- 2 days ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01Next on Secrets of War.
00:03From Germany's big birth and World War One to Iraq's top secret Project Babylon,
00:10they are the ultimate projection of force.
00:13Secret cannons designed to strike their target from miles away.
00:17Handheld rifles that pack the power of the atom
00:20and super guns capable of launching satellites into space.
00:24Super guns is next on Secrets of War.
00:41The
00:42Civilization
00:42Civilization
00:43The
00:57Civilization
00:58The
01:43It has been said that national boundaries are drawn in one of two ways, with pens or with guns.
01:51Unfortunately, the 20th century saw more of the latter, as warring nations used guns as their principal means to protect
01:59power.
02:01In secret laboratories and on military proving grounds the world over, engineers have sought to make these guns more powerful,
02:08more accurate, and more deadly.
02:13Of all weapons in the artillery arsenal, perhaps none is more awe-inspiring than the big gun.
02:24These are the super cannons on the field of war, shooting higher and farther, forever changing the course of battle
02:31and history.
02:35The story of super guns dates back more than 500 years when cannons first appeared on the battlefield.
02:45It must have made a tremendous impression the first time people who were used to bows and arrows found themselves
02:52being attacked by projectiles that didn't need muscle power to throw them,
02:57but were thrown by this new chemical device, which was gunpowder.
03:02As cannons grew larger and more accurate, improvements in gunpowder increased their range, but the mechanics of artillery remained virtually
03:11unchanged for more than 500 years.
03:15The standard guns of the American Civil War were loaded, aimed, aimed, and fired much the same as were its
03:21ancestors in the 14th century.
03:28As the 19th century came to a close, however, artillery changed dramatically.
03:35The two key events of the 19th century, as far as artillery is concerned, one is breech-loading, the other
03:44is rifling.
03:46Small grooves in the inside of a gun's barrel, called rifling, caused artillery rounds to rotate, improving their range and
03:53accuracy.
03:55Rifling also allowed for heavier, more streamlined shells.
04:02Breach-loading made refiling quicker, and recoil systems allowed a gun to be fired without repositioning and re-aiming after
04:09every shot.
04:14The First World War saw modern, large-calibur, breech-loading artillery wreak destruction on a scale unimaginable in previous conflicts.
04:26The First World War was the Great Artillery War.
04:30It was a huge conflict, a struggle between two sides, who had all of the technology of both societies ranged
04:40behind them.
04:42In the volatile political climate in Europe at the end of the 19th century, Belgium recognized its vulnerability, and built
04:50a series of forts designed to withstand the most powerful field artillery of the day.
04:56Behind these forts, the small country was convinced of its security.
05:01The Belgians had no idea Germany was building a supergun, beyond what anyone thought possible.
05:11Big Bertha took its name from Baroness Bertha Krupp, the granddaughter of Alfred Krupp, the German gunmaker.
05:20Originally designed as a coastal gun, the 42-centimeter howitzer weighed in excess of 40 tons.
05:28It was so immense that it had to be transported in pieces and assembled on site.
05:34In August of 1914, the Germans transported their supergun to the outskirts of the Belgian town of Liège, where 12
05:43state-of-the-art forts guarded the border.
05:47Although nobody ever talked about the Kaiser's secret weapon, those 42-centimeter howitzers certainly were a secret weapon.
05:56And the fact that the Germans not only had two guns, but deployed them with a field army, guns of
06:02that size, was astonishing.
06:05The thing about the 42-centimeter howitzer is that it fired a shell, which is equivalent in weight to a
06:12small car, to a range of between six and seven miles.
06:16At high angle, so that at the peak of its trajectory, the shell had the added assistance of the force
06:25of gravity.
06:25And if you can imagine the impact of that upon a brick building, it would probably pulverize it into small
06:33little bits of dust.
06:36The Belgian forts were no match for the German supergun.
06:40Within three days, those that hadn't been destroyed were surrendered.
06:46The Big Bertha was a very effective weapon in smashing forts.
06:51And it shocked everyone on the Allied side because these forts were considered artillery proof.
07:00From Liège, the massive guns moved through Belgium and into France with the same devastating effect.
07:06Five Big Bertha's were eventually built and continued to rain destruction down on the Allies until the end of 1917,
07:14when their limited range made them targets for Allied counter-battery attacks.
07:24Still, the Germans had another supergun in the works, and it would change everybody's idea of the limits of artillery.
07:36At 7.18 on the morning of the 23rd of March, 1918, the peace in Paris was shattered by an
07:43explosion.
07:46The citizens thought it was an air raid, but no airplanes had been seen or heard.
07:51By the end of the day, there were 22 such explosions.
07:55Fifteen people lay dead.
07:57Another 36 were wounded.
08:00Only when shell fragments were found and analyzed, did French officials realize that airplanes were not responsible for the destruction.
