Topic: Military history/Weaponry (Page 3)

You are looking at all articles with the topic "Military history/Weaponry". We found 49 matches.

Hint: To view all topics, click here. Too see the most popular topics, click here instead.

πŸ”— Gay Bomb

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— LGBT studies

The "gay bomb" and "halitosis bomb" are formal names for two non-lethal psychochemical weapons that a United States Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing. The theories involve discharging female sex pheromones over enemy forces in order to make them sexually attracted to each other.

In 1994 the Wright Laboratory in Ohio, a predecessor to today's United States Air Force Research Laboratory, produced a three-page proposal on a variety of possible nonlethal chemical weapons, which was later obtained by the Sunshine Project through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Operation Epsilon

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/Intelligence πŸ”— United Kingdom πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

Operation Epsilon was the codename of a program in which Allied forces near the end of World War II detained ten German scientists who were thought to have worked on Nazi Germany's nuclear program. The scientists were captured between May 1 and June 30, 1945, as part of the Allied Alsos Mission, mainly as part of its Operation Big sweep through southwestern Germany.

They were interned at Farm Hall, a bugged house in Godmanchester, near Cambridge, England, from July 3, 1945, to January 3, 1946. The primary goal of the program was to determine how close Nazi Germany had been to constructing an atomic bomb by listening to their conversations.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Synchronization gear

πŸ”— Technology πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft project πŸ”— Military history/World War I πŸ”— Firearms

A synchronization gear, or a gun synchronizer, sometimes rather less accurately called an interrupter, is attached to the armament of a single-engine tractor-configuration aircraft so it can fire through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. The idea presupposes a fixed armament directed by aiming the aircraft in which it is fitted at the target, rather than aiming the gun independently.

There are many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high speed at which any gear synchronizing the two has to operate.

Design and experimentation with gun synchronization had been underway in France and Germany in 1913–1914, following the ideas of August Euler, who seems to have been the first to suggest mounting a fixed armament firing in the direction of flight (in 1910). However, the first practicalβ€”if far from reliableβ€”gear to enter operational service was that fitted to the Eindecker monoplane fighters, which entered squadron service with the German Air Service in mid-1915. The success of the Eindecker led to numerous gun synchronization devices, culminating in the reasonably reliable hydraulic British Constantinesco gear of 1917. By the end of the war German engineers were well on the way to perfecting a gear using an electrical rather than a mechanical or hydraulic link between the engine and the gun, with the gun being triggered by a solenoid rather than by a mechanical "trigger motor".

From 1918 to the mid-1930s the standard armament for a fighter aircraft remained two synchronized rifle-calibre machine guns, firing forward through the arc of the propeller. During the late 1930s, however, the main role of the fighter was increasingly seen as the destruction of large, all-metal bombers, for which the "traditional" light armament was inadequate.

Since it was impractical to try to fit more than one or two extra guns in the limited space available in the front of a single-engine aircraft's fuselage, this led to an increasing proportion of the armament being mounted in the wings, firing outside the arc of the propeller. There were in fact some advantages in dispensing with centrally mounted guns altogether. Nevertheless, the conclusive redundancy of synchronization gears did not finally come until the introduction of jet propulsion and the absence of a propeller for guns to be synchronized with.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Tsar Bomba

πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Russia/technology and engineering in Russia πŸ”— Environment πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/Cold War πŸ”— Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia

The Soviet RDS-202 hydrogen bomb (code name Ivan or Vanya), known by Western nations as Tsar Bomba (Russian: Π¦Π°Ρ€ΡŒ-бо́мба, tr. Tsar'-bΓ³mba, IPA:Β [tΝ‘sarΚ² ˈbombΙ™], lit. 'Tsar bomb'), was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created. Tested on 30Β October 1961 as an experimental verification of calculation principles and multi-stage thermonuclear weapon designs, it also remains the most powerful human-made explosive ever detonated.

The bomb was detonated at the Sukhoy Nos ("Dry Nose") cape of Severny Island, Novaya Zemlya, 15Β km (9.3Β mi) from Mityushikha Bay, north of Matochkin Strait. The detonation was secret but was detected by US Intelligence agencies. The US apparently had an instrumented KC-135R aircraft (Operation SpeedLight) in the area of the test – close enough to have been scorched by the blast.

