Filler, ridiculous historians, We get a we get a classic for you that just keeps coming back to our mind.

We brag about our friend Christopher hasiotis constantly because he is just that cool and uh, just here in spirit.

He is always with us.

And uh, Christopher came to us a while back and said, hey, guys, do you think the military does dumb stuff?

Sometimes?

Not a chance, not a chance, They're all it's all.

It's all thriller, no filler.

Yeah.

And Christopher, you know, knows us well, and he probably if I had, if I had to guess, Christopher probably knew that we had been working on some hilarious stuff they don't want you to know, historical missteps or some ridiculous history.

Weird ideas like the government the world's governments pitch all kinds of crazy stuff.

They'll see a cat walking around and then and I'll say, can we turn this cat into a spy?

What if?

Yeah, let's just mount to some lasers on the heads of these dolphins.

That was doctor Evil.

But you get the idea.

If I'm not mistaken, then this episode on idiotic military prototypes involves like a thing that was like a pedal driven helicopter under a dome like it was trying to be sort of like a War of the World sort of space vehicle like Jetson's type thing, but just it could not stay aloft.

And I'm probably misremembering some of the details there, But that's the kind of stuff you're in for on this episode, and we can't wait to roll the tape.

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

First things first, the US military has so much money.

It's only tangentially related to our episode today.

But if we're looking at a hard number, in twenty seventeen alone, the US military's budget was around a little over six hundred and ten billion dollars.

Ben, that can't be true.

It's true.

No, it's true, And you have to wonder where all this money goes.

We have not been in the military ourselves, that we're aware.

Of, right, No, No, but I think you've spent some time around military type things.

That's true in my other life.

And our super producer, Casey Pegram has also to our knowledge, not been involved in the military or cannot admit to anything.

He's more of a sleeper agent type, you know.

I always had him pegged as that as well, and I mean that as a compliment, Casey, every time that we are looking into strange stories for ridiculous history, we have a pretty high likelihood of running into some shenanigan by one military or another.

Because militaries and governments drive a lot of technological innovation, right, There are a lot of things that are now common in the civilian world started out as military initiatives for the purposes of waging war.

It's right, And there's always kind of a disconnect where you think, oh, that's like crazy future technology, but terns out the military was doing it like twenty years ago, and then it kind of gets when they're like done with it, then it gets leaked out into the public sphere and you can kind of you know, get a thumb drive or like a PlayStation or whatever, or a GPS system exactly.

Yeah, and this this is something that's been on our collective minds for some time, both in this show and other shows.

That we've done.

So we were over the moon when our good pal friend of the show, Christopher Ahasiotis hit us up earlier and said, Hey, what what do you guys think about weird military weapons that never quite made it?

We said, something to the effect of holy smokes, will you please hang out with us on air?

And by golly by gum he agreed.

Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians.

Christopher hasiotis, Hey, thanks for having me.

And then we all hugged, and then we all hugged again and again and again.

We've been hugging this whole time and doing light handholds.

Yeah, yeah, So Christopher, of course, thank you for returning to the show.

If anyone listening through some gross miscarriage of cosmic justice hasn't had the chance to check out your appearance on our Louie Louie episode, I would say, I don't know what you think, nol.

I would say, pause this episode and listen to that.

It's one of my personal favorite episodes we've ever done.

So, Christopher, what inspired you to think about this topic?

There are, as you mentioned, You know, the military contributes so many things to society in terms of technological innovations, lots of great stuff that we've gotten out of, you know, the minds behind military weaponry.

But to get to those successes, you know, sometimes you got to break a couple what nuclear bombs eggs to make a god we're gonna stretch this metaphor out to make some sort of omelet of death and destruction and death omelet.

Right, Yeah, I like that.

But yeah, there are just a lot of examples of really strange things out there where you would think this is an Internet hoax the first time you hear about it, or you would think surely someone on some committee would have said, guys, wait a minute, that's that's just not gonna work.

But I probably a lot of you out there listening have been in a situation where you know your boss has an idea, and your boss really loves the idea, and you're thinking, I know that's not a good idea, and everyone around here knows that's not a good idea, but the boss really wants to do this.

And sometimes bosses like to throw out big, wild ideas to justify their existence, you know, in the hopes that it'll like be a big splash, but a lot of time to just kind of fizzles.

And today we're going to talk about some good fizzles.

Yeah, fizzles splashes kabooms uh puts.

Yeah, all the onomatopeias out there.

That's true yet, and we have we have compiled some of our favorites.

We do have to say from the beginning, we're not going to get to every single spectacular, strange, hilarious failure.

Now we're going to do to a piece.

Yeah, we're going.

We're gonna We're gonna, maybe, if the winds at our back and everything goes according to plan, hit up a total of six.

But we have curated these, and we want to know what you think.

You know, what do you think about this?

Guys?

Christopher Sinture our guest today, would you like to do the honors and kick off the first invention?

Guys, just sit right back and I'll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip that departed from a Russian port upon a rounded ship.

Was a mighty sail in.

Man, I'm sorry, I can't not do that.

Yeah, I don't know what's Gilligan and Russian Comrade Ben, I know you've got.

A Russian accent, uh Coln Red gilgelf I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

The first thing I want to talk to you about are the round ships of the Russian Navy.

We're talking eighteen sixties technology.

Two ships in particular, the Vitzi Admiral Popov and the Novgorod.

Now these were coastal defense ships.

You have to think back to the time of the Russian War.

So Russia had just suffered some defeats at the hands of France and some of their allies, and they had actually been banned from building and maintaining battleships in the Black Sea.

