Atrocious Historic Weapon Designs That Left a Lot to be Desired

21. A Good Concept – in Theory

Known as the Krummlauf, German for “curved barrel”, the device intended to fire StG 44 bullets over obstacles and around corners was a good concept. However, it failed when it was employed in the real world. Various versions of the Krummlauf were produced, with 30, 45, 60, and 90 degree bends. The 30 degree version was intended for general infantry use. The severe 90 degree one was intended to be mounted in tanks and other armored vehicles, and stick out of a port in the armor from which it could be swiveled around. The idea was to cover the dead area not already covered by the vehicles’ machine guns, and sweep infantry who got close enough to try and attach explosives to their hulls or set them ablaze with incendiaries.

20. A Good Idea That Failed When Put to the Test

The Krummlauf’s curved barrel wore out quickly and grew distorted from the pressure of the rounds fired. In a best case scenario, the 30 degree curved version had a lifespan of only 300 rounds. There was no way to predict whether the 90 degree one would last a few dozen rounds, or explode with the first shot fired. After the war, the US military tested the Krummlauf at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and discovered that the bullets usually failed to even exit the barrel. Instead, they broke in half or fragmented into smaller pieces when they hit the curve, and the result was an unintended shotgun effect that made the device useless for any but very close distances.

19. Trying to Stick Bombs to Tanks

The Sticky Grenade or Sticky Bomb was one of WWII’s more infamous weapons. It was developed in the aftermath of the Battle of France and evacuation from Dunkirk, where most British anti-tank weapons had been left behind. The Grenade, Hand, Anti-Tank No. 74, AKA Sticky Bomb, was a maraca-looking device with an outer metal shell that covered a bomb coated with an adhesive. The user would pull a pin to remove the outer metal layer and expose the sticky bomb, run up to a tank, stick the bomb to it, activate a five second fuse, then run away or dive to avoid the explosion. Alternatively, the user could throw the bomb at the tank and hope it stuck to its surface. As seen below, there were various problems.

18. An Inability to Stick to Tanks Was a Problem With This Anti-Tank Bomb

The Sticky Bomb’s first problem, and it was a major one, was that the adhesive had trouble sticking to dusty, muddy, or wet surfaces. That was bad, because dusty, muddy, or wet surfaces are “a customary condition of tanks“, as Churchill’s chief military adviser pointed out. A second problem, also major, was that failing to stick to what it should, the Sticky Bomb often stuck to what it should not: the user. In cartoon-like fashion, the adhesive tended to leak and glue the bomb to its thrower’s hand or uniform.

17. A Tendency to Stick to the User’s Hand Was an Even Bigger Problem With the Sticky Bomb

A Sticky Bomb’s user could pull the pin to arm the five second fuse, then try to stick it to a tank or throw it at one, only to discover to his horror that it was stuck to his hand instead. He would then (probably) spend his last seconds on earth frantically shaking his hand like Wile E. Coyote with a stick of TNT glued to his paw. As recounted by a British Home Guard member: “It was while practicing that a Home Guard bomber got his sticky bomb stuck to his trouser leg and couldn’t shift it. A quick thinking mate whipped the trousers off and got rid of them and the bomb. After the following explosion, the trousers were in a bit of a mess — though I think they were a bit of a mess prior to the explosion.”

16. Firing Chains from Cannons Was a Good Idea

Cannons revolutionized warfare. Heavy siege artillery rendered medieval castles obsolete, while lighter field pieces wreaked havoc upon infantry and cavalry. Before modern breach-loading artillery, gunpowder muzzle loaded field cannons used solid metal shot to reach out to distant targets. For closer targets within a few dozen yards, cannons were packed with smaller projectiles such as grape shot, a bundle of small metal balls, or canister, even smaller metal balls. They transformed cannons into giant shotguns that mowed down all in front of their muzzles. In practice, just about any bits of small metal fired from a cannon would produce a similar shotgun effect, and one of the deadliest was heavy chain.

15. Casting Double-Barreled Cannons to Fire Chains

When it exited a cannon’s muzzle, chain would swirl around at incredible speeds, and chop down people in its path like an electric saw going through watermelons. That got some people to think: what if instead of one cannon that fired chain, we had twin cannons that fired a chain stretched between them? The idea was to have an artillery piece that simultaneously fired from two side-by-side barrels a pair of iron balls, with a chain between them. As the balls whirled around each other, the chain between them would scythe down enemy soldiers in its path like wheat. So in 1642, a Florentine gun maker named Antonio Petrini cast a double-barreled cannon to test out the concept.