The bhangmeter results and other data suggested the bomb yielded about 58 megatons of TNT [Mt] (240Β PJ), and that was the accepted yield in technical literature until 1991 when Soviet scientists revealed that their instruments indicated a yield of 50Β Mt (210Β PJ). As they had the instrumental data and access to the test site, their yield figure has been accepted as more accurate. In theory, the bomb would have had a yield in excess of 100Β Mt (420Β PJ) if it had included a uranium-238 tamper but, because only one bomb was built, that capability has never been demonstrated.

The remaining bomb casings are located at the Russian Atomic Weapon Museum in Sarov and the Museum of Nuclear Weapons, All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Physics, at Snezhinsk.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Blue Peacock

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Cold War

Blue Peacock, renamed from Blue Bunny and originally Brown Bunny, was a British tactical nuclear weapon project in the 1950s.

The project's goal was to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear mines in Germany, to be placed on the North German Plain and, in the event of Soviet invasion from the east, detonated by wire or an eight-day timer to:

...Β not only destroy facilities and installations over a large area, butΒ ... deny occupation of the area to an enemy for an appreciable time due to contaminationΒ ...

Discussed on

πŸ”— Steam Cannon

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Middle Ages πŸ”— Middle Ages/History

A steam cannon is a cannon that launches a projectile using only heat and water, or using a ready supply of high-pressure steam from a boiler. The first steam cannon was designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse. Leonardo Da Vinci was also known to have designed one (see the Architonnerre).

The early device would consist of a large metal tube, preferably copper due to its high thermal conductivity, which would be placed in a furnace. One end of the tube would be capped and the other loaded with a projectile. Once the tube reached a high enough temperature, a small amount of water would be injected in behind the projectile. In theory, Leonardo da Vinci believed, the water would rapidly expand into vapour, blasting the projectile out the front of the barrel.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Fu-Go Balloon Bomb

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft project πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— Japan/Japanese military history πŸ”— Military history/Asian military history πŸ”— Military history/Japanese military history

A Fu-Go (ち号[兡器], fugō [heiki], lit. "Code Fu [Weapon]"), or fire balloon (ι’¨θˆΉηˆ†εΌΎ, fΕ«sen bakudan, lit. "balloon bomb"), was a weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen balloon with a load varying from a 33Β lb (15Β kg) antipersonnel bomb to one 26-pound (12Β kg) incendiary bomb and four 11Β lb (5.0Β kg) incendiary devices attached, it was designed as a cheap weapon intended to make use of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and drop bombs on American cities, forests, and farmland. Canada and Mexico reported fire balloon sightings as well.

The Japanese fire balloon was the first ever weapon possessing intercontinental range (the second being the Convair B-36 Peacemaker and the third being the R-7 ICBM). The Japanese balloon attacks on North America were at that time the longest ranged attacks ever conducted in the history of warfare, a record which was not broken until the 1982 Operation Black Buck raids during the Falkland Islands War.

The balloons were intended to instill fear and terror in the U.S., though the bombs were relatively ineffective as weapons of destruction due to extreme weather conditions.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Canal Defence Light

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Military land vehicles πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

The Canal Defence Light (CDL) was a British "secret weapon" of the Second World War.

It was based upon the use of a powerful carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a tank. It was intended to be used during night-time attacks, when the light would allow enemy positions to be targeted. A secondary use of the light would be to dazzle and disorient enemy troops, making it harder for them to return fire accurately. The name Canal Defence Light was used to conceal the device's true purpose. For the same reason, in US service they were designated T10 Shop Tractor.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System (Poseidon)

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Military history/Post-Cold War

The Poseidon (Russian: ПосСйдон, "Poseidon", NATO reporting name Kanyon), previously known by Russian codename Status-6 (Russian: Бтатус-6), is an autonomous, nuclear-powered, and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle under development by Rubin Design Bureau, capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads.

The Poseidon is one of the six new Russian strategic weapons announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1Β MarchΒ 2018.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Boirault Machine

πŸ”— France πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/World War I πŸ”— Military history/French military history πŸ”— Military history/Military land vehicles πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Boirault machine (French: Appareil Boirault), was an early French experimental landship, designed in 1914 and built in early 1915. It has been considered as "another interesting ancestor of the tank", and described as a "rhomboid-shaped skeleton tank without armour, with single overhead track". Ultimately, the machine was deemed impractical and was nicknamed Diplodocus militaris. It preceded the design and development of the English Little Willie tank by six months.

Discussed on