But Russia still needed to defend their land and their sea, and specifically we're talking about the Kerch Strait.

Now that's the if you think back to your geography class, the part of the world right between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

So you've got a little straight where ships passed through and they need to defend it.

And this task of creating a defense was given to Vice Admiral Popov.

He said, I'm gonna make you some ships to defend the waters.

He said, I'm gonna make you some round ships to defend the waters.

Next, it's three hundred and sixty degrees of protection RW floating platforms kind of tank like, not intended for quick fleet battle, but just intended to defend more like death bullies.

Yeah, so he came up with this circular boat.

He wanted to build ten of them, but the Russian Navy said, let's let's go, let's build two, you know, and then we'll talk about the rest.

So I want you to picture just a circular platform, a couple hundred feet across, Okay, six propellers on the back, two cannons on the top.

Now let me ask you.

Have you guys been canoeing?

Yes?

Yeah, no, kayaking?

Kayaking?

Okay, So have you ever been kayaking and just road just on one side?

You kind of go around in circles like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now imagine you're just firing a cannon just on one side.

And then it accelerates your spin.

Yeah, and you're a completely circular boat.

So this wasn't moored in any way to the seafloor.

So this was a ship.

It was a monitor, which is a type of small light warship defined by kind of oversized guns.

So you've got this round ship, two guns on top, and anytime one gun would fire, it would just spin the ship around in a circle.

And they tried and tried and tried to figure out a way to counterbalance this.

They tried to run the propellers in the opposite direction of the firing.

It just didn't work, and it just came down to a severe misunderstanding and or just plane ignoring the physics on the part of Admiral Popov.

Well, isn't there a vodka named after I don't know if it's named after him, but it is named that.

Okay, Well, maybe maybe there was vodka vodka best forgotten from the it's no mister Boston.

You know, I know it's pretty low shelf.

But so maybe those were his two big ideas.

Round warships and you know, low rent vodka.

Well, he thought that if you if you created a really shallow round broad boat, it would float really well on the water.

And it did.

It floated fine.

But the problem is what makes boats so successful is the shape.

They're sort of long.

They cut through the water.

Right.

When you have a wide broad boat with six propellers trying to push forward, you're pushing the entire mass.

There's a lot more drag.

It just does not work.

And nobody said, hey, Popov, let's not do this.

So the ships were built, we're talking eighteen seventy.

They actually, despite their ridiculous nature, were put into service defended the straits.

Didn't do it particularly well.

So they did these embarrassing tests and they tried to fix it, but they realized they couldn't, but they just went ahead and forged on.

Well, the thing is is the tests themselves weren't that embarrassing.

We're still in early days of tank testing.

And by tank I mean a giant tank of water.

You know, it takes a lot to build a ship, and you don't want to just put it out on the water and.

Because then there you are.

So they did models.

Right, Well, they built a big tank of water, built some models, and you know, these tanks were still water, and that's one of the things.

These ships worked fine in still water.

But let me read you a little bit about this ship from the book World's Worst Warships, a very specific book out in two thousand and two from Anthony Preston.

He said the Vita Admiral pop Up and the Novgorod were quote too slow to stem the current and proved very difficult to steer.

In practice.

The discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out of control and even contra rotating.

Some of the six propellers were unable to keep the ship on correct heading.

They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything more than a flat calm and could not aim or load their guns under such circumstances.

So wouldn't that throw off the trajector of the shot as well?

Right, So it would not only screw up the navigation of the boat in the direction, it would like be completely impossible to aim.

Yeah, I think you would have to just be really lucky or hit the broadside of a boat that's nearby, or try to shoot it, I don't know, at the water as a warning.

Basically, these were in serve.

These two boats were in service for about three decades.

They just kind of floated there, they did their thing.

Ultimately, they were put into storage in eighteen ninety three, and right before the First World War kicked off.

They were just scrapped.

Because they figured they could use the materials for something a little bit less cartoonishly ineffective.

Or it was just wasting everyone's time.

You know, you had better things to do than to just keep a giant round boat that Honestly, it looks like a toy.

It looks like a child's toy that you would float in a bathtub.

So it doesn't even look scary, No, it looks perfect circle.

Yeah no, I yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we've got some photos we can share on ridiculous historians.

What's the logic though, is it?

What's this pop off fellow thinking, like, is he trying to cut corners?

Oh?

Wow, literally cut all the corners.

Yeah, he really just want to come up with a really smart idea, you know, it's the kind of thing you want to be the one who solves the problem.

Yeah, and he just didn't.

There were other round boat proponents at the time.

There's a guy in England in eighteen fifties who was really all about the roundhul People thought it would add stability to the ship, and it added stability in certain circumstances, but in rain, in wind, in choppy waters, you know, the kind of things that happen when you're at sea.

No dice.

So one important note for everyone listening who's thinking maybe the same thing I initially thought, which is, well, okay, sure, this ship rotates wildly anytime the gun is fired.

The guns are fired.

Rather, why don't they just make these weapons of absolute chaos and have the guns fire quickly?

So this stuff is just sort of spinning Tasmanian Devil style firing on all sides.

The problem, I believe is the loading time, right, because every shot was so these were order type rounds.

Yeah, this is still eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, so we don't have machine gun technology on a boat like this.

And they can't load it while it's spinning.

Yeah, exactly.

So I would be very curious to find out how long it took them to shoot, get back to a calm, stable state, and then reload and shooting.

I guess in theory, if you fired both cannons at precisely the right time, it would stabilize itself.

