- 9 hours ago
From a wooden submarine powered by hand cranks to firebomb-carrying bats and a missile with six folding swords, America’s wars produced some of the strangest weapons ever built. This narrated history dives into the weirdest weapons from every US war, including the Turtle, a floating bomb, a torpedo launched from a rowboat, a lasso used in battle, a double-barreled cannon, the Gatling gun, and the silent dynamite gun.
The story keeps getting stranger through World War I trench clubs and the bat bomb of World War II, then into the Cold War with joystick-guided bombs, the nuclear Jeep, ghost tapes, the blackout bomb, the Flying Ginsu, and a laser weapon for modern warships. Along the way, the video mixes military history, invention, and battlefield absurdity into one fast-paced documentary-style breakdown.
Created for viewers who enjoy military history, bizarre weapons, war inventions, and narrated history videos, this is ideal for anyone searching for weirdest weapons, American war history, combat technology, and strange military experiments. If you like history commentary, documentary storytelling, and unusual weapons from the Revolutionary War to modern warfare, this is a deep dive into the most surprising arsenal in US history.
The story keeps getting stranger through World War I trench clubs and the bat bomb of World War II, then into the Cold War with joystick-guided bombs, the nuclear Jeep, ghost tapes, the blackout bomb, the Flying Ginsu, and a laser weapon for modern warships. Along the way, the video mixes military history, invention, and battlefield absurdity into one fast-paced documentary-style breakdown.
Created for viewers who enjoy military history, bizarre weapons, war inventions, and narrated history videos, this is ideal for anyone searching for weirdest weapons, American war history, combat technology, and strange military experiments. If you like history commentary, documentary storytelling, and unusual weapons from the Revolutionary War to modern warfare, this is a deep dive into the most surprising arsenal in US history.
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00:00From firebomb-carrying bats that thawed down our own base
00:04to a missile with six swinging swords instead of explosives
00:07to the time the U.S. Army weaponized ghosts.
00:11These are the weirdest weapons from every U.S. war.
00:15And some of these were so ridiculous,
00:17it's a miracle they ever left the drawing board.
00:20But let's start in 1776, when America had a tiny problem.
00:26Britain had the most powerful navy on planet Earth.
00:30And we had rowboats.
00:32So a Yale-educated inventor named David Bushnell
00:36looked at the huge British fleet and said,
00:38what if I attacked it from underneath?
00:41And that's how America built the world's first combat submarine,
00:46the turtle.
00:47Now, when you hear submarine,
00:49don't picture a sleek steel torpedo machine.
00:52Picture a giant wooden egg with one guy inside
00:55powering the whole thing with a hand crank.
00:58The plan?
00:59Sneak under a British warship,
01:01drill a screw into the hole,
01:03attach a time bomb,
01:04and crank away like your life depended on it.
01:07It's gonna blow!
01:10So in New York Harbor,
01:12on the night of September 6, 1776,
01:15Sergeant Ezra Lee peddled this floating death barrel
01:18straight at the HMS Eagle,
01:20the flagship of the entire British fleet.
01:23One wooden egg versus an empire.
01:26If that ain't the American spirit,
01:28I don't know what is.
01:30And unbelievably, Lee made it.
01:33He got under the Eagle undetected and lined up his drill.
01:36But then, the screw wouldn't go in.
01:39The sun was coming up and British rowboats were closing in.
01:43So Lee had to make a last-ditch effort.
01:45He released his bomb and cranked for his life.
01:49The bomb drifted into the open river and exploded
01:52in a massive column of water.
01:55It didn't scratch a single British ship.
01:58But it scared the fleets so bad,
02:00they literally packed up and moved their ships.
02:04You know what, sir?
02:05A win's a win.
02:06But if the turtle was America being sneaky,
02:09this next weapon was America saying,
02:11forget stealth.
02:13What if the entire boat was the bomb?
02:15Because by 1804, America was at war
02:18with the Barbary pirates of Tripoli.
02:21And the Navy had a captured enemy sailboat
02:23called the Intrepid.
02:25So they packed it with 115 barrels of gunpowder
02:29and 150 shells,
02:31turning the whole thing into a floating bomb.
02:34The plan was simple.
02:36Lieutenant Richard Summers and 12 volunteers
02:38would sail the Intrepid into Tripoli Harbor at night,
02:42point it at the enemy fleet,
02:44light the fuses,
02:44and escape in rowboats
02:46before the biggest firework show in Navy history.
02:49Every man aboard knew the risk,
02:52but they volunteered anyway.