14. A Good Idea in Theory, but a Failure in Practice

Antonio Petrini’s idea was good in theory, but it failed in practice. In order to work, the gunpowder in each barrel had to ignite simultaneously – extremely difficult even with modern technology, and nearly impossible in the 1600s. A difference of a tiny fraction of a second would send one ball ahead of the other, to whip around the muzzle and scythe the cannon’s crew instead of the enemy. So Petrini dropped the project. However, the concept of a double-barreled cannon continued to crop up from time to time in subsequent centuries, as tinkerers with mayhem on their minds sought to transform it into a practical reality. One such instance occurred in 1862, when a dentist named John Gilleland raised money from the Confederate citizens of Athens, Georgia, to make a double-barreled chain cannon.

13. Inflicting Devastation is a Good Thing in a Weapon – but Only When It’s Controlled Devastation

The Confederate double-barreled chain cannon was cast in a single piece. It had roughly 3-inch bores that were slightly splayed outward to keep the chain between the balls taut. When tested, Gilleland’s cannon proved devastating. However, its devastation was uncontrollable. As a witness recalled, the projectile: “had a kind of circular motion, plowed up an acre of ground, tore up a cornfield, and mowed down saplings. The chain broke, the two balls going in opposite directions; one of the balls killed a cow in a distant field, while the other knocked down the chimney from a log cabin. The observers scattered as though the entire Yankee Army had been turned loose in that vicinity“. Gilleland’s cannon was never used in combat. It is displayed nowadays in front of Athens’ City Hall.

12. The Lantern Shield

During the Italian Renaissance, lantern shields – small circular bucklers to which a lantern was attached – became all the rage in dueling circles. Such fancy shields were sufficiently popular so as to be included in dueling manuals of the period. A leather flap covered the lantern, and when the user thought it appropriate, he would throw open the flap, and the sudden light from the lantern would hopefully dazzle the opponent by blinding or otherwise degrading his night vision.

11. Literally Mixing Oil and Fire

Some of the more sophisticated lantern shields, which could include built-in spikes, sword blades, and gauntlets, also had a mechanism to dim or brighten the lamp’s light. It was a stylish contraption that bestowed upon its bearer an air of elegance, urbane classiness, and refinement. A drawback – and a significant one at that – was that the era’s lanterns were oil lamps. That meant that lantern shields suffered from an unfortunate design defect: they literally mixed oil and fire, strapped to the user’s arm and in close proximity to his face and torso.

10. A Weapon That Had the Unfortunate Tendency to Set Its User on Fire

The lantern shield’s lamp had an oil storage compartment to allow extended use for hours on end. When the lamp was jostled – and affixed to a shield it was often jostled, since a shield’s purpose is to absorb blows when used defensively, and to bash opponents when used offensively – the oil could leak out or spill uncontrollably. With the lantern’s fuel compartment affixed to the shield, there was a high risk that the user’s shield-bearing arm, face, or body, would get drenched in flammable oil and catch fire if that oil came in contact with the lantern’s flame. As a result, lantern shields tended to turn their users into human torches every now and then.

9. A Disappointing Tally of Enemy Ships Sunk by American Submarines

Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, new commander of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet submarines, sat down in March, 1943, to examine the tally of enemy ships sunk by his men. The figures he found were depressing. The previous year, American submarines had fired off 1442 torpedoes, but only sank 211 Japanese ships that totaled less than 1.3 million tons. The real figures, if he had known them at the time, would have depressed Lockwood even more. After the war, it turned out that Lockwood’s figures were actually wildly optimistic. Analysis of captured Japanese records revealed that in 1942, only 109 enemy ships had been sunk by torpedoes from US submarines. The culprit, as was ultimately revealed – but only after massive resistance from US Navy higher ups – was the Mark 14 Torpedo.

8. A Magnetic Detonator That Was a Great Idea

Designed in 1931, the Mark 14 Torpedo was American submarines’ standard weapon when the country joined WWII in 1941, and it failed the submariners miserably. Unlike earlier American torpedoes that detonated on impact with a target ship’s hull, the Mark 14 Torpedo had an advanced magnetic detonator. It was supposed to set off the torpedo’s explosive charge directly beneath the enemy’s keel and break its back – fatal damage to any ship. The concept was good, since it meant that a single Mark 14 could sink any enemy ship, regardless of its size. By contrast, earlier designs often required multiple torpedo hits on various spots in a targeted ship’s hull in order to hole and sink it.

7. Failure to Adequately Test a Theoretically Promising Weapon

Unfortunately, the Mark 14 was designed at the height of the Great Depression, when money and military budgets were tight. Between frugality and secrecy, no live Mark 14 were conducted. The magnetic detonator upon which great hopes rested had been live tested only twice on older torpedoes in the 1920s. In one of the two tests, the detonator had failed to go off. A 50% test failure rate did not prompt the US Navy to conduct additional tests. Despite the fact that it had fared miserably in the few live fire tests conducted, the magnetic detonator to be used on the Mark 14 Torpedo was approved for use by the US Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance.