But that seems so so unlikely and.

A wasting a shot because obviously your target's only going to be on one side or the other chances are so you got to coordinate and be like, all right, guys, we got a three two one go oh yeah, this is comical.

Yeah.

I mean, in Popov's defense, he was trying to solve problems and ignoring the problems generated by his supposed solutions.

The ships that were round like this could be much more heavily armored so they could withstand more attacks.

So he did solve that problem, but it just kind of ignored with the failings.

I think we can definitely call that a military fail.

Yes, Popovka as it was known, the type of ship they named it after him, to his glory and or maybe in glory.

Yeah, what's next?

Do I get to go?

Do you want to go?

I do, because I really want to say these two words.

Yeah, I go for it.

Rocket bullets, yes, okay, rocket bullets.

That's fine, right, yes.

So one of the first questions would be aren't all bullets propelled?

What makes these different?

Well?

These these are propelled using rocket fuel?

Nice or jet fuel, let's let's be fair.

Yeah, so this is uh, this might sound like something out of a James Bond movie, and as it turns out, it actually is.

This weapon called the gyro Jet made by two gentlemen named Robert Mainhart and Arthur T.

Beal who started a company, an arms company called MBA, which was short for Manhart and Bell Associates.

They decided they wanted regular guns just weren't cut for them.

They want to do something a little more futuristic because this is the time when we wanted to rocketize everything.

And so their company was NBA, right, yeah, NBA, and I should have been like Magic Bullet Association or something.

Thanks, thank you.

So the first thing they worked on was something called the fin Jet, which shot these tiny little needle type rocket bullets out of this weapon.

And the thing that was cool about rocket bullets that so what I'm gonna keep calling them is they were self propelling.

They didn't need that much complicated mechanisms in the gun itself because these bullets literally had a rod of jet fuel running through them and a little element that could get hit by the hammer didn't even need a firing pin, and then it would propel itself out of the muzzle.

And I actually saw a really great video where some guys with a YouTube channel got ahold of one of these, the Gyrojet model, and you can see they did slow motion photography where the bullet exits the muzzle and then a little ways out it gets rocketized, so when it comes out initially it's actually going quite slow.

So one of the issues with this gun was it didn't work very well at point blank range because you know, people would joke that you could stop it with your hand, and you know, it might break some bones in your hand, but it certainly would not penetrate your skin.

And its range.

If you fired a bullet that's moving not slowly, its trajectory wouldn't stay constant.

Yeah, that's the thing about it.

It used a technology called spin stabilization, which I'm a little foggy on the exact because I'm not like a ballistic specialist or anything.

But the bullets had these three holes drilled in the back of them that when it would cause them to rotate really really fast, and they would achieve such an incredible speed once they actually got to their maximum velocity, And a lot of that had to do with the fact that they came out of the barrel like spinning.

So it's sort of like a rifling technology exactly like that, but not because the barrels were smooth.

They didn't actually have that.

That's what a regular gun it has bored out kind of like little whatever you call it, markings or kind of grooves exactly.

That caused the bullet to do that, because otherwise it would just go wild and not be accurate at all.

Turns out, it still wasn't very accurate because of the fact that this rocket fuel would burn at pretty unpredictable rates and you could never quite predict what it was going to do.

So this video that I saw, which is really really worth checking out, if you just searched testing gyrojet rocket guns, why were they a commercial failure?

On YouTube you can find these guys that do this amazing test of this.

You can't find these anymore because the parts don't exist.

Yeah, I imagine that they look kind of like a like a bottle rocket, you know, where they just sort of spin off wildly you can't quite decide which way it's going to go.

No, they were much more stable than that, Yeah, but they certainly were not as stable as a traditional gun.

They did some tests where they measured how, you know, how accurate they were compared to a regular gun, and it wasn't insane, but it was just very unpredictable.

And there's one part where it just kind of like went up all of a sudden and like shot the GoPro camera off of the dummy that they were firing at.

So, but they had other models.

They had a more of a rifle with a scope on it, and they had something that kind of looks like a machine gun, a carbine, but these were they loaded one bullet at a time and it was semi automatic, so you could fire one after the other, but it certainly wasn't fully automatic and this is pretty neat in order to keep the rocket fuel from like leaking out or to keep it contained properly.

These guys were super innovative.

They figured out that titanium oxide was the best chemical for containing this stuff so it didn't accidentally ignite, just like in the casing.

And they just went down to the local paint store and bought the white paint that had the most titanium oxide content, And so you can actually see they got these rocket fuel rods in these long kind of like almost like big thick pencil lead and then they lathed it on like an actual lathe to get it cut down to the right size to fit these bullets, and then they spray painted them white on the outside and then put them in the casing and it did discharge a shell.

It shot the whole thing out.

So that's what made them different.

To question, Yeah, how much did these costs and did the cost play a role in their failure other than they're completely hilarious.

Yeah, lack of reliability and this maybe is a very good military one because it doesn't feel like they were developed for the military, but it was too good of like a weaponry fail to not throw in here and especially the fact that it was very much featured in You Only Live Twice, the James Bond movie, because of the fact that you look at them, they look like a cool like spy gun.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely that.

I mean, given that it's full of rocket fuel, I wouldn't want to carry that around in my pocket.

But it's a it's a cool looking gun.

It is a cool looking gun.

Not to mention that apparently they could engineer the bullets so that they would dissolve in the human body.

Cool wow, And that was a big part of it, I believe in the Bond film because that way you would leave no trace and there would be no forensic evidence to tie anybody to it.