08:08Paris had been the victim of a terrifying new weapon.
08:13A long-range supergun.
08:17It's understandable that this conclusion wasn't arrived at sooner.
08:20The best land artillery of the day had a range of about 23 miles, and the front was nearly 80
08:26miles away.
08:28More than three years earlier, the German advance had stalled, and the war ground to a bloody stalemate.
08:35The opposing armies dug in, casualties mounted.
08:39The German military commanders wanted to strike at the heart and soul of the enemy, not just their man at
08:45the front.
08:46Aerial bombing of Paris had proved costly and ineffective.
08:50In the autumn of 1916, the Dilemma was taken to Krupp, the same company that made Big Bertha.
08:56In an amazing feat of engineering, a revolutionary long-range gun was made suitable for testing by the spring of
09:04the following year.
09:06The Kaiser Wilhelm Geschutz, known as the Paris gun, was fashioned by inserting a 21-centimeter liner into a 38
09:14-centimeter naval gun.
09:16Under this, a smooth-bored extension was added.
09:20The resulting barrel was some 34 meters long and weighed in excess of 140 tons.
09:28The gun was so long that a superstructure had to be erected to keep it from drooping.
09:34In the quiet woods near the small French town of Crepy, the Germans built this gun emplacement, the remains of
09:41which are still visible today.
09:43An immense amount of pressure was needed to propel the shells 76 miles south to Paris.
09:49Now, that powder was so hot and the pressure was so high that every time the gun fired, it wore
10:00away because the flame temperature of the cartridge was hotter than the melting point of the steel.
10:05So each shell gradually increased in size and each shell was numbered.
10:13Deterioration of the barrels was so severe they had to be replaced each month.
10:19The Allies tried desperately to silence the big guns.
10:24Railroad artillery was brought closer to attempt counter-fire and air raids were called in.
10:31But to no avail.
10:34The guns were well camouflaged and moved periodically between concrete emplacements that held them.
10:42And the other interesting question is, if you're firing at a town that's 76 miles away, deep in enemy country,
10:51how do you know if you've hit it?
10:54And that was what was worrying the Allies.
10:59After the war, it was discovered that German spies in Paris were relaying details on where each of the shells
11:05landed through operatives in Switzerland and back to Germany.
11:11With this information, the gun crews could adjust their fire.
11:16From March to August of 1918, the superguns fired some 350 shells into Paris, killing 256 citizens and wounding over
11:27600 more.
11:30After the war, the Allies rushed to the woods of Crepe to retrieve the German supergun.
11:38One of the great secrets of World War I was just exactly what happened to the Paris-Gachettes.
11:43When the French got in there, it was gone.
11:46The German government treated it as a state secret for well after the war.
11:50And actually locked up some of their citizens up for, technicians up for releasing anything about it in 1926.
11:58The world may never know what became of the guns.
12:01All that remains are these concrete emplacements, mute witnesses to their mysterious disappearance.
12:07But 70 years later, the Paris guns would inspire the design of the greatest supergun of the century.
12:21The destruction wrought by big guns in the First World War echoed throughout the Second.
12:28Once again, both sides deployed large caliber artillery in the form of naval weapons, coastal guns, and railroad guns.
12:36But none could compare with the massive weapons secretly developed by the Crook factory for the Third Reich.
12:47As an infantryman in the First World War, Adolf Hitler had observed the destructive capability of big guns firsthand.
12:56He was a firm believer in the power of artillery.
13:01Shortly after he was elected chancellor, he asked the Krupp Company for a superweapon to penetrate the Maginot Line,
13:08France's deeply entrenched, heavily fortified first line of defense.
13:13At more than 1,300 tons, Gustav remains the heaviest gun ever made.
13:20Two trains were required to move the massive weapon in pieces.
13:25When it arrived on site, four specially designed railroad tracks had to be laid to accommodate the gun and the
13:32crane needed to assemble it.
13:36While this was going on, two anti-aircraft trains were parked to protect it.
13:41A company of infantry were dispersed to protect it.
13:46It needed 1,250 men to man these trains, put the gun together, and everything else.
13:53They took three weeks doing it.
13:57Gustav could fire either a 4.7-ton high-explosive shell to a range of 29 miles,
14:04or a specially designed 7-ton concrete piercing shell, 24 miles.
14:12But the engineering of such a colossal weapon system was more difficult than Krupp estimated,
14:17and Gustav was not completed for Hitler's push into France.
14:22It didn't see action until the siege of Sevastopol, Russia, in 1942.
14:34And the most spectacular one was when the anti-concrete shell went straight down into an underground magazine,
14:40naval ammunition magazine, outside Sevastopol, and blew up in the sky in one shot.
14:46After Sevastopol, Gustav was sent to Leningrad, but arrived too late to part of the siege.
