The "Deadlies": Fatal Firearms

There have been a number of nominations for firearms in the “Deadlies,” our poll to find the worst gadgets ever devised. Anyone who has ever heard gun buffs arguing the merits of different weapons will know what a fertile ground this is for prejudice, questionable anecdote and reams of competing statistics without any agreement ever being reached. So if you disagree with any of what follows, you're probably right.

Some have nominated the Chauchat, long hated as the worst weapon ever issued to US forces. It was French WWI light machine-gun which was notorious for jamming. The US tried a version chambered for 30-06 which was produced with the wrong sized chamber due to a manufacturing error. Only short bursts could be fired before it over-heated, leading to claims that you could get a better rate of fire with a bolt-action rifle.

Early models of the M-16 used in Vietnam have also been nominated on the basis of the weapon's tendency to jam at every opportunity. The bore and chamber were prone to corrode, and the low-quality ammunition worsened problems.

But for weapons which were likely to be the death of their user, I would have to nominate the FP-45 Liberator pistol. This was mass produced in large numbers in WWII and intended to be dropped into occupied Europe for Resistance fighters. It fired a single .45 round from an unrifled barrel, giving very short effective range (10 feet or so). Reloading involved poking out the used cartridge with a stick.

Any use of the Liberator would be near-suicidal: you leap out, shouting "Eat lead, Nazi scum!" and pull the trigger, and unless you manage to kill your target with a single shot, you are now unarmed and facing an armed enemy at close range. ((Maybe it was US revenge for the Chauchat?))

The Liberator was not dropped in Europe as planned, but small numbers were apparently distibuted in China and the Phillipines.

Got a nomination for the 'Deadlies? Send us your idea by E-mail or post it here.

-- David Hambling

The "Deadlies": Atomic Automobile

In our competition to find "Deadlies" -- technology which may be feasible but still looks like a really bad idea -- there have been plenty of atomic nominations. In the 50's and 60's there were plans for nuclear powered ships, trains, aircraft, missiles and spaceships which have attracted nominations for the "Deadlies." But nobody has mentioned the Atomic Automobile yet.

These days we're a bit wary about nuclear power, but back in it's heyday it was selling like (radioactive) hot cakes. Nuclear power was the future, it was cleaner than fossil fuels, endlessly abundant and so inexpensive that Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, forecast that: "It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter."

Perhaps the original source of atomic bad ideas was the Atoms For Peace initiative, a deliberate attempt to turn nuclear power away from military uses and harness it in constructive ways. The intentions may have been good -- or not. In Britain the public were persuaded that the Calder Hall atomic power plant would provide them with cheap energy, and it was not until 1961 that the government admitted that its main purpose was to manufacture plutonium for nuclear weapons. In the US, the government tried hard to convince people that atomic was good. (The full story is told in the chapter on Ultimate Power in my book Weapons Grade).

So the idea spread that everything which used power would be atomic in the future. The obvious end point of this is domestic atomic power for everyone. In 1940 Dr RM Langer, a physicist at Cal. Tech, predicted that home nuclear power plants for heating, lighting and electricity would arrive "in our own time," and that a nuclear plant "the size of a typewriter" would power cars.

So when the Atomic Age really got under way in 1958 it was no surprise when the Ford Nucleon concept car was rolled out. This had the pasenger compartment placed well forward to keep away from the nuclear plant at the back. The company suggested that the Nucleon would travel 5,000 miles before needing to have the atomic core replaced at a charging station, the future equivalent of a gas station. Unsurprisingly enough, the car never went beyond concept stage.

Atomic car? You'll be wanting the additional "radiation leak and massive area contamination" insurance cover for that, and maybe some lead-lined underwear. No, I think we should leave atomic-powered cars to Batman.

Got a nomination for the 'Deadlies? Send us your idea by E-mail or post it here.

-- David Hambling

The "Deadlies": Killer Rocket Plane (Updated)

Readers of my book, Weapons Grade will have seen the chapter on technologies which looked promising at the time but which failed to deliver. Perhaps the most lethal example is the German WWII Me163 Komet, a rocket-powered interceptor which is surely a hot contender for The Deadlies.

On paper it looked great; the first plane to break the 1,000 kph (625 mph) barrier, it seemed like the ideal weapon to take on Allied bomber formations. It would be much too fast for the fighter escorts to stop.

In practice it was the deadliest plane ever built.

At the heart of the Komet was a rocket motor which mixed oxidising agent (a hydrogen peroxide mixture known as T-stoff) and a fuel (hydrazine hydrate, methyl alcohol, and water, called C-stoff). These were combined explosively. The small motor generated 1,500kg of thrust for an aircraft that only weighed 1,900 Kg, twice the thrust-to-weight ratio of the Me262 jet fighter which was itself considered awesome for the time.