To the mice bullets exactly.

But I think that they did at least get tested by the US Army, if not specifically this brand of rocket bullets, something something like this.

They had a gyro jet had an assault rifle that the Army tested briefly.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't run across that myself.

It was a very bit of a blip in the history of these weapons.

But I mean, the Army's gonna get wind of any new fangled device.

They'll give it a go, they'll throw a little money at it.

But if you're going to miniaturize something, I mean you might.

You could.

You could load that thing with little tiny explosives in the tip.

You could have like a tiny little ballistic missile.

And it's interesting.

The weapons failed because of largely they were expensive and they were a pain to make because to drill those holes I was talking about that that created the spin, they had to have these tapered drill bits which had to be custom machined themselves, and they would always break.

So to make that the ammunition was very expensive because again the guns themselves only really had a hammer and the firing pin was fixed because it actually would push the hammer would push it backwards, and then the firing pin would pierce the little primer that would then set off the chain reaction that would like the rocket fuel, but you would see it come out of the gun and it wouldn't start shooting a little rocket tail out of it until it was about halfway to the target.

So, I mean, it's it's pretty fascinating.

But the company NBA actually went on to make a lot of non lethal ammunition like beanbag shot, and they made little pen guns like little pen projectile things that were that were used in the military.

So cool, pretty cool, right, yeah, And that's ridiculous.

I mean, I don't know.

I think it's more interesting, but it's just a very roundabout way of doing something that was already done pretty well, sort of like but but but these use rocket fuel.

These use rocket fuel.

Guys, have you heard about rocket fuel?

I like to think in the future, when humanity is gone and the world is overtaken by let's say, mice, U super smart intelligent mice.

Yeah, absolutely, they're going to find the guns and these will act like giant bazookas or missile launchers.

I'm just picturing a cute little mouse holding one of these guns on its shoulder, launching rockets at you know cats.

I love that image.

And last thing I do want to say that in the video that I saw, the ammunition they had was was very, very old and it all worked, you know, And I would have thought that the fuel would have degraded or something would have happened to make it not function properly, or it would just explode in the gun and not do what it was supposed to do.

And it wasn't perfectly accurate, but It definitely reached the target every time and didn't just like zoom off somewhere else entirely.

It just didn't, you know, keep a perfect bead, you know what I mean?

Well, you know what the answer is to all this, that, the expensive, boring tips and all that.

Lasers.

Lasers, Yeah, always, yeah.

I am not a scientist, I am not a ballistics expert.

But as with all things in life, the answer is probably just lasers.

And you are.

You are a well known laser enthusiast.

Yeah, why not.

It's one of the first things people told me about you when we started working together.

They're just neat, They're great.

Oh man.

We used to have a very like an industrial class laser at the office years and years ago.

It mysteriously disappeared.

Would it make a cool laser sound?

Like in the really cheesy techno songs?

I feel like every time we played around with it and we were literally just playing with a dangerous laser, one of us was making sound making.

Yeah, because it was better than the click click.

Why did you Why did you have this to what was it?

What was it for?

You know, just to learn about stuff?

Lasers are cool?

Yeah, it wasn't powerful enough.

To physically cut things.

But it was one of those lasers that would do permanent damage to your eye.

Got it and if you shot it towards someone's eye, and we do some good for kids, good for great for children.

I was at a Black Crows concert once and someone had one of those laser pointers and was shooting at the singer guy, and he got very upset.

He threatened to, uh take it away from him and put it someplace like uh yeah, Poughkeepsie in his pocket.

Yeah, it was gonna confiscated, not give it back.

It sounds a very substitute teacher vibe there.

So we've talked about an amazing ship.

We've talked about some uh some I would say, very innovative bullets.

Both of those things on the offset seem like they are worth investigating, right, I'd like to give you one that I'm on the fence about, especially because in my past life hosting car stuff, I learned to love ridiculous vehicles.

Have you ever looked at a jeep and thought I would get one of these if it was also a helicopter?

Because if you have been thinking about this, I want to introduce everyone to the Hafner Rota Buggy.

It is a British experimental aircraft that looks kind of doofy.

So it looks like exactly what you said.

It looks like a helicopter truck.

Yeah, there you go.

And what's ridiculous to me is there's having the rotors and the wheels.

It's sort of transit wise.

It's kind of like wearing Paris suspenders and a belt.

So the Rota Buggy came about as as a solution to the problem of air dropping off road vehicles and a guy named Raoul Hafner of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment created this after they had an earlier invention that had some success, which was the Rota shoot.

They took this rotor thing and ran with it.

It was an experimental one person kit rotor thing.

Wow.

So it's kind of like a helicopter that you sit on that is sort of like a segue with blades.

It just seems that seems dangerous.

It looks like a wind sock or something like that.

Yeah, it's hovering behind this.

Is it tethered to that truck bed?

It is tethered.

They though they were probably be picking up speed and then the air would catch here.

It's a kite essentially with.

It's like a giant kite or like a big rudder that flies behind your back, but also you have helicopter blades on your head.

I think the emphasis was to look whimsical in this, but it enjoyed some, as we said, some success, which led to the creation of the Rota buggy.

I think similar to the way you feel about rocket bullets.

No, I think I just like saying Rota buggy.

Rotabuggy's fun.

But Ben, do you think they were trying to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies with whimsy.

I think they were trying to strike whimsy into their heart of their enemies.

Yeah.

So here's the crazy thing.

It's so un aerodynamic.

It looks so poorly designed because jeeps and helicopters have two very different ways of transporting people and two very different footprints design wise.

