-round (per gun) time-on-target mission. Each gun fires three rounds in quick succession, at a different elevation for each round, timed to that all the shells impact at approximately the same time, in this case it was eighteen shells exploding at about 20 meters (if I remember correctly) above ground within one second. The intent is to maximize the destructive capability of a single artillery battery and give the enemy no time to react and get under cover.
It was just an exercise, but seeing the chaos that ensued, from over 10 miles away, was sobering, to say the least.
Truly a fascinating video in every way; thank you. Also I absolutely love the explanation of that gas booster; I never would have imagined something like that- very interesting.
Gerald Bull: I. Like. Big Guns and I cannot lie...
One barrel segment of the Babylon Gun can be seen at Duxford Air Museum just outside Cambridge England.
Yes, they accepted the order, accepted payment, then refused to ship instead of just declining the order like a moral person.
@@harryniedecken5321 Duxford Air Museum? What did they refuse to ship, and where?
@@marqsee7948 The pipe / tube supplier in England that made the barrel sections for the gun for Sadam.
Then mossad assassinated the guy.
@@harryniedecken5321 the Duxford Air Museum supplies pipes/tubes?
TY-So much facinating facts on Mr. Bull , and he was killed for it, wow! His story is epic.
I've always found Gerald Bull very fascinating.
The big gun barrel sections were rendered unusable after Sadam lost if I remember reading correctly.
My boss in 1990 worked for Gerald Bull before starting his own company “Overhoff Technology”
According to the US Army website, they are getting inquiries from private satellite companies about using the HARP gun at Yuma as a launch platform. The gun has been restored to museum state and would take only a little effort to restore to full operation. It's probably too small to launch an unassisted projectile into orbit, but since assisted projectiles are a thing, it is a real possibility. The question is then more about hardening instruments against the enormous G-load, about what orbits it can reach, and whether the economics make sense compared to a rideshare on a conventional launch platform.
I saw "A load of Bull" and was almost going to be angry, and then I remembered who "Bull" is. If ever there was proof that geniuses can be idiots, Bull is it.
@@Grendelmk1 in my experience, “geniuses” have a tendency to get tunnel vision so it just appears to outsiders that they are insane.
Wow! This really was a huge load of Bull...
‘ Guns Lies & Spies’ - also worth a read. 👍
Thank you so much for doing what you do. It'll be super awesome to shake your hand one day
I have just watched an excellent documentary on Gagarin on another channel, where you were cited as the author: or at least, someone with the same name. You are versatile, and an accomplished writer and communicator.
You want to go deeper with Dr. Bull, look into his designs for the Iowa class guns with submunitions. He had a design of the standard 16" round that would hit out to 39 miles, but that wasn't his only mod for the Iowa guns. He also had a 11" submunition and an 8" submunition with the 8" submunition being able to reach 100 miles.
Hey, the youtube links to the mainpage of youtube for some reason, thanks; tried on multiple browsers and on a VM, might be country blocked or a broken link :)
It doesn’t do anything for me (iphone app, USA)
No probs on my phone in Australia.
Ive noticed a lot of sites i used to access have become inaccessible over the last 24hrs, here in usa.
@@bunyipdragon9499 not working for me in Oz
Are we being sealed off from something for some reason ?
13:13 Those Mounties really get around. Their horses must have been pretty tired after crossing the Atlantic from North to South.
155mm is the king munition on the modern day battlefield. Quantity, quality and firepower for all purposes except surgical
Depends on the quality of the EW and the operating conditions. It can be quite surgical. Given an excellent platform, robust targeting, and a proper guided shell. If there is not significant EW, you can really do something special with that. Or the BONUS rounds and whatnot. They're absolutely surgical.
Excellent presentation!!
Whenever a new technology comes along, their are some engineers who will fixate on forwarding the existing solutions as far as possible, partly because it's what they know, partly because they know the mill monkeys can build it. The all-wood comstruction of the DeHavilland Mosquito is one example.
In a day when cruise and ballistic missiles were becoming dominate for long-range fires, Bull proved the gun was still viable. And he achieved some damn impressive performance.
BTW, there were 2 more HARP guns made--one at Yuma Proving Grounds and one at Highwater Ridge. Everyone focuses on the Barbados gun because it has pictures.
Those have photos as well. I prefer the one in the Yuma Proving Grounds because it is the only one of the bunch that was maintained in working order to this day...
you've earned a sub, sir. this was fantastic!
Strange, when I click the link for the documentary it takes me to youtube's front page, not a specific video.
If you are in England go to the Armouries Museum at Fort Nelson (its free!). Among many excellent exhibits is a section of the Supergun which was found still in the UK Customs store, it is huge. I have never forgotten Bull's assassination - the week before i had bought shares in Astra who had a joint venture with Bull. They lost 90% of their value, i should have paid more attention to the risks.
I vaguely remember hearing about this gun and guy during the first Gulf War, there were a bit worried the thing would be used.