But it was the sheer variety of ways that it could kill you that made the Komet unique.

- The controls tended to lock up, leaving the plane going in a straight line. If this happened during the attack dive, the Komet could accelerate to high speed and broke apart. Otherwise, it just ploughed into the ground like a thunderbolt.

- The exhaust plumbing could crack on take off. A leak into the cockpit would fill the cockpit with steam making vision impossible.

- T-stoff, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, is a powerful corrosive and the pilot pilot sat between two tanks of it.
"One pilot did get dissolved by T stoff flowing into the cockpit after the aircraft crashed on take-off and inverted," says DefenseTech reader Pat Flannery.

- The commonest and cruellest problem was the controlled explosion which drove it. The Komet had a skid rather than wheels, so landings were hard (many pilots suffered back injuries). If there was any fuel left in the tanks, the shock of landing could mix it suddenly, and the returning hero would go up in a fireball.

Three hundred and seventy Komets were built; they shot down nine Allied bombers between them. About five per cent of the Komets were lost to Allied fire in the air; fifteen per cent were lost due to problems with the controls and hydraulics. The other eighty per cent were victims of explosions.

No wonder pilot’s nicknamed it “The Devil’s Sled" - a fast ride straight to hell.

Can anything beat the Komet for the "Deadlies?" If you've got any ideas E-mail or post it here.

-- David Hambling

Thanks to Pat Flannery for the corrections

"Deadlies" Nominee: Tanks with Wings

Nominated by Robot Economist

There are some pairs that are positively made for each other, don't you think? The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Johnny Cash and June Carter. Pick ups and gun racks. Bongs and Playstations.

To that noble list, let us add another predestined duo: tanks and glider wings, our newest nominee for the "Deadlies," Defense Tech's search for the most insanely hazardous gear, ever.

In World War II, Soviet military engineers sure thought tanks and wings could work well together.

Throughout the 30's, Stalin's forces were looking for ways to deliver their tanks from the sky. The problem is, air-dropping vehicles means "that their crews drop separately, and may be delayed or prevented from bringing them into action," Wikipedia notes. Gliders, on the other hand, "allow crews to arrive at the drop zone along with their vehicles. They also minimize exposure of the valuable towing aircraft, which needn't appear over the battlefield. So the Soviet Air Force ordered Oleg Antonov to design a glider for landing tanks."

And thus was born the Antonov A-40 "Tank Wings" - a set of large wood and fabric biplane wings, fastened to a two-man, T-60 tank. The idea was tow the tank into the air with a heavy bomber or other large plane, and then release the thing on to the battlefield. A prototype was built and tested in 1942.

Now some might argue that Antonov's Wings shouldn't be a "Deadlies" nominee. Robot Economist says that the "Ruskies weren't dumb enough to drop a manned tank." But this site seems to suggest otherwise:

In its only flight, the weight and drag of the tank caused its tow plane's engines to overheat very badly and the glider had to be released earlier than planned. Anokin flew the tank over a small, rough field and started the engine. He then engaged the drive mechanism and sped up the tracks before making a smooth landing. He detached the flying surfaces and drove back to base where he gave the KT-40 an enthusiastic review.

But despite the technical success of the test, the flying tank was not to go into production. The Soviets lacked a plane up to the task of towing the heavy KT-40. Also the T-60 tank wasn’t much of a tank. In order to lighten the tank sufficiently and get it off the ground, it was allowed very little armour, and had to be stripped of most of its armament and fuel. Such a poorly equipped tank wouldn't have survived long.

"It probably would have been smarter to drop the thing on Germans," Robot Economist quips. "It might do more damage that way."

The Soviets weren't the only folks thinking about flying tanks, in the 30's and 40's. In 1943, the Brits built a wooden, V-shaped glider, the "Baynes Bat," meant to carry a tank into battle. Before that, American military engineer Walter Christie tried to design a similar system for the U.S. Army. As Modern Mechanix magazine exclaimed in 1932, "Imagine those two formidable weapons of modern warfare, the airplane and the armored tank, combined into one terrible machine of destruction!"

Got an idea for the "Deadlies?" E-mail or post it here.

"Deadlies" Nominee: Nuke Bazooka

Nominated by Steve Weintz

You can't have a contest to find the most hazardous equipment of all time without including the legendary Davy Crockett -- the tripod-mounted, atomic artillery launcher that inspired Starship Troopers' nuclear bazooka.

The Davy Crockett came in two flavors, 120mm and 155mm. Both used the same round -- an itty-bitty nuclear warhead, with a yield equal to "only" 10 to 20 tons of TNT (about what took down the Alfred R. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City). Maximum range was 2.5 miles for the bigger model, half that for the mini. Which meant that the Davy's three-man crew would survive the initial atomic blast. If they fired the shell perfectly, that is. Unfortunately, "both recoilless rifles proved to have poor accuracy in testing," Wikipedia notes.