But their initial tests were were pretty promising because they weren't testing it stemmed to stern, soup to nuts, an entire operation.

They were testing aspects of an operation.

They started by dropping it from around eight feet or so, and then they say, okay, well it can just drop eight feet it'll be fine, and things didn't really go wrong until November nineteen forty three, when they tried to toe it to get enough speed to get the Roto buggy into the air.

It didn't.

It didn't work the first time on the sixteenth of November, and it wasn't till the twenty seventh of November that they got a Bentley auto to pull it, and this unwieldy machine was able to become airborne and it reached gliding speeds of forty five miles an hour, which is surprisingly good, you know for.

A totally not aerodynamic object.

A jeep with a helicopter button.

Yeah, but okay, so what when did it all go south?

Ben?

When did it all go south?

So would you believe me if I told you in the parking lot on our office.

Now I'm kidding, I wish I could take us out of a Rota buggy ride went?

It went severely south.

As they continued testing, there were huge problems with vibration, speed and instability, and they kept improving it.

Nineteen forty four they got it to a flight speed of seventy miles an hour or one hundred and thirteen kilometers, and the last flight in September of nineteen forty four.

It broke a record for itself.

It was able to fly for ten minutes and was described as highly satisfactory.

And the thing is that the British Army probably would have continued trying to make Roda buggies if it were not for the introduction of large gliders that could carry vehicles.

So gliders like the air speed horsa which are just they look like planes, but they're these things if you see the picture, can carry vehicles.

So it's the kind of situation where whoever came up with the road a buggy solved a problem pretty well, but as they were doing that, someone else is working on the same problem and just totally surpasses that.

The laser disc conundrum.

Yeah, I mean, but can't you just drive a jeep out of the back of an airplane and have it like a jeep parachute, like in Fast and the Furious.

One would one would think.

I guess what they were grappling with was a failure of material science at the time too, because then you would have to build a fabric strong enough and resilient enough not to just break.

That's true, and maybe this, uh, this cheepicopter could then speed up and take off again and return.

So like let's say you were attacking a little island, you could drop them all off, they could come back.

You could have a cheepicopter for a while.

It does sound like fun.

Yeah, take a chepicopter ride, see the Grand Canyon, see the world.

It sounds like a like a nice whims a holiday things.

I would just prefer though, if like the blades like folded up, like in a really cool way with like a sound effect.

Like so you're talking about transformers.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

It and a lot of flying cars do that now, or flying car prototypes?

This was eight minute.

We have flying what do you know that we don't?

We have flying car prototypes, as in like one to two copies of something like Terrafugia.

So it's like, finally it's the future.

It's weird.

So we're all good friends with our pal Scott Benjamin, who's a wonderful, brilliant aerodype man, but he hates flying cars, and for the better part of the last six years he and I have been very beefed up about this.

Look.

I get that they're dangerous.

I understand that I get that it would be disastrous to have flying cars.

But I don't want everyone to have flying cars.

I just want one because as long as there's only one, things are going to be relatively fine.

You guys are cool.

Would you guys want one?

I think we could get the number up to four without we just wouldn't.

Well, there's a whole conundrum that goes into flying cars.

I mean, you ever heard of airplanes.

We have to have a whole system of air traffic controllers and you know, coordinated takeoffs and landings.

And if there were flying cars, just willy nilly, there'd be a lot of air mid air collisions.

I think.

Yeah, but we figured it out right.

I mean, I imagine there's a podcast from the late eighteen hundreds on whatever format they podcasted in back then, saying, would you have an.

Automobile a horseless carriage?

We have horses.

You know what would happen if you had ten people in a town with a car.

That would be madness.

I think that is etched podcast right into wax cylinders.

Yes, absolutely so, there we are road a buggy.

I like it.

If you are a road of bugs that you have missed this period in history.

Do not despair.

The last thing I'll say about it is you can go to a town with an amazing name.

You're gonna love this.

No Middle Wallop.

And in Middle Wallop there.

Is a museum of Army Flying that has a replica of a Roada Buggy as well as a road a tank which is the same thing, but a tank.

That seems like you would need much bigger blades to keep a tank aloft.

Yeah, it was a weird idea, but this.

Is the kind of thing where if if any ridiculous historians are listening at home, and you're enjoying this show with your who knows you know, your your daughters, your sons, you could make a little toy Roada buggy, you know, just go buy a toy helicopter, snap off the blades.

That's called a transformer.

No no, no, I'm taking it.

Buy two things, gloom together, make your own toys.

Have a little Rota Buggy warfare.

Thing going on at home, the toy mashup.

I like to Yeah, So what's what's next, Christopher?

Well?

I started off with some wildly propulsive cannons, and that is where we are headed again, but this time we're staying stateside.

We're not going to Russia.

We're in the United States.

Well, let me correct that we're in the Confederate States of America.

Oh boy.

Or in the lead up to what would become that you're seen a double barrel old canon.

I feel as if I can picture it in my mind popped right in when you see the words.

Yeah, double barrel cannon.

Right, you've got think of a shotgun.

Double barrel shotgun shoots out twice as much shot.

But can't you unload it one barrel at a time as well?

You can, yeah, because there's like a little compound trigger, right, Yeah.

But you don't want to do that with a double barrel canon.

Well, I was wondering.

Yeah.

So the double barrel canon we're going to talk about is from the American Civil War, but it's not a purely American invention.

The idea of this goes back to sixteen forty two so Renaissance Italy, Florence in particular, and there was an inventor named Antonio Petrini who came up with the idea of a double barrel canon.