14:56There is little evidence that it ever saw action again.
15:01If you come right down to it, to spend millions of marks on a 1,300-ton cannon,
15:11which in the course of a five-year war fired 25 shots,
15:15you're not really looking at something that you call cost-effective, are you?
15:21Gustav, like the Paris gun before it, mysteriously disappeared.
15:26Parts were reportedly found in Russia and at the Krupp factory proving grounds.
15:30But after the war, all that remained was a spare barrel and some ammunition.
15:39By the fall of 1943, Germany occupied all of Western Europe.
15:46Only England stood between Hitler and total domination of the continent.
15:51Less than a hundred miles from the coast of France,
15:54London was a tempting but unreachable target for conventional artillery,
15:58and therefore the driving force behind the development of another German secret weapon.
16:05The high-pressure pump gun was a gun that had firing chambers on both sides of the main barrel.
16:14And the idea was that you started the round down the barrel,
16:19and as the round would clear each one of these chambers on the side,
16:23it would fire, adding more and more gas pressure behind the round,
16:29thereby kicking the round out to very, very, very long ranges.
16:36The V3, also known as the Busy Lizzy or the Millipede,
16:40was designed as a terror weapon.
16:42Nearly 500 feet long, the guns couldn't be moved or aimed.
16:47They had just one target.
16:49London.
16:51In September of 1943, construction was begun in secret
16:56on a massive gun installation deep in a mountainside near Mimiacs, France.
17:05We are here in the railway tunnel that extends 600 meters.
17:10Inside this tunnel, you have an underground railway that measures 300 meters
17:15and was accessible by 11 galleries, each one 100 meters long.
17:21At the end of these galleries, there is a parallel tunnel 300 meters long.
17:26And on the other side of this tunnel, where five of these galleries meet,
17:31there are five launching sites inclined at 50 degrees.
17:36The cannons were 127 meters long, pointed in the direction of London.
17:47The shells for the V3 were small by heavy artillery standards.
17:53Still, each gun had an expected rate of fire of up to four rounds an hour.
17:58In all, the guns at the site could have hit London thousands of times a day.
18:07When secret aerial reconnaissance photographs showed trainloads of material
18:12disappearing into a mountain near Mimiacs, the Allies became suspicious.
18:18Without knowing the exact nature of the project,
18:21they initiated a massive bombing campaign on the site.
18:25The elder brother of the future U.S. President John F. Kennedy,
18:29Joseph Kennedy, Jr., participated in the raids.
18:32He flew one of the planes packed with 10 and a half tons of explosives
18:36bound for the site near Mimiacs.
18:42He and his co-pilot's mission was to fly the plane at a certain altitude,
18:47jump out with parachutes, and have the plane continue on autopilot
18:52to fly to its destination, where it would then destroy the structure.
18:56The plane, however, for reasons unknown, then blew up in the air.
19:02Many people suggest this was caused by a short circuit in the plane.
19:10Ironically, by the time this attack took place on the 12th of August, 1944,
19:16the structure had already been destroyed by an earlier bombing raid.
19:19The Allies were not aware that the first mission had been successful.
19:24Left intact, the V-3 could have been one of the most devastating weapons of the war.
19:32If it had worked, London would have been in ruins.
19:37Can you imagine 200, 150-pound, 180-pound shells
19:44dropping on London every hour, day and night?
19:48The place would have been devastated.
19:52Thank God it didn't work.
19:55Germany wasn't the only country engineering giant cannons.
19:58The United States built a supergun of its own.
20:04Little David was a 914-millimeter mortar designed for Operation Olympic,
20:10the top-secret plan for the invasion of Japan.
20:14The Americans felt that an extremely heavy mortar would be necessary
20:17to root out deeply entrenched Japanese positions.
20:24It took two tractors to tow the huge gun into position.
20:29One hauled the barrel, the other the steel mounting box.
20:33A hole was dug in the ground, and the mounting was inserted with earth packed around it.
20:38Then a crane lowered the massive barrel into place.
20:44Like the guns of a bygone era, Little David was a muzzleloader.
20:49Once the massive round was inserted, the barrel had to be raised to seize it in place.
21:02And off went this 3,700-pound bomb with, I think, about three-quarters of a tonne of explosive inside
21:10it
21:11to a range of about 10,000 yards, something like this.
21:14Now, can you imagine three-quarters of a tonne of explosive landing on top of a pillbox
21:20or a bunker or something like that?
21:22You would just remove it.
21:25Operation Olympic was set for November of 1945,
21:28but before Little David could prove itself in battle,
21:31the war with Japan came to an abrupt end.
21:35Atomic bombs would dramatically influence the design of the next generation of superguns.
21:46For all intents and purposes, the close of the Second World War marked the end of the supergun.
21:55The advances of long-range heavy aircraft rendered massive superguns obsolete.
