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Atrocious Historic Weapon Designs That Left a Lot to be Desired

Khalid Elhassan February 6, 2025 16 min

Weapon - An American general with a captured Krummlauf — An American general with a captured Krummlauf. Sandboxx

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

Weapon - Sticky Bombs had an unfortunate tendency to get stuck to their users — Sticky Bombs had an unfortunate tendency to get stuck to their users. Warner Bros

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.”

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.