"Most Impractical Weapon Design of WW II?" Topic

1. The Boomerang Grenade was a private venture submitted in WW1 not 2. The single example is in the Infantry Museum at Singleton. Having had a chance to examine it, it is not a returning type boomerang, but one of the long distance, straight flying (aka killer) type. It would be a lot easier to throw than the contemporary grenades.

2. The Krumlauf device, which came in 30, 45 and 90 degree versions was considered a success, but was only available for the various assault rifles. Also the short 8mm Kurtz bullets did not break up being fired around corners, but the bent tube did suffer from wear if the gun was fired on full auto.

Strangely enough, the US Army is currently investing in the equivalent, buying video cameras & screens so soldiers can shoot from cover by sticking their gun around the corner & aiming via the camera – want to bet on which system cost less & is less likely to get out or order?

Some of the Funnies, especially the previously mentioned Panjandrum have to be up there.

The various unguided naval AA rockets weren't too useful.

Anti-submarine sweeps don't seem to have accomplished much.

Equipping Japanese infantry with swords was probably not the most useful allocation of weight.

Early-war US torpedoes might as well have been left on shore.

Those R/C B-17s filled with explosives for use as amazingly clumsy cruise missiles were a bit over-the-top, too.

The Messerschmidt Komet wasn't too hot, really.
-Kle.

Another vote for the air towed mine.

Curvy lines was a standard thing for railguns, they weren't generally designed for rapid deployment.

wrt the Lee, hull mounted guns were a popular design feature in various tanks – Char B, Churchill Mk1, M11/39 etc. It was one way of mounting a largish gun without having to design a bigger turret ring. It was a solution to a technological problem.

The Avro Manchester. The A38 Valiant.

No slight against the UK. It is only the UK is one of the most open to talk about their failures.
Without the Manchester, there would be no Lancaster et cetera.

The blacker bombard was official issue for a brief period. It was successfully use in the defence of Tobruk and knocked out several tanks. So I think it proved itself practical – at least in defence.

The ampulomets was complete rubbish.

There was a british type of bomb intended for anti submarine use. Used several times and never damaged a U boat the thing was fairly quickly ditched.
The problem was they were intended to be dropped from low level and had a tendency to bounce back off the water.
One plane was downed by it's own bombs in this manner.

Dad has very bad things to say about sticky bombs.
They didn't like the idea of those things at all and training was quickly cut short. As he pointed out, for their officers to have noticed they must have been very obviously bad. He has a low opinion of most of the officers he served under.

I don't think the Blacker Bombard should count for one very good reason…. Hedgehog.

While the Piat was from the same general concept, and was a fair Anti-Tank weapon, Hedgehog really was just a mass-launch Blacker Bombard Rack, and was a very good Anti-Sub weapon.

Tanks could never have lost us the war. Subs could. QED The Blacker Bombard was a good thing.

Pat

Shooting around corners with a curved barrel! What is so silly about protecting the shooter? As mentioned by bsrlee, it is being used right now by the U.S. Army!

Fire Zouave, what if you needed to shoot the other way?

The corner shooting weapons were thought to be quite successful.

Apparently, SMG armed ones were issued to some tanks crews as well, so they could fire through a roof port.

The Komet worked very well on many occasions, and had a number of kills. Since it was so small and fast, the turret guns on the bombers had difficulty tracking them.

Of course, it was quite dangerous to its pilots as well, who might be blown up during a rough landing, or dissolved, if there was a fuel leak.

Some of the heat rays and sound guns being experimented with never became operational during the war, but their descendents are quite effective today.

Fire Zouave, what if you needed to shoot the other way?

Turn the gun upside down? Might be rather uncomfortable to fire thus, though.

Or perhaps screwing off the whole thing, turning it 180 degrees and then screwing it back? I guess modern versions could even use some sort of a quick-release bolt for attachment – just pull the handle to release the widget.

Can't recall the model number (Type 90, maybe?) of the Japanese LMG that was bin-fed. The loader had to feed rounds into a bin on the side of the gun by hand. This lead to a low rate of fire and a lot of fingerless loaders.

wrt the Lee, hull mounted guns were a popular design feature in various tanks …

Yup. Worked well enough in the StuGs and jagdpanzers. Depends on what you want: smaller gun with full traverse or bigger gun with limited traverse.