22:05Still, the advent of atomic warheads suggested a new use for heavy artillery.
22:11First proposed in 1944, plans for an atomic cannon were abandoned when the war ended.
22:18But as the Cold War heated up, a weapon was needed to combat the massive numbers of tanks being produced
22:24by the Soviet Union.
22:26These mechanized forces threatened to overrun Europe.
22:31Had they been deployed, they may have faced the 280-millimeter howitzer known as Atomic Annie.
22:39Commissioned into service in the mid-1950s, Atomic Annie could lob its nuclear charge up to 18 miles.
22:49A specially built tractor with twin cabs gave the 75-ton gun surprisingly good mobility.
22:57But when they deployed this thing on exercises in Germany,
23:02it never got a chance for the tires to cool down before the enemy air were over it.
23:08And there was the great drawback.
23:11You can't deploy an old-fashioned, it has to be admitted it is an old-fashioned, cannon of large size
23:20against an enemy who has tactical air, short-range missiles, aerial photography.
23:27You can't conceal it. It's impossible.
23:30As an early weapon, it was a very effective weapon, but rapidly was overcome by technology because the round was
23:39shrunk so that you could put an atomic warhead into an 8-inch gun round or a 155 round.
23:46July 1962. These troops, forming a special task force, were the first in our Army's history to engage in a
23:54tactical exercise supported by live nuclear firepower.
23:59This once top-secret U.S. Department of Energy film, declassified in late 1997, shows maneuvers featuring the Davy Crockett.
24:1011 inches in diameter and just 51 pounds, the warhead was the smallest, lightest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the
24:19United States.
24:23With a range of up to two and a half miles and an explosive punch, the equivalent of about 10
24:29tons of dynamite,
24:31Davy Crockett was a potent, secret weapon to confront the Soviet tanks.
24:36Then Attorney General Robert Kennedy was on hand to observe what would be the last atmospheric detonation of a nuclear
24:43weapon to take place at this Nevada test site.
24:48The Davy Crockett is probably the worst weapon system ever devised.
24:52I can only think of one thing worse, and that would probably be an atomic hand grenade.
24:56You had to point the weapon, you had to dig a hole, you fired the weapon, you jumped in the
25:01hole,
25:02because you were in the blast radius of the atomic warhead.
25:06This is not a good idea.
25:09More than 2,000 of the weapons were produced between 1956 and 1963.
25:16With the power of the atom in the hands of a soldier, Davy Crockett was the ultimate supergun.
25:22But there was still one man who thought the greatest gun was yet to be built.
25:35Born in Ontario, Canada in 1928, Gerald Vincent Bull was one of the century's greatest artillery designers.
25:43After the death of his mother, he was raised by an aunt who encouraged him in his studies at school.
25:49Young Gerald went on to become a brilliant student.
25:53He always saw math as his area and went to the University of Toronto and again just excelled and excelled
25:59and excelled
26:00and in fact graduated with a Ph.D. at the age of 23, the youngest Ph.D. that Canada had
26:06ever produced.
26:08By the time he was 31, Gerald Bull had already designed a powerful gun that shot small rocket models
26:15as an alternative to expensive wind tunnel testing.
26:23On the 4th of October, 1957, the Soviets launched their first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit.
26:30The Russian satellite would have a profound effect on Bull.
26:34He wanted to launch a satellite for Canada.
26:37There was no way the Canadians could come up with the money to launch a satellite using rocketry.
26:43He felt that it would be possible to launch one with a gun, with a huge supergun.
26:50In 1962, Dr. Bull was given an opportunity to test his supergun idea.
26:57As a professor at McGill University in Montreal, he secured American military support
27:03for a joint U.S.-Canadian feasibility study named HAARP for High Altitude Research Program.
27:11On the island of Barbados and in the desert sands of Arizona, Bull began to push the limits of artillery.
27:19He was soon firing light projectiles up to 45 miles from small 5-inch guns.
27:26HAARP's 7-inch guns fired up to 62 miles.
27:31Bull then focused his attention on a supergun.
27:35The HAARP gun was initially fashioned by welding together two 16-inch battleship guns.
27:42More than 100 feet long, it was the biggest gun in the world.
27:49Although it was capable of firing a 3,000-pound shell,
27:53lightweight projectiles called martlets were the space vehicles Dr. Bull had in mind.
27:59He employed an ingenious method to house the small 8-inch-wide martlets inside the gun barrel.
28:06The gap between the martlets and the barrel wall was filled in by wooden sabos
28:11that encapsulated the projectile in a shape similar to an artillery shell.
28:16Both the martlet and the sabos were protected by a base plate.
28:20When the gun was fired, the wood and the base plate fell off, freeing the projectile.
28:26Tail fins stabilized and prolonged the martlets' flight.