02:53And on the night of September 4th, 1804,
02:57the Intrepid slipped into the harbor.
02:59But suddenly,
03:00a massive explosion lit up the night sky
03:03way ahead of schedule.
03:05The Intrepid blew up before reaching its target.
03:09Summers and all 13 men were killed.
03:11To this day,
03:12nobody knows if it was an accident
03:14or if Summers blew it himself rather than be captured.
03:18And to this day,
03:19over 200 years later,
03:21the wreckage of the Intrepid
03:22is believed to still lie in the waters of Tripoli Harbor.
03:26Man, what a ride.
03:28Rest easy, boys.
03:29But thankfully,
03:31this next guy had better luck.
03:33Kind of.
03:35Because during the War of 1812,
03:37the famous inventor Robert Fulton
03:39had designed floating mines he called torpedoes.
03:42And a sailor named Elijah Mix
03:45decided he was going to use one
03:46to blow up the British warship HMS Plantagenet.
03:50And how was he going to do it?
03:52From a rowboat named Chesapeake's Revenge.
03:55Sir, that might be the coolest name for a rowboat ever.
03:59So, one night in July 1813,
04:03Mix rowed out into Chesapeake Bay
04:05and got within 40 yards of the Plantagenet.
04:08All according to plan,
04:10until a British guard boat spotted him.
04:13Now, most people in a rowboat
04:15next to a warship would panic.
04:17But not Mix.
04:18Because this man calmly pulled his torpedo
04:21back out of the water,
04:22set it in the boat,
04:23and just rowed away.
04:25Completely nonchalant.
04:27Haha, nothing to see here, fellas.
04:30Just me and my totally normal boat bomb.
04:32Haha.
04:33And the next night,
04:35he came back.
04:36He slipped his rowboat
04:37directly under the Plantagenet's bow.
04:40The British watch called out,
04:42boat ahoy.
04:43And Mix quietly rowed off again.
04:45He never did sink the ship.
04:48But here's the best part.
04:49The British were furious.
04:51They considered bombing ships from rowboats
04:54dishonorable and unmanly.
04:57The British Navy,
04:58complaining about fairness.
05:00Now I've seen everything.
05:02But at least the British
05:03only had to worry about the water.
05:05Because in the Mexican-American War,
05:07American soldiers had to worry about
05:09cowboys with rope.
05:12Oh, I am so serious.
05:14During the war in 1846,
05:17some Mexican cavalry men
05:18were working ranchers,
05:19which meant they'd spent
05:20their whole lives roping cattle.
05:22And one day,
05:24somebody realized that
05:25if you can rope a cow,
05:26you can rope a soldier.
05:28So in skirmishes,
05:30riders would swing the lariats,
05:31rope a U.S. soldier
05:33clean off his feet,
05:34and drag him away at full gallop.
05:37Sir?
05:37Sir?
05:38Where you go?
05:39And he's gone.
05:40Now, if you watched
05:42my last Crazy Weapons video
05:44on the Civil War,
05:45you just knew this one was coming.
05:47Because in 1862 in Athens, Georgia,
05:50a dentist named John Gilliland
05:52built the infamous
05:53double-barrel cannon.
05:55Two barrels,
05:56two cannonballs,
05:58one chain connecting them.
05:59The plan was to fire
06:01both barrels together
06:02and mow down
06:03entire ranks of soldiers at once.
06:06But the barrels
06:07never fired at the same time.
06:09So instead of a spinning
06:11chain of death,
06:12the cannonballs whipped around
06:13wildly during test firing,
06:15tearing up a cornfield,
06:17knocking the chimney off a cabin,
06:19and killing a cow.
06:20Sir?
06:21We just killed a cow!
06:23Stop shooting!
06:24The Confederacy took one look
06:26and said,
06:27um, no.
06:28And today,
06:29the cannon still sits
06:30in downtown Athens,
06:32a monument to one dentist's dream
06:34of winning the Civil War.
06:36But while a dentist
06:37was building two barrels
06:39too many,
06:40the U.S. Army had a weapon
06:41with six barrels.
06:43And in 1876,
06:45one man famously died
06:47after he refused to use them.
06:49That man was
06:50George Armstrong Custer.
06:52Before the Little Bighorn campaign,
06:55Custer was offered
06:56a battery of three Gatling guns,
06:58hand-cranked,
07:00six-barreled,
07:00.50-caliber machine guns.
07:02And Custer turned them down.
07:05He said they'd slow his cavalry
07:07to a crawl in rough country.