But even if the Davy's crew managed to make it past the first few seconds of their weapon's firing, they still had to contend with the subsequent radiation. The minimum detonation range for the Davy was 1000 feet. The problem is, the explosion kicked off an "almost instantly lethal radiation dosage (in excess of 10,000 rem) within 500 feet (150 m), and a probably fatal dose (around 600 rem) within a quarter mile (400 meters)."

The Davy Crockett's warheads were tested twice, in 1962. 2,100 of the things were manufactured and deployed with American armed forces, until the Davy was retired in 1971.

Got an idea for a "Deadly?" E-mail or post your picks.

"Deadlies" Nominee: Man Cannon

Nominated by erewhon

Candidates for the "Deadlies" -- our search to find the most dangerous technologies of all time -- seem to come in two flavors. One group of gear is dangerous if mishandled. The second seems almost deadly by design.

Count Darpa's "man cannon" -- a high-powered ejector seat designed to forcibly shoot an unfortunate soul onto a roof -- in category number two. Here's how Defense Tech described it back in May...

An inclined (ha) member of the military or emergency services simply seats themselves -- and in around two seconds experiences what can only be described as being 'sneezed' to a height of five stories...

Darpa were happy to provide their inspiration in the patent:

"Circuses have amused crowds by shooting performers out of cannons. For recreational enjoyment, certain traditional devices for launching subjects catapult subjects to experience a free-fall sensation similar to the sensation of bungee jumping or skydiving. Aircraft ejection seat technology and aircraft carrier launching systems, such as catapults, are also capable of launching payloads, however, most of these designs have unpredictable and uncontrollable trajectories and/or cannot be immediately reset and reused."

I'm glad to see they did their research; it's been a tough year since 'Captain Crazy Clowns Emergency Roof Cannons' filed for bankruptcy - all those burnt cats...

"What is therefore needed is a launcher that is controllable, and able to launch payloads through a repeatable and predictable trajectory. Furthermore, the launcher should have a substantially short recycle time thus a user can launch another payload in a relatively short time after the previous launch."

And consider his life insurance plans, while he's at it.

What's your pick for the most lethal gear ever? E-mail us or post it here.

"Deadlies" Nominee: Drive-by-Wireless

Nominated by Nicholas Weaver. What's your pick?

You wanna talk dangerous? What if a little radio interference could cause a 500-car pileup? Or send a jumbo jet plummeting to its doom?

In the old days, to do a computer-controlled, "fly-by-wire" airplane or "drive-by-wire car," you had wires, and wire bundles, everywhere. The wiring loom on something as simple as a motorcycle can be a nightmare. That's what you get, when you replace mechanical and hydraulic controls with digital ones. These days, however, its tending towards CAN-based systems ("Control Area Networks"), where a couple of wires can communicate all the necessary information.

But some brilliant engineers seriously think that one wire is one too many. Yes, that's right, prepare for the fly and drive-by-wireless future, featuring Bluetooth (the same technology that connects your mobile phone to the wireless handset, oh-so-flawlessly, at all times, regardless of interference, jamming, or a Bluetooth Sniper Rifle). That's what some geniuses have in mind to used to control those critical fiddly-bits on your airplane's wing.

The 3-metre-long uncrewed plane "AIVA" will rely entirely upon a Bluetooth wireless network to relay messages back and forth between critical systems

Tests flights on a partly wireless prototype carried out in Portugal have shown that the system works well. Cristina Santos, at Minho University in Portugal, who developed the plane, says the aim is primarily to reduce weight and power requirements. "Also, if you do not have the cables then the system is much more flexible to changes," she says.

But that's not all. Don't want those pesky hydraulic lines in your car?

Even so, Santos says the system would need extensive testing before she would be willing to ride in a fly-by-wireless plane. She also admits that stringent aviation regulations may mean the technology first appears in cars rather than planes.

"Cables are already a problem in cars," Santos says, because many manufacturers cram ever more electronic gadgetry into each new model.

She admits the idea of having no physical connections may seem scary at first but believes ultimately it will become an accepted way to control brakes and even steering mechanisms in road vehicles.

Yes, you too can be living in a future where anyone with a simple jammer -- or just a few too many radios operating on the same frequency -- could stop everyone's brakes from working, causing the Mother of All Car Crashes. A future where some piddling radio noise causes your plane to nose-dive – all because it was too hard or too heavy for the engineer to drag a single wire (well, a single wire in addition to the power cable, assuming you don't have wireless power instead) through the tail to the rudder.

Me, given the choice? I'll take that personal copter thankyouverymuch. At least the engineers there probably know how dangerous it is.