28:32I remember as a tire going there and having a lot of fun.
28:36You just see it fire and you just stay quiet and it takes you by shock.
28:40Even though you hear the countdown and you say 3, 2, 1, you're expected.
28:45And then you see the flash and it just takes you by surprise.
28:48And then a few seconds later you hear the bang and that's a second shock for you.
28:54On the 19th of November, 1966, Bull's Arizona gun fired a 185-pound martlet, 112 miles high.
29:07U.S. Director of Project HARP Charles Murphy supervised the firing.
29:12The record of 112 miles is a Guinness Book record which is still standing.
29:18It's the highest a gun has ever fired.
29:19Although the flight of the 16-inch gun was 112 miles straight up in the air,
29:24if we had wanted to try for a horizontal range record
29:28and brought it down to an elevation of about 50 degrees,
29:32the range that would have been achieved would have been 250 miles.
29:38The 16-inch HARP gun was to be the launch pad for a small three-stage rocket
29:43to boost a 20-pound payload into space.
29:47But before it could be developed,
29:49the Canadian and U.S. governments in 1967 terminated HARP funding.
29:56Dr. Bull was initially devastated.
29:59Despite the setback, though, he was more convinced than ever
30:03that guns could launch payloads into space
30:05at a fraction of the cost of large rockets.
30:08He would eventually find a well-heeled sponsor
30:11who would finance his dream,
30:13a Middle Eastern dictator named Saddam Hussein.
30:21In 1967, Dr. Gerald Bull retreated to his private compound
30:26on the border of Quebec and Vermont.
30:28He also quietly entered the arms business
30:30as a means to continue his research on super guns.
30:34The man who had fired his super gun higher than anyone else
30:37began to tinker with conventional artillery pieces.
30:41Instead of altering the guns,
30:43Bull simply redesigned the ammunition they fired.
30:47If you picture a shell,
30:49it seems wonderfully streamlined at the front,
30:52but of course it's flat at the back.
30:53And the turbulence is a partial vacuum at the back end of a shell.
30:57And the sucking of air inevitably slows down the shell
31:01and limits its ultimate range.
31:04Gerald Bull had a great idea
31:06of actually designing a system
31:07by which you would bleed gas
31:09into the space at the back of the shell
31:12so that it was no longer being, as it were,
31:14sucked back by this eternal semi-vacuum void
31:18that formed at the end.
31:20Dr. Bull applied some of the Project HAARP advances
31:23to a conventional 155-millimeter shell.
31:28He made it thinner and more streamlined.
31:31He then added small fins as stabilizers
31:34to keep the slender shell steady inside the gun.
31:37They also helped the shells to glide farther.
31:43The new GC-45 shell was nothing short of revolutionary.
31:48By lengthening the 155-millimeter gun barrel slightly,
31:53the shells were soon capable of flying
31:55one and a half times farther
31:56than conventional NATO shells.
32:01When you've increased the range of the gun,
32:04the benefit is this.
32:05You can put your own guns back where they're safer
32:09or you can fire deeper into enemy territory.
32:13And because one gun can command more ground,
32:18you can fire and cover the area
32:20with less number of guns.
32:23Before long, artillery guns based on Bull's designs
32:27appeared all over the world.
32:29The Israelis used them to protect the Golan Heights.
32:32During the Iran-Iraq war,
32:34the Iraqis bought over 500 artillery cannons
32:37based on Bull's design,
32:39and they were used to devastating effect.
32:43In 1984, Bull teamed with Dr. Charles Murphy
32:46to publish a book about superguns.
32:49During his research,
32:50he became obsessed with the long-range Paris gun.
32:54He managed to get many of the secret German documents
32:57on the Paris gun project
32:58from friends at the Krupp factory.
33:01Using computers, Bull ran calculations
33:04to learn all he could
33:05from the design and wartime employment of the gun.
33:09During this time,
33:10he immersed himself in the subject of World War I.
33:13He often toured the battlefields
33:15outside his office in Brussels, Belgium,
33:17and read poetry written by soldiers during the war.
33:22He would walk through the graveyards reading the little crosses
33:26and reciting his poetry,
33:28sometimes on his own,
33:29sometimes with one of his sons who went with him,
33:31and he would cry.
33:33And a great many of them are marked known only unto God.
33:37There's no name.
33:38No one knows who lies there.
33:40The reason is that they were blown to pieces by artillery.
33:43The very sort of, the very work that he was involved in.
33:47And I really think that he did not make that jump
33:52of realizing that the pieces he was producing
33:55was producing new little crosses on some other land.
34:01He was producing many weeping widows and mothers,
34:05as had been produced in the First World War.
34:08When the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988,
34:11the Iraqi military was looking to rebuild its artillery systems,
34:15and members of the Iraqi government approached Gerald Bull.