07:09But then came June 25, 1876.
07:13Custer and over 200 of his men
07:15were wiped out
07:16at the Little Bighorn.
07:17And ever since,
07:19people have asked
07:20the same question.
07:21Would the Gatling guns
07:23have saved him?
07:24Well, here's the twist.
07:26Those same guns
07:27went with a different column instead.
07:29And they were a disaster.
07:31They had to be lowered
07:32down a riverside hill on ropes.
07:34They just couldn't keep up.
07:36At one point,
07:37they got lost in the dark
07:38and were just abandoned
07:40until morning.
07:41So, some historians say
07:43the guns could have
07:44changed everything.
07:45Others say they'd have
07:47never even made it
07:47to the battlefield.
07:49We'll never know.
07:50But it might be
07:51the most famous
07:52no-thanks
07:52in American military history.
07:55Meanwhile,
07:5620 years later,
07:57America finally invented
07:58a weapon so weird,
08:00even Teddy Roosevelt
08:01couldn't stop
08:01talking about it.
08:02Because in 1898,
08:04during the Spanish-American War,
08:06Roosevelt's Rough Riders
08:08hauled a Sims-Dudley
08:09dynamite gun to Cuba.
08:11Instead of gunpowder,
08:13it used compressed air
08:14to silently lob shells
08:16full of gelatin explosive.
08:18This thing was
08:19totally silent.
08:20The enemy just heard
08:21a soft thump,
08:22and then their trench
08:23exploded.
08:24And it actually worked.
08:26Roosevelt himself
08:27said it was like
08:28a hidden mortar,
08:29and the Spanish
08:29could never find it.
08:31But Teddy also admitted
08:32every few shots
08:33it got out of order.
08:35So, after each round or two,
08:37the crew would huddle
08:38around the space-age
08:39superweapon
08:40like Tads fixing a lawnmower.
08:42And at the Battle of
08:43San Juan Hill,
08:44the dynamite gun
08:45wasn't used at all.
08:46Why?
08:47Somebody lost the ammunition.
08:49They found it later,
08:51misplaced in a medical aid station.
08:54Sir, how do you lose the...
08:56You know what?
08:57Never mind.
08:58But here's where
08:59things get dark.
09:00Cause in World War I,
09:02the deadliest,
09:03most industrialized war
09:04humanity had ever seen,
09:07American soldiers
09:07went medieval.
09:09Think about it.
09:10By 1917,
09:11the battlefield had
09:13machine guns,
09:14poison gas,
09:15tanks,
09:15and airplanes.
09:16But at night,
09:17in the trenches,
09:19none of that mattered.
09:20Cause raids happened
09:22in pitch blackness,
09:23in tunnels of mud
09:24so tight you couldn't
09:25aim a rifle.
09:27So soldiers on both sides
09:29built weapons made for
09:30brutal,
09:31mind-to-hand combat.
09:33Trench clubs,
09:34hand-carved wooden maces
09:36studded with nails
09:37and horseshoe spikes.
09:39Push daggers,
09:40short blades built for
09:42snapping a man
09:43before he could make a sound.
09:44And the American classic,
09:46the Mark I Trench Knife,
09:48a dagger with brass knuckles
09:50built into the grip,
09:51so every part of the weapon
09:53was a weapon.
09:54The most advanced war
09:56in human history
09:57fought in the dark
09:58with clubs and knuckle dusters.
10:01But now,
10:01we've arrived at perhaps
10:03the weirdest weapon
10:04America has ever made.
10:06Cause in World War II,
10:08the United States government
10:09spent over a million dollars
10:11strapping bombs
10:13to bats.
10:14This was Project X-Ray,
10:16and it was the brainchild of,
10:18I kid you not,
10:19another dentist.
10:20A Pennsylvania dental surgeon
10:22named Little S. Adams.
10:25What is it with these dentists?
10:27Once, on a trip to
10:28Carlsbad Caverns,
10:29Adams saw millions of bats
10:31pour out of a cave.
10:33So, he had a thought.
10:35Japanese cities were built
10:36mostly of wood and paper.
10:38Bats roost in buildings.
10:40So, what if we attach
10:41tiny firebombs to bats,
10:44drop them over Japan,
10:45and let them burn
10:46entire cities to the ground?
10:48He mailed the idea
10:49to the White House,
10:50and the government said,
10:52and this is the craziest part,
10:53yeah, okay.
10:55So, the military
10:57actually did it.