What's your candidate for the most lethal gear of all time? E-mail us or post it here.

More "Deadlies": Gliders, Shuttles, Killer Meals

Nominees for the "Deadlies" are piling up...

Michael votes for hang-gliding, ("killed 14 people I knew before I gave it up") while Trainer flips the lethal thumbs-up to the Smart Gun.

"Any male sex device that accurately mimics any part of the female anatomy," pants Lester. "Or the Space Shuttle."

Haninah gives the cold eye to the inflatable rafts they keep stowed away in airplanes. Kevin H., on the other hand, nominates the "Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast" -- a 1030-calorie, 64-gram of fat, 2090 miligrams-of-sodium heart-stopper, from the gourmands at Swanson.

Keep 'em comin'... E-mail or post your picks.

"Deadlies" Nominee: Inflatable Space Pod

Nominated by Richard R.

"The Deadlies," our contest to find the most insanely-dangerous gear of all time, is well under way. A bunch of folks have already posted their nominees. They're all brilliant. Take MOOSE ("Man Out of Space Easiest"), General Electric's one-man, orbital escape pod from the 1960's.

To use it, an astronaut first would don a spacesuit and remove the 200-pound packaged escape system from a large suitcase-sized container aboard the spacecraft.

Then the person would unfold a 6-foot-long bag made of clear Mylar plastic and step into one end of it.

Attached and bonded to the rear of the bag was an ablative heat shield about one-quarter inch (6.3 millimeters) thick. Inside the bag were two canisters of white polyurethane foam, a portable rocket motor with twin exhaust nozzles that protruded through the Mylar cover, a parachute, radio equipment and a survival kit.

Once inside the bag, the astronaut would don a harness, zip the bag closed and float out the hatch of the spacecraft.

Out in space the astronaut would activate the foam canisters, which would inflate the bag into the shape of a blunt cone within a few minutes.

Then the astronaut would orient the bag with the rocket motor so that the blunt end faced towards Earth. That way, atmospheric heat upon reentry would char only the heat shield.

Riiiiight. As Space.com observes, "corporate brochures touting MOOSE did not focus on the question of whether a person could withstand the mental and physiological shock of an untethered jump into space and a free fall of hundreds of miles (kilometers) back to Earth."

Perhaps the engineers gained confidence from U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger who made a couple of towering leaps from open-balloon gondolas during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In one high-altitude test in August 1960, Kittinger jumped from a height of nearly 103,000 feet (31,395 meters) and free fell for more than four and a half minutes before his parachute opened. Kittinger even surpassed the speed of sound – the only human to do so without using an aircraft or space vehicle -- yet survived his 20-mile (32-kilometer) fall in remarkably good shape.

The reasoning followed that if one man survived such a drop, then others could as well from even higher altitudes.

Got a "Deadlies" candidate? Speak up!

The "Deadlies": Earth's Most Lethal Gadgetry

The post below, on personal helicopters, got me thinking: There must be a zillion technological wonders out there that are beyond hazardous to use. What are they? Let's hear from you... Share your lethal gizmos (with links, if possible) below.

Reader Steve Weintz starts us off with a fine, fine suggestion: the steampunk jetpack.

Resembling a cast-iron uterus with whirring, razor-sharp dentata more than a jetpack proper, Andreas Petzoldt has spent the last decade perfecting every rocket lad's dream on his own dime...

It hasn't been tested yet, but... it's hard not to imagine the test flight. With great ebullience, Andreas soars into the heavens. He sneers at gravity with contempt, a spurned mistress, a whore who embraces all but him. But suddenly he hears a horrifying choke and shudder and a sickening vertigo creeping up from his genitalia and into his bowels as he plummets back down to the ground, strapped to over 200 pounds of highly-explosive rocket fuel and whirring metal blades.

So what could give the steampunk jetpack and the personal copters a run for their suicidal money? Vote now, and vote often. Think of it as a cross between Popular Mechanics' Breakthroughs (or Wired's Raves or Pop Sci's BOWNs) and the Darwin Awards.

Call it... "The Deadlies."

Personal Copter, Lifespan-Chopper

Feel like you've lived a wee bit too long? Looking for a spectacular way out -- one that'll keep your family crying in disgust for years on end?

Well, has Popular Mechanics got a gizmo for you: the personal helicopter. This $30,000, assemble-yourself "Gen H-4" mini-chopper relies on "two blades on the same axis and rotating them in opposite directions to counteract each other's torque, eliminating the need for a tail rotor."

The contraption meets "the FAA's rules for ultralight aircraft: a top speed of just over 60 mph and a 5-gallon gas tank, for about an hour of flying. That means you don't need a license to own or fly one."

Oh, joy!

Pop Mech is also featuring a slightly safer model, just in case you want to take a few trips before the big crash.