34:19And in those conversations,
34:21he began to tell them about his life ambition,
34:25which was to prove that it would be possible
34:28to launch a satellite with a huge gun
34:31at a fraction of the cost.
34:34No Arab country had ever launched a satellite
34:36and the notion of an inexpensive gun system
34:39that could fire satellites into orbit
34:41appealed to Saddam Hussein.
34:46At long last, Gerald Bull thought he'd found someone
34:50who shared his vision.
34:54With their financial backing,
34:55he set down to develop the greatest gun
34:58that anybody would ever have seen.
35:00It would have weighed 2,100 tons.
35:05Can you imagine the size of that?
35:09Bull borrowed from his harp gun design
35:12and opted to build the barrel in segments.
35:15In all, they would stretch 512 feet long,
35:19nearly one and a half times the length of a soccer field.
35:23The gun would be so powerful,
35:25it could fire a 2-ton rocket-assisted shell into orbit.
35:31The Iraqis codenamed the gun Project Babylon,
35:35but there were concerns of Dr. Bull's company.
35:38Iraq was embarking on an unprecedented arms buildup.
35:41I did disagree with Project Babylon.
35:44I said it was a dangerous project.
35:46My objections to the supergun project
35:49were political much more than scientific.
35:54When his son convinced him
35:56that his supergun could be seen as a military weapon,
35:59Dr. Bull decided to build it discreetly.
36:04The gun was fabricated in separate parts
36:07by factories in England, Spain, Holland, and Switzerland.
36:13Many manufacturers were led to believe
36:15they were working on a petrochemical project
36:17for the Iraqis.
36:19Bull's supergun was now a secret gun.
36:23But he didn't keep it that secret
36:26because he talked a lot.
36:28He didn't understand the dangers
36:30of loose lips sinking ships.
36:34My dad was probably the worst secret keeper in the world.
36:40He was a very enthusiastic person.
36:43He would talk.
36:45As word leaked
36:46that Gerald Bull was getting a second chance
36:49at his lifetime dream,
36:50pieces of the gun began to arrive in Iraq,
36:53upsetting the delicate balance of power
36:56in the Middle East.
37:02As a component of Project Babylon,
37:05Dr. Bull designed and built a smaller gun,
37:08nicknamed Baby Babylon,
37:09as a prototype for the larger supergun.
37:12This 40-meter-long gun
37:14was first constructed for horizontal testing.
37:19In the summer of 1989,
37:21the Iraqis installed the prototype
37:23at a secret site at Jabal Hamran,
37:2590 miles north of Baghdad,
37:27in central Iraq.
37:29The gun was positioned along a mountainside
37:31at about 45 degrees,
37:33an angle which didn't seem appropriate
37:35for high-altitude gun research.
37:39As long as they kept funding Project Babylon,
37:43Dr. Bull agreed to assist the Iraqis
37:45with other weapons projects.
37:47These other ventures
37:48led him down a dangerous path.
37:51My dad was a bit politically naive,
37:54and they tagged that project along.
37:58They didn't fund the project,
37:59but meanwhile,
38:01they were asking increasing things from him.
38:06Bull designed a number
38:07of advanced mobile artillery systems
38:09for the Iraqis
38:10that would use supergun technology.
38:13Perhaps the most ominous project
38:15Bull worked on
38:16was the long-range Iraqi Scud missile program.
38:19For Saddam Hussein,
38:20the major trouble with his Scuds
38:22was their restricted range and accuracy.
38:24Like the Paris guns of World War I,
38:27they could hit a city,
38:28but not an exact target.
38:30To carry a heavier warhead,
38:32they also needed more power.
38:34They did ask him at one time
38:36to validate some of their work,
38:38a missile program,
38:40in which they basically took some Scuds
38:42and put them together.
38:44They needed,
38:45they felt they needed,
38:47a long-range missile,
38:48a missile that could really threaten Israel.
38:51They didn't have that.
38:53What they did have
38:54were large numbers of Russian Scuds,
38:58and they felt that if they tied
39:01enough of these Scuds together,
39:03they would change them
39:05from being a short-range missile
39:07into at least a medium-range missile.
39:11And Bull agreed with that.
39:13Bull assisted the Iraqis
39:15with some of the mathematical calculations
39:17in their multi-stage Scud rocket program.
39:20It may have been a fateful decision.
39:23Israeli intelligence agents
39:25were following the project closely.
39:27On at least two occasions,
39:29the Iraqis tried to launch
39:31one of these cobbled-up,
39:33tied-together missiles,
39:35and they failed.
39:37But sooner or later,
39:38they were going to be successful,
39:40and the Israelis knew that.
39:41And friends of Bull,
39:45people that Bull had known for years,
39:46who were associated
39:48with the Israeli government,
39:49and certainly some of them, in fact,
39:51were at the time members
39:52of the staff of the Israeli embassy in Paris,
39:55visited Bull in Brussels
39:57and talked with him at some length
39:59in secret meetings.