10:58They collected
10:59thousands of bats,
11:01built tiny incendiary devices,
11:03and designed a bomb casing
11:04that would open midair
11:06and release a thousand
11:07flaming bats of freedom.
11:09And in testing,
11:10the concept worked
11:12disturbingly well.
11:13But then,
11:14in May 1943,
11:16at Carlsbad Auxiliary Airfield,
11:19a handful of armed bats escaped.
11:21And they did exactly
11:23what bats do.
11:24They roosted in the nearby barracks,
11:26offices,
11:27and control tower.
11:28And then,
11:29the timers went off.
11:31The bats burned down
11:33our own base.
11:35And here's the cherry on top.
11:37The fire crews weren't allowed
11:38to fight the fire properly
11:40because the project
11:41was classified.
11:42So, officers just stood there,
11:44watching their airfield burn,
11:46unable to explain
11:47to anyone why.
11:49Sir, the bats did what?
11:51The project was cancelled
11:53in 1944.
11:55But, real talk,
11:56if you think that's
11:57the craziest thing
11:58on this list,
11:58just wait until you hear
11:59about what we did
12:00with ghosts.
12:01First, though,
12:02Korea,
12:03where in December 1950,
12:05America started steering bombs
12:07with a joystick.
12:08It was called Tarzan.
12:10And it was freaking ridiculous.
12:12Engineers took a British
12:1412,000-pound tallboy earthquake bomb
12:16and bolted radio-controlled fins onto it.
12:19The finished bomb was 21 feet long
12:22and weighed 13,000 pounds.
12:25It was so huge,
12:26the B-29 that carried it
12:28needed special cutouts
12:29in its bomb bay doors
12:31just to hold one Tarzan bomb.
12:33And here's how it worked.
12:35The crew dropped the bomb,
12:37a bright flare ignited
12:38in its tail
12:39and the bombardier
12:40watched that little light fall
12:42while steering it
12:43with a control stick,
12:44like a video game.
12:45And it actually worked.
12:48Tarzans cracked
12:49North Korean bridges
12:50that regular bombs
12:51couldn't touch.
12:52Woo-hoo!
12:53High score, sir!
12:55It only served about a year
12:56before being withdrawn.
12:58But every smart bomb
12:59in the world today,
13:00this flying monster
13:02is their great-grandpa.
13:03And since we're talking
13:05about the nuclear age,
13:06let me introduce you
13:07to the most overconfident weapon
13:09ever built,
13:11the Davy Crockett,
13:12a nuclear warhead
13:14fired from a giant bazooka
13:16mounted on a jeep.
13:18Deployed in 1961,
13:21its maximum range
13:22was about two and a half miles,
13:24but its lethal radiation zone
13:26was a quarter mile across.
13:29Meaning,
13:29if you fired it
13:31even slightly wrong,
13:32congratulations!
13:34You just nuked yourself!
13:35In fact,
13:36the warhead
13:37had to be kept tiny
13:38specifically so the crew
13:40wouldn't be caught
13:41in their own blast.
13:42Sir,
13:43if the weapon comes
13:44with a don't nuke yourself setting,
13:46maybe just don't use it?
13:47But look,
13:49jeep nukes are one thing.
13:50This next weapon
13:51is the only one on this list
13:53that still gives me the creeps.
13:55Cause during the Vietnam War,
13:56the U.S. Army weaponized
13:58ghosts.
14:00In Vietnamese tradition,
14:02if a person dies far from home
14:03and isn't properly buried,
14:05their soul is doomed
14:06to wander and torment forever.
14:08And in 1968,
14:10the 6th Psychological Operations Battalion
14:13decided to use that belief
14:15against their enemy.
14:16They called it
14:17Operation Wandering Soul.
14:20Engineers took Vietnamese voice actors
14:22into a studio
14:23and recorded the sound
14:24of a dead soldier's spirit.
14:26They drowned the voice in echo,
14:28then added wailing
14:30and funeral music.
14:31They even recorded
14:32a little girl crying,
14:33Daddy, come home with me.
14:35The result
14:36was ghost tape number 10.
14:51And then,
14:52all night long,
14:53American forces
14:54would blast it
14:55into the jungle
14:56from helicopters,
14:57from swift boats
14:58on the rivers,
14:59and from loudspeakers
15:00strapped to soldiers' backs,
15:02loud enough
15:03to reach into the tunnels.
15:04Just imagine
15:05being a 19-year-old soldier,
15:07alone in the dark,
15:09and hearing the voices
15:10of dead people
15:11calling you from the trees.