It was put into action though, in eighteen sixty two by a man named John Gilliland.

Now Gleiland was a mechanic and dentist living in Athens, Georgia.

Okay, oh all right, yeah, not too far from where we are.

We're here in Atlanta recording, So about an hour and a half up the road, Galliland said, I'm going to take two cannons, put them together in one sort of one molded entity.

They've got two side by side boars in a three inch diameter, and you've got these two six pound balls next to one another.

But that's not it.

You've also got a ten foot chain connecting the two balls.

I have heard of this.

Yeah, that sounds dangerous.

Well, you know, think of the what are they called the yeah bolos that gauchos in South America used to capture birds or horses or whatever.

So you've got these two balls connected by a chain, propelled from a cannon.

Think of the destruction possible, these spinning balls of death a chain in between them.

It's just gonna tear through the Union soldiers right, just cut you right in half.

You would you would think, imagineah, you think you think?

So it's not quite what happened.

Now.

Gilliland was passionate about this idea.

He actually put out a subscription service to raise funds to develop the prototype.

He raised about three hundred and fifty dollars.

I don't know if those were Confederate or Union dollars.

And he built it, he tested it, and reports from the time say they blasted the cannon two balls a chain, It tore through a cornfield, it knocked down a chimney, it killed a cow.

But it was just so wild and uncontrollable that the Confederate Army said, no, no, no, this is ridiculous.

We do not want this.

In terms of accuracy, yeah, you.

Would have to fire both cannons simultaneously because they're sitting parallel to one another, but slightly splayed, a slight degree of difference in the direction in which they propel the ball.

And that's so that the two cannon balls that sit next to one another, when they fly out of the cannon will spread out and kind of pull the chain between them.

Okay, but getting that exactly right with the eighteen sixties technology, you can't be that precise.

And so what happens is even a split second of timing difference in firing one or the other side of the cannon, or a little bit of wind or a little bit of who knows, some material in the barrel will just send one ball slightly faster than the other, and all of a sudden you get something that's sort of rip sawing through the terrain, going in completely the wrong direction.

Now, that could be destructive.

It tore down some trees.

But yeah, it's just too risky to bring into warfare.

I got a good idea.

What's your idea?

Bigger cannons, bigger balls, bigger balls, longer chains.

Well no, not even just one, just one barrel, one barrel, bigger, So big cannons, big cannons.

Yeah, that's interesting because I heard about the ball and chain stuff before.

But I always thought to your point, Noel, I always thought that the it was a situation where there was a single cannon and they loaded the balls sort of atop each other with the chain hanging out, and then shot it out that way.

Yeah, that seems like that would make more sense than having two sources of propulsion.

Let's double down.

Did anybody try like a triple barreled cannon.

I think they have that at Burger Cane, right, it comes with the kid, comes with cheese.

Yes, there's a special sauce but yeah, so this canon, it was just a total failure.

But Galliland believed so passionately in his invention.

He kept trying to make the case to the Confederate army.

The canon was shipped from Athens, Georgia to Augusta, where it was put into more testing because he really really thought it would work.

Ultimately, no, no, no is what the Confederates said.

It was sent back to Athens.

It was used in battle, but just as a signal, so kind of a warning shot to let the Confederates know that the US troops were arriving, so you know, as canons are used.

And you can see that canon today.

It still sits in Athens, Georgia.

It was sold by the city for a while, luckily was not scrapped or anything, and the city bought it again and it now sits atop a hill in Athens, Georgia, right next to city Hall.

There's a little plaque.

You can kind of go look at it and say, that's weird.

Have you seen it?

I have seen it.

Yeah, See, I used to live in Athens and this is all ringing a bell when you were talking about it, and I feel like I've seen it before.

Yeah, it's at the corner of College Avenue and what not, West Washington.

I think corner of Clayton Street.

I think that's right.

Yeah, and it's it's it's on the Northeastern corner.

Pointed straight up at the Yankees.

Oh oh wow.

Not that it's a threat or anything.

It doesn't work, and it never worked, but you know, it might as well.

Might as well have the impotent rage represented in a statue.

Oh that's a good one, Christopher.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Yeah, if you guys want to take a field trip, we'll just hop on over to Athens.

Let's go.

I'm all about I haven't been back in too long.

It's a good place, all right.

Well, I guess I'm gonna stick with kind of retro futuristic kind of ones.

Cool.

This one is.

I'm just gonna call it the hoverboard.

Heard of it?

Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

It turns out it was real.

So I feel like a lot of what we're talking about, at least what you guys are talking about, could come straight out of the back the Future movies.

You've got the flying cars, You've got a hoverboard.

Rocket bullets.

Yeah, okay, it's a Hoverboard's a bit of a misnomer.

It's really more like a helicopter platform.

Okay, So this is something that was designed by the Hiller Company for the US Navy.

Originally it was called the VS one Pawnee and it's basically a disc with fans underneath it, and it used something called rotor duct technology.

So here's the interesting part about it.

I also used something called kinesthetic control.

Can you guys guess what that is?

Controlling by moving your body?

That's right, which is why I think of the hoverboard.

So yeah, literally, a person manning one of these things, or piloting one of these things rather would be standing atop the strange little disc in kind of like a cage with no controls except for a throttle.

So all they had control over was altitude.

With an actual device to navigate, they have to lean the left lean of the lean four lean backward, and so it's almost like a segue in that respect.

So they definitely tested these.

They had a prototype which was much smaller than the second one.