40:01Now, we don't know what happened
40:02at those meetings,
40:03but Bull's colleagues have told me
40:06that he emerged from them
40:07a very worried man.
40:09I think the Israelis realized
40:10that he was frightened
40:13and that he might stop,
40:14and they wanted to encourage that.
40:17And strange things began to happen to him.
40:19He lived in a small apartment
40:22just out of the center of Brussels.
40:24He arrived home one day
40:25and the furniture was rearranged
40:27in his apartment.
40:30There were little gestures,
40:32you might say,
40:33nothing that would identify an assailant,
40:35but enough to unsettle him.
40:37He did complain about a lot of these things,
40:40but not in a way to say,
40:42oh, jeez, somebody's trying to warn me.
40:46Meanwhile, Dr. Bull and the Iraqis
40:49continued to test fire
40:50the baby Babylon gun.
40:52Bull became increasingly nervous.
40:55He was drinking during the day
40:57and taking sleeping pills at night.
41:00His every move was now being watched.
41:03On the 22nd of March, 1990,
41:06his assistant dropped him off at his apartment.
41:09He was carrying $20,000 in cash.
41:15Inside, he rode the elevator to the sixth floor
41:17and stepped out into this hallway
41:19where a killer with a silenced pistol
41:21waited in the shadows of an alcove.
41:28Bull turned left to his apartment door,
41:31fumbled for his keys,
41:33got his keys out,
41:34and in fact had put the key in the lock.
41:38The person who had been standing in the alcove
41:40then stepped out behind him
41:42and fired five shots
41:44in a straight line right up his back.
41:47He died more or less instantly
41:49in a large pool of blood on the floor.
41:53Shortly thereafter,
41:54Gerald Bull's body was discovered.
41:56His money had not been taken.
42:01It came as a total, entire surprise.
42:05And it's a shock.
42:07You don't believe it.
42:07You go into denial for a little while.
42:10And then it just sinks in
42:12and then you're at loss.
42:14It takes a long while to heal from that.
42:19The Belgian police believe
42:20the assassin ran down the stairs,
42:22walked out through this back garden
42:24and into a waiting car.
42:28Most experts believe
42:29that it was a government-sponsored execution,
42:32but which government may never be known.
42:36Some believe the Iraqis
42:38no longer trusted Dr. Bull,
42:40perhaps fearful that he gave
42:41the Israelis details on the super gun
42:43or the Scud missile program.
42:47It could also have been
42:48the work of Israel's secret Mossad.
42:52He had many enemies,
42:54international enemies.
42:56The one that makes the most sense
42:57is Israel.
43:00The visits from the Israelis
43:03fit the timetable.
43:04He himself felt that
43:06it was the Israelis
43:07who were threatening him.
43:08And the circumstantial evidence
43:11would seem to point to that,
43:12but you could never prove it.
43:15Acting on an anonymous tip,
43:17the British Customs and Excise Department
43:19seized the final eight sections
43:21of the super gun
43:22in November 1990.
43:28During the Persian Gulf War,
43:30Israeli concerns over the Scud missiles
43:32were borne out.
43:34The Iraqis fired their Scuds
43:35at Americans in Saudi Arabia
43:37and Israelis in Tel Aviv.
43:41After the war,
43:42United Nations inspectors
43:43raced to the sites
43:44of Iraqi weapons
43:45of mass destruction
43:46and blew up a number of biological
43:48and chemical weapons plants.
43:51When they arrived at the super gun sites,
43:54they discovered baby Babylon
43:56still intact.
43:58There's a secondary
44:00graphite system.
44:01The inspectors went to great lengths
44:03to ascertain the capabilities
44:05of the super gun.
44:07The requirement,
44:09according to the Iraqi declaration,
44:12was to fire
44:12a 600 kilogram projectile
44:15about 1,000 kilometers.
44:18That was the...
44:20If you look back at the work
44:21that Gerald Bull did in HAARP,
44:23that's quite achievable.
44:24With this size caliber
44:26and a rocket-assisted projectile,
44:27it could certainly push
44:28towards low Earth orbit.
44:32These sections
44:33of the super gun barrel
44:34were found
44:35in a final staging area.
44:37The UN team determined
44:38that Project Babylon
44:39was a weapons program
44:40that destroyed
44:41the remains of the guns.
44:43Building a super gun
44:44this size
44:45may never be attempted again.
44:48I've got a feeling
44:49that Gerald Bull
44:50was to guns
44:52what Werner von Braun
44:54was to rockets.
44:55They really wanted
44:56to build the biggest
44:57and the best.
44:58And at the end of the day,
44:59it didn't matter
45:00who paid the money
45:01so long as they could realize
45:03their crazy ambitions.