Oddly enough, I know of at least one instance where a Soviet tank was knocked out by a flare gun-wielding German soldier…who wasn't using the special AT version.

"As for the Roc in its attack version as the Skua it did ok. Also at the time the Roc was in service as a fighter no-one else had a decent carrier born fighter either – the Japanese being the first with the Zero late in 1940."

I agree the Skua was OK as it had little opposition and was a handy dive bomber!

I had forgotten about the Komet--Kileed far more of its pilots and ground crew than Americans--I think it possibly had a few dozen kills at the most--Complete waste of time and effort!!

The Davey Crockett super caliber nuclear device was also intended to be transportable after breaking down by it's 3 man crew, for implacement as an atomic demolition munition (ADM). The warhead fit into a handy little O.D. nylon bag, which bore a remarkable resemblance to a bowling ball bag, once the warhead was inside it.

Yup. Worked well enough in the StuGs and jagdpanzers

Though these at least had the benefit of a low profile

My favorite was the Japanese 50 mm 'Knee Mortar" which was badly named, as it would break the leg of anyone who braced it on their knee. In fairness to the designers it was never intended to fire from the knee, but the name and the misconception apparently made many think that they could.
Rod Robertson.

There seems to be some confusion between the terms 'impractical' and 'unsuccessful'.

Something like the Manchester was unsuccessful as it was underpowered, but it wasn't 'impractical' – it didn't require the crew to sit on the tail to steer it or require special bombs to made for it or anything.

Impractical is something completely stupid like the Great Panjandrum or the air towed mine…..

My favorite was the Japanese 50 mm 'Knee Mortar" which was badly named, as it would break the leg of anyone who braced it on their knee. In fairness to the designers it was never intended to fire from the knee, but the name and the misconception apparently made many think that they could.

Ummm, I doubt that the Japanese called it "knee mortar", that name and misconception to my knowledge were invented by the US forces when they captured them. If a few clueless GIs ended up breaking their knee or tight bone by trying to fire it in the wrong way, that is hardly the Japanese designers fault (and even in that case, the weapon fulfilled its original design goal: to cause casualties to the enemies of Imperial Japan).

Griefbringer:
I bow to your inescapable logic and encyclopedic knowledge. I have been corrected in my wrong-thinking!
Rod Robertson.

(Curiously enough, the designers of the US M60 machine-gun also considered such handles unnecessary, with the poor assistant gunner being instead supplied with an asbestos mitten.)

Still a problem today (so you dump the barrel off the front with the E3 version), but even the MG42 didn't have a handle on the barrel. You up-ended the weapon and unlatched the barrel, let the barrel drop out, then stuff in the new one and close the latch. Too hot to handle? Then don't bother. by the time the second barrel needs to be changed, the first should have cooled off enough to get picked up and have the crud tapped out of it.

I see all your rubbish with a Semple Tank:
link

And raise you a Breda Ba88 "Lynx" – so bad that it was occasinoally unable to take off under their own power, and most spent the war as decoys scatterd around airfileds! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_88

something completely stupid like the Great Panjandrum

This is the sort of thing I menat- it is unfair when we have hindsight. New problem (atlantic wall) so the designers try lots of different ideas, some work, many don't BUT UNLESS YOU TRY you never find the right ones.

Let's face it – Guns. What a stupid idea. More dangerous to the user than the target, can't be used near horses, unreliable and prone to misfire. They will never replace the longbow!

The Japanese 'Special Grenade' has got to be on the list – a glass ampoule, filled with hydrocyanic acid, which was intended to incapacitate a tank's crew with toxic fumes.

Does anyone do the Bob Semple tank in 6mm ?

Not H&R, not Skytrex, not irregular

R Mark Davies wrote:

The Japanese 'Special Grenade' has got to be on the list – a glass ampoule, filled with hydrocyanic acid, which was intended to incapacitate a tank's crew with toxic fumes.

I believe there's an account in Louis Allen's "Burma" of this type of grenade being used to knock out a Grant, so, hardly ineffective, and I have difficulty in seeing what is impractical about the design. A much better bet than a Molotov cocktail, Kartukov ampulomyot, Bates eight-barrelled bottle-thrower, tank-burning team, anti-tank fougasse or flame-trap, at any rate, and not as hazardous to the user as a lunge-mine or dog-mine.

All the best,

John.