They kind of made the whole thing a little bigger, added a little bit more stability, and then the third one is massive, and it was so massive that it wouldn't even allow you to do the kinesthetic controls because it was just so unwieldy.

They had like a group of guys run exactly now, come back center go, I know.

So they added a seat to this one in more traditional helicopter type control, so there were actually some steering capabilities on this third one.

So this was in nineteen fifty three.

The US Navy's Office of Naval Research essentially gave this company, Hillar Helicopters, a contract to develop one of these.

It was a twin engined ducted fan VTOL, which I think we all agree stands for verse takeoff and landing better.

Yeah, no runway, no runway required.

That's that's the one positive thing about this this device.

Well, also I imagined it inspired a lot of Mega Man villains.

To me, it sounds like kind of thing it's like right out of a nineteen eighties video game, which is like bad guys fun flying platforms exactly.

Unfortunately, these things were very slow and they couldn't really figure out like any kind of real practical use for it in battle.

There is in fact a video though, I'd like to play a clip from of one of the first flight tests of this thing.

Well, this is quite a machine you have here.

I suppose you've come as close as anyone to operating a flying carpet.

How does it feel, Well, it feels fine.

And the nice thing about it's very.

Easy to fly.

What do you think, phil is a truly revolutionary characteristic of this machine.

Well, I mentioned earlier it was so easy to fly.

We do it by shifting our weight.

Is the way we control the aircript.

I say by that, you mean you don't have any mechanical controls as we normally think of them in then aeroplanes, such as a stick in the rudder.

Oh, we have a throttle, which all aircraft have, but we control it by shifting our weight using our feet.

So yeah, again, he even says the interviewer, like, I guess it's because it's close to anyone's coming to fly and cop it.

It's all about the future, you know, it's all about magic and technology.

It's great, but yeah, they don't go very high.

They seem a little.

The guy keeps talking about how easy it is to fly, but it just doesn't seem like you could really get it to go forward very quickly at all, or be very precise in your movements on it.

You know, yeah, And it seems like the kind of thing where if as you're training people to use it, you would just break a lot of them.

And I also wonder what the point of it is.

I mean, if it doesn't go that high, it can't be used for reconnaissance.

If it moves as you move, you probably can't use it like a heavy rifle, because then you might, you know, throw yourself off, and it'll be like you're in a round ship.

Yeah, exactly.

You could even sneeze, yeah, and just crash.

So maybe it's more of a proof of concept because one would imagine there surely there would be ways to mitigate those issues.

Even just fixing one of those issues would make it a more worthwhile investment by a military, that's right.

And of course they did take them out of commission entirely by nineteen sixty three, but it did offer some pretty valuable information, of research wise, for technology they would later use for more practical vertical takeoff and landing planes, which which are a thing I don't thought that was kind of cool.

I agree, Yeah, it's the kind of thing that reminds me too of technology you know, supposedly coming from Project Bluebook and that investigation into alien technology in Area fifty one.

This weird flying saucer stuff, it kind of makes me think of that, and I know it's.

Not real, but oh, I wish I'd done that.

Maybe it could be.

I was having such a tough time off the air preparing for this episode because there's an extensive list of ridiculous experiments but also very promising, somewhat space age stuff that militaries have gotten up to in secret.

And I wanted to find one of the dumbest ideas, not one that has some promise, not one that's innovative.

Let's try something new.

The dumbest, a dumbest idea that I found is the ball tank.

The ball tank, the ball tank, tell me more it We are a family show.

It's a tank.

It's been known alternately as the kugle Banzer or the tumbleweed tank.

The thing about this is we'll start with one story.

We'll start with the tumbleweed tank.

There's an inventor in Texas.

His name is A.

J.

Richardson, and in nineteen thirty six he says, you know, the First World War, which they just called the World War at that time, no war.

Yeah, can you imagine calling that war the First World War.

Back then it was.

He said it was well.

He was haunted frankly by the sheer mass of human suffering and carnage and death that occurred.

And in his estimation, one of the reasons so many people died in World War One was because of trench warfare.

People couldn't aim very well.

They could just blindly throw mortars toward the enemy's trench and hope they hit someone who's a soldier rather than a civilian, rather than medical personnel and all this other stuff.

So he said the best idea would be to send heavily armored, motorized bunkers across that no man's land that kills zone between the trenches, because again, I just want to emphasize this important.

Later he thought the main problem was that you couldn't really see who you were firing at, and so he decided that he would invent this thing called the tumbleweed tank.

It is a sphere.

It has room for three people.

It has each of the three people are manning one gun.

I would like to show you, gentlemen, a picture of this of this design.

I want you to get a look at it, because the guns you see the guns you see have a lot of random placement.

There's one pointing toward the air, there's one pointing toward the ground, and then there's one just out there on the right, and the one on the right can swivel by the way.

It sort of like cars in the newer Jurassic Park movies, I guess it is.

Yeah, yeah, because those are two seaters.

That's two seaters, so this one is an uncomfortable three seater.

And just from that initial picture you guys saw, the tumbleweed tank has some problems.

Yeah, this is.

The kind of thing that should be drawn and then immediately torn up.

How is it going to roll if there's random guns poking out every which way?

Do they collapse?

It has a ring it is propelled by uh.

Oh, so it only goes forward and back.

Yeah, it doesn't roll in like, not even three hundred and sixty degrees, but the entire spherical gyroscopic motion, it just goes straight back and forward.

Let me let me correct myself there in the diagram, from what we understand, the actual the sphere wherein the soldiers are located, that is enclosed within two rotating outer shells that are each like bowls round the thing, so it can it can turn a little bit in theory.