45:05In the end,
45:06one of the tragedies
45:07of Bull
45:08was that he didn't understand
45:10that the technology
45:11to which he was tied,
45:13gun technology,
45:14had passed.
45:15The day had passed.
45:17He was very jealous
45:19of a development
45:20in the United States
45:21at Lawrence Livermore
45:22where he knew
45:23that they were thinking
45:25of building a gun
45:27which would be capable
45:29of sending small payloads
45:31into space,
45:32particularly for use
45:33with the development
45:35of a space station.
45:38The sharp, light gas gun
45:40at the Lawrence Livermore
45:41labs in California
45:42uses compressed hydrogen
45:44to launch
45:45an 11-pound projectile
45:47to speeds
45:47nearing 9,000 miles an hour.
45:53A methane gas explosion
45:54propels a piston
45:55down a long pump tube
45:57to compress hydrogen
45:58to 30,000 pounds
46:00per square inch.
46:04The launch tube
46:05is connected
46:05to the pump tube
46:06at a right angle.
46:11Initially,
46:11it was thought
46:12that this would make it
46:13possible to pivot
46:14the launch tube
46:15to a vertical position,
46:16but the gun
46:17has yet to be
46:18pointed skyward.
46:20Still,
46:21it bears the acronym
46:22SHARP
46:23which stands for
46:24Super High Altitude
46:25Research Project.
46:27With a space station
46:29in orbit,
46:30an inexpensive means
46:31of supply
46:31would be
46:32an attractive notion.
46:36Suppose you forget
46:38some small piece
46:39of equipment
46:40or suddenly need it.
46:41How do you get it up there?
46:42If you send it up
46:43with a rocket,
46:44it costs huge sums.
46:46But if you could
46:46shoot it up
46:47with a gun,
46:49it costs almost nothing.
47:03In the last quarter
47:05of the 20th century,
47:06the conventional artillery
47:07has become smaller,
47:08not bigger.
47:09Dr. Bull's
47:10155-millimeter gun design
47:12is now standard
47:13in most of the armies
47:15of the world.
47:17What sets the guns
47:19of today apart
47:20is the super ammunition
47:21they fire.
47:25Smart ammunition
47:26incorporates sensors
47:27that seek out targets
47:29and ensure that
47:29virtually every shot
47:31is lethal.
47:42But the super guns
47:43of the next century
47:44may not fire
47:45any sort of
47:46fuzz or tire.
47:48Along the stuff
47:49of science fiction,
47:51energy and beam weapons
47:53are slowly becoming
47:54a reality.
47:56One of the most promising
47:57of these new
47:58projectile-less concepts
48:00is the electromagnetic
48:01pulse weapon,
48:02or EMP.
48:05The EMP is another
48:07byproduct of the nuclear age.
48:09It was discovered
48:10that a nuclear explosion
48:11produces a burst
48:12of electromagnetic energy
48:14which disrupts
48:15all electronic activity
48:16over a vast area.
48:21If you can produce
48:23the pulse
48:24without the embarrassment
48:25of having to fire
48:26an atomic bomb,
48:27you have got
48:28a very,
48:31very effective weapon.
48:33This pulse
48:34renders inoperable
48:36all electronic equipment
48:37in its range,
48:39disrupting transportation,
48:42communication,
48:43and computation.
48:46And that's one
48:47of the things
48:47that the modern army
48:49in the 21st century
48:50is going to have
48:51to guard against
48:51because everything
48:52these days
48:53is computer-driven.
48:56There have been reports
48:57that the United States
48:58Army field-tested
49:00an electromagnetic pulse
49:01device during
49:02the 1991 Gulf War.
49:04Government sources
49:05will not confirm this
49:07because the consequences
49:09of the implementation
49:10of such a weapon system
49:12are staggering.
49:12The very existence
49:14of electromagnetic pulse weapons
49:16is shrouded in secrecy.
49:18If the electromagnetic pulse weapon
49:22can be developed,
49:24you've put us back
49:26to the 19th century.
49:28We're back to rifles,
49:29bayonets,
49:30firing over open sites,
49:32sending messages
49:33by pencil and paper
49:34and rummers
49:35and flags.
49:37If you take the electronics
49:38out of the modern battlefield,
49:39that's what you've got left.
49:41And this is a very
49:43frightening prospect,
49:44but it does mean
49:46that artillery
49:47will come back.
49:59The quest to develop
50:00the next super gun
50:02will continue
50:03as it has
50:03since the dawn
50:04of artillery.
50:06Whether the super guns
50:07of tomorrow
50:08will be used
50:09for more
50:09or for more
50:10peaceful purposes
50:11is yet to be seen.
50:13scheinlich
50:14is yes.
50:15is?
50:41is a very
Comments