There’s this feeling I sometimes get watching humans do the cool things that humans have been doing for thousands of years. It makes my chest expand and my heart thud and I love it. I love this.
Australian Army Centurion Mk 3-1
169041, nicknamed the “Atomic tank”, but more appropriately, the tank that won’t fucking die.
In 1951, it was subjected to a 9.1 kT nuclear blast from 450m away, with full ammunition and the engine running. Investigation showed the tank had been pushed back 5 feet (1.5m), the canvas gun mantlet cover was burnt off, the side skirts were blown 200m away (the Aussies didn’t use them in combat anyway, not picture above) and the optics had been sand-blasted to opaque. The engine had stopped… because it had ran out of fuel.
The tank went on to serve for 23 more years including in Vietnam, where it recieved a penetrating RPG-7 hit to the turret, wounding two crew. One was evacuated and survived, the others continued fighting and the tank was never knocked out. It still exists to this day as an exhibit.
The Centurion folks, the greatest tank the UK ever designed.
The 1950’s and 1960’s were an odd time when bizarre concepts in firearms technology were tested. One of those concepts was the Gyrojet, invented by Robert Mainhart and Art Biehl. The duo behind the Gyrojet believed that their new concept would revolutionize firearms, after all conventional firearms are so limited. Take for instance, ballistics. After fired a bullet will tend to drop ova distance, a victim to gravity like all other objects in the universe. As a result, with longer distances a shooter has to compensate by either adjusting his sights or aiming higher. The Gyroject compensated for this because it did not fire standard bullets, but rather a small rocket with four exhaust ports which propelled the projectile through the air. In other words the Gyroject was a space age mini rocket gun.
At first the Gyrojet was horribly inaccurate. This was due to the fact that the bullet did not spin while in flight, and thus had little stability. At first the designers tried adding stabilizing fins to the rocket, which turned out to be a complex process and was even dangerous. Then a solution was found by using diagonal vented exhaust ports on the rocket which caused it to spin while in air. Projectiles came in .49 caliber (Mark II) and .51 caliber (Mark I). It is interesting to note that the Gyroject had low muzzle velocity, however the velocity of the projectile increased to 1,250 feet per second after it left the barrel.
The Gyroject was made in two pistol models, a carbine model, and an assault rifle model for the military. Plans were also made to develop a machine gun and an underwater rifle. There were advantages to the Gyrojet; it was lighter than most other firearms, and had much less recoil. However the Gyroject had several flaws that were revealed during testing by US Army Ordnance. The weapon proved to be very inaccurate compared to traditional designs, and often suffered from reliability problems such as misfires and failure of the exhaust vents to cause the bullet to spin properly. The mechanism was complex: the weapon was cocked by sliding forward a lever above the trigger to pull a round into the gun; the lever sprang back when the trigger was pulled. The lever hit the bullet on the nose, driving it into the firing pin. As the round left the chamber, it pulled the lever forward again to recock it. What was most undesirable of all was that the Gyroject lacked a detachable magazine. Instead, the Gyrojet had a fixed internal magazine which held six rounds and was loaded one at a time through the open action. Thus reloading was a slow process.
As a result the Gyroject was a flop. Only 1,000 pistols were produced, a few of which were issued to US troops in Vietnam, while most were purchased by civilians as novelty items. In an attempt to garner a market for the Gyrojet, its designers went to Gene Roddenberry, who was fascinated by the design, to convince him to feature the weapon in his new science fiction TV series Star Trek. However Gene Roddenberry was more interested in ray guns than projectile weapons. Today the Gyrojet is highly sought by collectors, with ammunition being especially rare, costing as much as $100 a round.
I honestly love the gyrojet, and in my mind three things teamed up to kill a design that could have had a promising future.
First, the design of the weapon was substandard. It was completely unorthodox and highly unreliable, mostly due to the low initial kinetic energy inherent to the gyrojet causing the projectile to get stuck in the barrel because it didn’t have enough force to re-cock the hammer on its way out.
Second, the original design of the gyrojet itself crimped the bullet-body to the nozzle-base at the obvious point, the bottom edge, seen here in the top design.
However, the roll crimp covered the exhaust ports, as you can see in both the base photo and the cross-section, which redirected the exhaust jets unpredictably and caused massive inaccuracy in the round. This was fixed in the later gyrojet design (below), which used a circumferential squeeze-crimp to lock the nozzle-base to the bullet-body, leaving no excess material on the rear edge to interfere with the exhaust. These were far more accurate. However, they hardly went into production before…
Third, the NFA act of 1968 was passed, suddenly classifying the larger-than-.50-inch Mark I 13mm gyrojet as a destructive device. At the very least this required a $200 tax stamp to own the firearm, but I’ve heard mixed reports that it may have also classified the projectiles themselves as grenades, since they’re full of solid rocket fuel, and required a $200 tax stamp per round as well. Either that’s no longer the case or it never was, I can’t be sure, but either way the rounds aren’t legally considered grenades today. However, avoiding having to have the added cost of a $200 tax stamp on every manufacture and $200 paid again to the ATF by each buyer ($400 in 1968 money is almost $3000 today, plus a potential $1500 per shot if the previous “grenade” rumor is true) forced them to rapidly re-tool the entire factory to the .49 caliber Mark II design, but the financial stress of a complete emergency redesign coupled with the poor reputation gained from the older roll-crimped gyrojet design and the unreliable nature of the pistol itself made it so MBA never recovered, and they were forced to shutter up for good.
Personally, I’m of the mind that a dedicated group could use the Mark II gyrojet design in a completely new pistol designed from the ground up to fire gyrojets, capitalize on the current interest in caseless ammunition, and wipe some of the mud off the reputation of the gyrojet concept at the very least. If someone ever tries it, I’ll be first in line to buy one.
IF YOU NEED TO CALL 911 BUT ARE SCARED TO BECAUSE OF SOMEONE IN THE ROOM
dial and ask for a pepperoni pizza. They will ask if you know you’re calling 911. Say yes, and continue pretending you’re making an order. They’ll ask if there’s someone in the room. You can ask how long it will take for the pizza to get to you, and they will tell you how far away a patrol unit is. Share this to save a life!!! Dispatchers are trained to ask specific yes or no questions..dont hang up!