I'd like to know who signed his non existence chit, and who in oddawa cooperated with this, if Oddawa was in the loop at any point. His demise and lack of interest in a vigorous ongoing investigation by Oddawa has all the hallmarks of 'the disappeared.'
What an amazing story. That it ends with the building of some crazy SUPER GUN... wild. I will be looking more into him.
Man really thought he could trust the CIA 🤣
Frederick Forsythe wrote a fiction novel, based on this man, and his "supergun" project.
I remember my dad mentioning the Sheffield forgemaster thing as he was an engineer, and quite worried about the implications
I believe they were fined or whatever. And as you can see they just look like pipes.
Great video, Gilles...👍
Fascinating! Thanks for posting.
Ian looks different today
Great show!
Another great video. I remember seeing a story about Bull on 60 minutes, back when I was a teenager.
Foreground was a little out of focus lol.
By the way - what was the very large insect crawling around on the floor (right above the back of the shell)? It is just a small speck when the video starts and then slowly gets closer and closer LOL
At 4:08 I'd say that it was a cockroach.
@@rjmun580
Yes, that is what I thought - but I didn't think they had cockroaches that big in Canada.
I've lived in northern Maine near the border and we never saw a cockroach, let a lone one that big.
We now are in southern US and they are here.
The Royal Artillery Museum at Woolwich had for many years a couple of sections of pipe outside. Seized parts of Bull's 'Supergun'.
Not forgotten, CBC did excellent coverage on the news at the time, an i believe the Fifth Estate.
LOL, anyone else see the roach on the floor behind him on the right at 4:15? It gave me flashbacks to the X-Files episode that had the roach jump scare.
And so goes another story from the Canadian annals of interrupted military industrial projects.
Used to live by Shilo, Grandfather lived there for years. Neat base.
The tan GC-45 looks like the one at Fort Sill Oklahoma. That gun was marked as a GHN-45. That was alst very close to my Unit while I was there.
Sparks notes surely
The shape of projectile Bull implemented is good for range but bad for accuracy. There is an alternative solution to use more traditional shape projectile, but fire it at higher velocity and with flatter trajectory. Modern GPS guided MLRS systems are tough competitors to traditional artillery. It's unclear if it is worth using such shape projectiles nowadays or not.
The giant cannon in Barbados is something out of a James Bond novel.
Its a lovely documentary, watched it right after it came out l
You get to see all the kool stuff. Good job.
Six months in a minimum security prison for smuggling arms is such a Canadian punishment. Probably even get your own igloo.
3:11 "The missile was traveling through the air, instead of the other way around."
Instead of the air travelling through the missile "...in real life"? When does that ever happen? What!?!?!! Did anyone watch the video? How is no one questioning this?
highly interesting, thanks gilles
The nubs do not engage the rifling. They ride over the rifling. The nubs are too wide to engage the rifling. 155 mm guns can shoot standard rounds and ERFB rounds. The nubs keep the projectile centered. The nubs are angled to match the projectile spin caused by the driving bands. The ERFB projectile still uses a driving band, it's just not as substantial as the original driving bands.
It appears from your stats. This shell became orbital via height? Were any actually placed into orbit, I wonder? From memory, many other nations worked on similarly themed shells, such as Germany during WWII, etc.
my mom had a friend named Francis Bull, I think, who was a supply teacher at my primary school...both ladies are gone but I have often wondered if my mom's friend and Dr. Gerald Bull were related
Except ... an unguided shell can't achieve orbit. It can go as FAST as something orbital, but without any sort of motor, the ellipse it follows will pass through the last point where it was given a nudge (in this case, the moment it leaves the gun barrel). The very best you could do would be a shot tangential to the surface of the Earth (firing just above the horizon), but even then the shot would arc out, circle around the Earth, and then enter back into the atmosphere to complete the ellipse (touching the end of the gun barrel). In practice, drag from the atmosphere would keep it from reaching the point where it started ... but without some sort of motor (or drag) to change the orbit, it's always going to pass through the last place where it received any thrust. I suppose they might have been planning to include some sort of small rocket thruster on the shell to tweak the orbit once it cleared the atmosphere, but a GUN is a heck of a lot of impact inertia, and you'd need a guidance system that could handle that launch.
Oh baby. Now your talking my lingo. USMC Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Co. unit in the 80s.
My unit was trained to call in Air strikes at night
With recon units. We could hear The 105 and 155 going over our heads at night. From 10 miles away. Easily hitting targets
1 to 10 miles away. Accurate within 9m. Few years later in Afghanistan and Falucia they were calling them in going through windows of the target building. Oh well did this with Linsatic compasses you had to light up with flashlight and prc25 radio. Closest phone was in the E club.
Dr Gerald Bull didn't kill himself.
Jokes aside, very interesing video as always!
In a way, he did. He is too naive to know his backers deeply and has a tendency to talk too much to the wrong people. He's a living OPSEC breach...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 I don't know what you're talking about but I'll research it.
I, use to work for the machine shop that made to tools that made Babylon
Excellent