6. A Torpedo That Consistently Failed to Detonate

Despite the fact that the Mark 14 itself had never undergone any live tests, it was issued to the US submarine fleet as its standard torpedo in 1938. It was only after America joined WWII that the torpedo’s grave flaws became apparent. Within the first month of hostilities, submarine commanders correctly reported that the Mark 14 often failed to maintain accurate depth so as to pass within the correct distance beneath an enemy ship’s keel. Another problem was with the magnetic detonator, which frequently detonated prematurely or failed to detonate at all. The simpler contact detonator often failed to set off the torpedo, even when it struck an enemy’s hull at a perfect angle with a loud and clearly audible clang.

5. A Torpedo That Sank the Submarines That Fired It, Instead of Targeted Enemy Ships

Worst of the Mark 14 Torpedo’s problems was that if it missed and failed to hit or detonate beneath its target, it could boomerang, run in a wide circle, and come back to strike the submarine that had launched it. The US Navy ignored numerous reports from submariners who complained about the Mark 14. In one incident, a submarine commander fired two spreads that totaled a dozen torpedoes at a large Japanese whaler. They failed to sink the enemy ship, and only managed to cripple it. Then, with the whaler dead in the water, the exasperated commander maneuvered his submarine and carefully positioned it so that his torpedoes would have a perfect angle of impact. He then fired off nine more Mark 14s. Each and every one of them failed to detonate.

4. The Navy’s Resistance to Acknowledge That Its Standard Submarine Torpedo Had a Problem

Despite numerous reports from submarine commanders that detailed the Mark 14’s shortcomings, it took the US Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance two years from the start of hostilities to even acknowledge the possibility that a problem might exist. So it finally began to conduct tests to find out if something was wrong. The tests verified what American submariners had complained about nonstop for two years. Only then were remedial steps to address the problems finally begun – two years later than should have been the case.

3. History’s Worst Pistol?

Japan’s WWII era Type 94 Nambu Pistol has garnered a reputation as one of history’s worst pistols to have ever been issued to a military. Basic maintenance was difficult because it was overly complex and had too many parts. That made disassembly and reassembly awkward. It fired unintentionally if jarred. Added to the design defects were manufacturing defects stemming from poor workmanship and inadequate quality control in the production plants. Among the Type 94’s myriad problems was that it did not have a hammer, but used a firing pin instead – and a weak firing pin at that, which easily broke when firing.

2. A Pistol With a Host of Design and Manufacturing Defects

When firing the Type 94 Nambu Pistol, accurate aiming with the sights could be impossible because the front blade atop the muzzle and the rear ‘v’ were often misaligned. The pistol had too many parts, which made cleaning and daily upkeep overly onerous. The parts were not finely machined and did not fit well with each other, which led to frequent jamming. It had a small grip, and a correspondingly small magazine that held only six rounds. The magazine, held in place by bolt pressure inside the pistol, was hard to reload and insert. It often disengaged and came loose if the pistol was jarred, placed on a hard surface, or simply inserted into a holster.

1.     A Pistol That Frequently Fired Unintentionally

The biggest problem, however, which made the Type 94 one of history’s most dangerous pistols, was its tendency to discharge unintentionally. The cause was a sear bar located outside the pistol that could easily snag on the user’s holster or uniform. If that happened while a round was chambered, and the pistol was then jostled, wiggled, or placed on a hard surface in a manner that depressed the sear bar, it could discharge accidentally, even with the safety switch in the ‘on’ position.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Armory Life – Japanese Type 94 Nambu: Deadliest Pistol of WWII?

Athens-Clarke County Unified Government – Double Barreled Cannon

Battery B, 4^th US Light Artillery – The Athens Double-Barreled Cannon

Blair, Clay, Jr. – Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan (1975)

D-Day Overlord – No. 74 Sticky Bomb

Defense Media Network – The Mark 14 Torpedo Scandal

Firearm Blog – The Worst Pistol Ever: Type 94 Nambu

Forgotten Weapons – History of the Krumlauf Device: Hitler’s Folly (One of Many)

History Collection – What People Don’t Know About the World War II Race for Nuclear Weapons

Imperial War Museum – Grenade, Anti-Tank, No. 74 Mk I (‘Sticky Bomb’)

Popular Mechanics – Forgotten Weapons: The Nazis’ Desperate Attempts to Curve a Bullet

Street Directory – The Strangest Medieval Weapon Ever Created: The Lantern Shield

Swords and Dorkery – The Lantern Shield

Technology Org – Probably the Worst Handgun Ever Made: What Made the Type 94 Nambu So Terrible?

Today in History – August 2, 1864, Grandissima Ruina