15:13So,
15:13did it work?
15:14Well,
15:15reports say
15:16some enemy soldiers
15:17fled their positions.
15:18But here's the detail
15:19that gets me.
15:21American commanders
15:22were warned
15:22not to play the tape
15:24near allied
15:24South Vietnamese troops
15:26because they were afraid
15:27of the ghost too.
15:29Yeah,
15:29I'm gonna sleep
15:30with the lights on tonight.
15:31Moving on,
15:32and back to something
15:33less haunted.
15:34The time America
15:35turned off an entire country
15:37with string.
15:39Cause on the first night
15:40of Desert Storm,
15:41January 17th, 1991,
15:44Tomahawk cruise missiles
15:46streaked toward
15:46Iraq's power plants.
15:48But some of them
15:49weren't carrying explosives.
15:51They were carrying
15:52spools of carbon fiber.
15:54As each missile arrived,
15:56it showered thousands
15:57of these ultra-fine
15:58conductive fibers
15:59over the switch yards.
16:01The strands drifted down,
16:02draped across the power lines,
16:04and bang!
16:05Massive short circuits
16:07everywhere all at once.
16:09The lights went out
16:10across a rock.
16:11Radar screens went dark.
16:14Command centers went blind.
16:15But the power plants
16:16themselves?
16:17Barely damaged.
16:19It wasn't destruction.
16:20It was actually
16:21the world's largest unplugging.
16:23A bomb made of string
16:25that turns off a country.
16:26It's like the world's
16:27most expensive light switch.
16:29But while the blackout bomb
16:31was designed not to destroy,
16:33this next weapon was designed
16:35to destroy one single person
16:37and nothing else.
16:38Meet the R9X Hellfire,
16:41nicknamed the Flying Jinsu.
16:44It's a Hellfire missile
16:45with the explosive warhead
16:46completely removed.
16:48In its place,
16:49about 100 pounds of dense metal
16:52and six blades,
16:53folded inside like a pocket knife.
16:56Moments before impact,
16:57the blades snap out
16:59into a ring of swords.
17:00And then the missile lands
17:01at hundreds of miles an hour.
17:03No explosion,
17:05no fireball,
17:06nothing fancy.
17:07But it can take out
17:08the driver of a moving car
17:09while the person
17:10in the passenger seat survives.
17:12First used in 2017
17:14against terrorist leaders,
17:16this thing is lethal precision
17:17taken to its absolute limit.
17:20A missile with swords in it?
17:22Who's pitching this stuff?
17:23And are they okay?
17:25Which brings us to today.
17:27And the weirdest part
17:28of the newest weapon
17:29isn't what it does.
17:31It's what it costs.
17:32Cause modern warships
17:34have a problem.
17:35They keep getting swarmed
17:37by cheap enemy drones.
17:38And shooting down
17:39a $2,000 drone
17:41with a million dollar missile
17:42is a pretty easy way
17:43to go broke.
17:44So the Navy built Helios,
17:47a laser mounted on a destroyer.
17:49In a Navy demonstration,
17:51Helios tracked
17:52and shot down four drones.
17:54And it didn't use
17:55missiles or shells.
17:56Just focused light.
17:58Frying drones like ants
18:00under a magnifying glass.
18:02But this isn't just
18:03science fiction.
18:04In March 2026,
18:06Helios deployed
18:07aboard a destroyer
18:08near Iran.
18:09Where tensions
18:10with the US and Israel
18:11mean it could actually
18:12see real combat.
18:13But the real reason
18:15Helios changes everything
18:16is the price tag.
18:18A missile intercept
18:19can cost up to
18:20a million dollars.
18:21A shot from Helios
18:23costs somewhere
18:24between $1 and $10.
18:26The price of a freaking sandwich.
18:29After 250 years
18:31of bat bombs,
18:32ghost tapes,
18:33and cow-killing cannons,
18:34the weirdest weapon
18:35America ever built
18:36might be the one
18:37that finally makes sense.
18:39God bless the electric bill, sir.
18:41But hey,
18:42if you think
18:43a double-barrel
18:44cow-killing cannon
18:45was the weirdest thing
18:46the Civil War produced,
18:47you have no idea.
18:48From a rifle that backfired
18:50on Civil War troops
18:52to a grenade disguised
18:53as a Nerf football
18:55to a submarine
18:56that sank itself.
18:57We covered all of it
18:59right here
19:00in The Weirdest Weapons
19:01of the American Civil War.
19:03I'll see you there.
19:04Flappy out.