So it's sort of like a deadly gerbil ball kind of yeah, hamster mechanism with guns, yep, and men.

And it had some it had some good points.

It could be very easily sealed against poison gas attacks.

And Richardson also thought it would present a much smaller target for enemy shells and that they would glance off of the curved sides.

But remember how we mentioned the part where his primary beef with World War One was that people were just blindly throwing.

Yeah, you couldn't see people.

So this was his way around that somehow.

So the guys sealed inside this tank, Christopher frantically firing guns in all directions, could not see outside.

They had no idea what was going on.

So it would maybe work if you could somehow catapult one of these balls into the middle of your enemy and just shoot in willy nilly directions.

This just sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.

I mean, imagine, yeah, terrible is the right word.

Imagine how terrifying this is for the operators they can't see outside, how terrifying it is for the enemy.

What the hell is that?

Are they even aiming for us?

How terrifying it is for nearby troops who are like, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm on your side.

The only way I could imagine this would be worse is if instead of a track, they all had to run inside to make it going.

You know, like those big kind of translucent plastic balls you see on America's fundies home videos or whatever.

Yeah, sorbian that's what what zorbian zeo or what are you saying?

Is that like furries zorbian zo r B I n G So like a furbie.

It's where you get inside that giant plastic ball sorbing zorbian Is that an acronym?

And then they fight?

Uh they fight?

Yeah, yeah, they've they've fought.

I don't know if it's I don't know if it's an acronym.

I know it's it's meant to cite the fact that you're rolling downhill in an orb.

So like maybe zero gravity or.

I think there's but I think there's proper gravity.

Yeah, yeah, well neither.

Hell, I've also seen them on water.

Yes, you can get inside those on water and just roll them around aquasorb aquasorbing, but I like that, but you can see through through those, which I think is key here.

So aquasorbing, rotocopter, battle, rocket, chip, bullet failure, disaster war.

That's what we're talking at right now.

That's what we're talking Oh, there's one other point.

We do know that there was at least one other group of people who thought this balltank idea was just the top notch military concept of the time.

It was Germany.

We know that during World War Two Germany designed that google poundcer the ball tank, and we don't know what they meant to do with it.

We don't know how often it was used.

Clearly not that much, but we haven't found any plans or documents about it.

Only one survived the war.

It was captured in Manchuria in nineteen forty five.

You can go see it in the Kubinka Museum's collection of German vehicles.

It was apparently used by some unfortunate German and the Germans, in their part did include a small visor or small slit so the operator could see what they were rolling.

That's nice, that's thoughtful.

Yeah, they learned from the tumbleweed tank.

And that's what they learned is just let them look outside.

Just see.

It feels like there's a lot more lessons to be learned from the ball tank.

This was such a cool idea for an episode.

Thank you for bringing this to us.

Absolutely yeah, always a pleasure to have you in the studio and kind of kick the ball tank around nice.

Speaking of kicking, if any ridiculous historians want to kick it with me over on another show this week, you guys, okay, if I plug something.

Oh please plug away.

So ridiculous historians.

If you're listening to this show, I know you like learning about stuff in the way back, So point your podcast machines over to This Day in History Class.

It's one of our sister podcasts here on the House Stuff Works Network.

It's a daily history show, just really quick, five minute tid bits of one thing that happened that day in history.

Now.

Normally the host is Tracy V.

Wilson, who you probably know from stuff you missed in history class.

She's out this week, So the week that you are listening to this in your podcast machine, I'm going to be guest hosting over on This Day in History Class.

So head over that way and you can find all sorts of cool weird things that happen every single day of the year, day by day.

Awesome, congratulations, and we are definitely going to check it out.

We can also go ahead and maybe post a link to that, yeah, ridiculous Historians.

Yeah, we'll share that on the Facebook page.

Ridiculous Historians will point you in that direction.

It's a great show.

I'm only on it for a week, but you should definitely take a listen.

It'll be going through some cool changes in the coming year too.

I think we're going to be getting a little more creative, but still a daily podcast kind of updating you just on the things you need to know about what's happened in the past and how that affects our days today.

Awesome, and thank you so much for coming on the show.

This is going to be one of a number of recurring appearances.

Yeah, we're gonna mean this's a regular thing.

I'll be around.

Fantastic.

Well, let's as always thank our super producer, Casey Pegram.

I think we've already thanked Christopher enough that I'm gonna do it one more time film for measure.

Thank you, Christopher.

Do I have a choice?

Doesn't that sound like an alien overlord character?

There is a Zorba the Great I think, oh wait, this works out with you?

It does?

Yeah, thanks to you as well, Ben Hey, thanks to you looking dapper as ever today, sir.

And thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track.

Thank you for checking out the show.

We hope that you enjoyed it, and we hope that this is kindled a spark of inspiration.

Let us know what strange military contraptions were otherwise ridiculous inventions you have run across.

We will be all ears.

We would love to hear this stuff.

And you know, we're of course that should go out saying we're we're not really picking on these inventors.

A lot of these ideas seem very promising, and the only way you can learn whether or not they're feasible is to test them, you know what I mean.

Rocket Bullets sounds like a tremendous idea.

It sounds really cool and.

One of my favorite bands and.

One of your favorite bands, Rocket Bullets.

Sure, if they don't exist yet, they absolutely need to.

So please come and hang out with us next time.

When we talk about flowers as currency or you know, some sort of like the bitcoin bubble, we'll see you then for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.