since the dawn of time humans have attempted to weaponize just about everything and anything they can think of from spherical tanks and cat guns to bombs that were literally carried by bats it's time to take a look at some of the weirdest yet most amazing military weapons ever created [Music] before we get into this i want to give a shout out to our sponsor for making a video on this topic possible conflict of nations it's a military-themed pvp strategy game where you choose a real country to lead and modern global warfare against up to 128 other players you can use many different units to build up your army tanks jets nuclear submarines whatever you need to engage in epic battles or build alliances all over the world what's really cool about it is that it's available on both pc and mobile and you can use the same account on both so you can play the same game at home or on the go and if you click on the link in the description below you'll get 13 000 gold and a one month premium subscription for free available for 30 days from this video's upload so don't miss out alright thanks again conflict of nations now it's time to take a look at some super weird weaponry [Music] pistol this is the aptly named corner shot it's a weapon accessory that mounts a semi-automatic pistol or grenade launcher at the front remotely linking to a trigger on the other end this allows the front section to rotate up to 60 degrees around corners while a digital camera feeds the user a view of what lies around the bed carriers can fire their weapon and hit a target up to 650 feet away without exposing themselves from their cover but what if taking out the target right away isn't the best option what if you need the element of surprise or a distraction that's where the kitty corner shot comes in yep that's a stuffed animal built onto the top of the weapon the back legs conceal the bipod beneath while the head covers the barrel and the scope peeks out between the front legs at worst anyone seeing this around the corner is confused giving the shooter several critical seconds of advantage to aim and shoot while the target tries to figure out what's going on at best anyone not looking close enough just thinks there's a cat or a child's toy landing against the corner giving the shooter a few more moments to survey the scene oh man if that were me the only thing that gunman would see is an idiot desperately going for the cat's attention crazy krumlov at the end of world war ii germany became obsessed with creating weirdly impractical weapons that they believed would help turn the tide of the war these included the v2 revenge rocket the wacky wind cannon and most notably the krumlov a 14 inch long curved barrel rifle attachment this is the great great grand daddy of the corner shot designed so the german troops wielding sturmgover 44s could shoot from cover during conflict but instead of a digital display the kremlof contained a mirror so the user could see where the gun was pointing while maintaining a standard hold this meant it could be used from within tanks over walls or around corners pretty forward thinking for the time but for all of the resources pumped into its development the krumlov had some pretty serious drawbacks u. s military testing revealed that bullets would shatter once they hit that all-important curve making the krumlov useless for anything but very close-range combat on top of that the damage taken from the shattered bullets meant the attachments only had a service life of a few hundred rounds not entirely surprising seeing how it looks like it was invented by tom and jerry badass attachments while we're on the topic of things you can add onto a gun to make it even more lethal let's talk about bayonets these are removable blades attached onto the end of a gun or rifle which originally allowed soldiers back in the 17th century to engage in deadly close combat encounters while stabbing the enemy with a gun isn't a war winning tactic these days bayonets have gradually developed over the years and are still used by the military many different designs are also being developed by weapons firms in a multitude of ways take for example the utterly terrifying stinger from paper city firearms this retractable bayonet is pin activated meaning it slides out when you need it retracting back when you don't and locking into place to stop it sliding out accidentally while we may see something disinventive on weapons in the future one with less practicality like this utterly terrifying chainsaw attachment will probably just be left a gun enthusiast don't get me wrong attachments like these would be perfect for fighting in the zombie apocalypse but with some of them reaching 18 inches and adding more than four pounds to the weapon's weight they're pretty cumbersome and can't be easily swapped out and stored so they probably won't become standard military issue for the foreseeable future but they are still available to gun enthusiasts who need to do important things like shoot pumpkins and solve them through yeah you show those pumpkins whose boss now you don't need a chainsaw attachment to attack those leg and subscribe buttons below go to war on those things all done great now where were we three in one alright this next weapon was never official military issue but it's so brilliantly weird i just have to show it to you take a look at this this is the apache 27 caliber revolver a six chamber gun that also contains a flick blade and a knuckle duster this is personal protection at its finest the knife lays on the bottom of the chamber and flicks up by a small hinge then the knuckle duster folds out revealing the trigger and clicks into place to form the handle and there you have it a brass knuckle duster knife gun from all of the details and elegance you can probably guess this is a french design one that dates all the way back to the 1860s and while it was only manufactured for about 10 years there was an official 9 by 19 millimeter parabellum variant reportedly used by the british during world war ii although it's no surprise the design was used in a war nearly 80 years after its conception i mean it's so weirdly innovative that even today it wouldn't look out of place in a grand theft auto game god tier grenades grenades for those who don't know are explosive weapons that work by dispersing fragments shock waves chemicals or fire usually they're small enough to be handheld allowing soldiers to throw them long distances at the enemy so they explode without damaging the thrower themselves but in 1915 german engineers came up with an ingenious way to throw them even further they created the steelhand granat a grenade attached to a long wooden handle and before you ask no these weren't used as some sort of super hitting hammers these attached handles provided greater leverage for throwing the grenade longer distances and were so effective that they became standard military issue but this wasn't enough for germany not by a long shot because by world war ii they were testing out the sturm pistol no this isn't photoshop that's a modified flare gun with a grenade loaded in its barrel the stern pistol was an attempt by the germans to arm their troops with lightweight multi-purpose weapons as such this gun could launch flares for signaling and illumination and a variety of deadly projectiles such as anti-tank grenades the rounds of the latter included the panzer virf corpor 42 which had a range of more than 225 feet though it could only penetrate 3 inches of armor still that's a little gun with a big punch sadly the germans focused their development efforts on more efficient anti-tank rifles and the little gun that could soon fell out of service guess you could say it tanked peculiar panjandrum as weird and wonderful as germany's wacky weaponry was though it had nothing on what the british cooked up to combat them this for example is the panjandrum or as i like to call it the ultimate fidget spinner it was a set of two rocket propelled 10 foot diameter wheels with a 5 foot wide central cylinder that was filled to the brim with explosives supposedly built to attack germany's extensive coastal defenses these catherine wheels of death were designed to launch out of a landing craft whiz up the beach and blow a hole in any fortifications or soldiers in their path however tests conducted in 1943 and 1944 ended in total disaster the rockets attached to the wheels often failed and in some cases they detached completely sending the panjandrum veering off in every direction except the straight line they needed while it seems too wacky to be real there are reports indicating that the development of this weapon might have been a spoof there's a chance this rolling rocket bomb was developed to lead germans into thinking the british intended to land on the beaches at collis either way the panjandrum was never used in action considering how badly those tests went i'm kind of amazed it didn't take anyone out with it baby grenades now when it comes to grenades size isn't everything and nothing's proved that quite like the dutch v40 grenade developed in the 1960s this fragmentation grenade also known as the minifragger golf ball grenade was a little over 1. 6 inches in diameter and weighed 4.
8 ounces this meant it was a little over a third the weight and half the diameter of a standard m67 grenade making it about the same size as a golf ball what is this a grenade for ants well not quite wow small and weirdly adorable the explosion of this baby grenade was still lethal up to a radius of 16 feet and dangerous up to 980 feet from the point of impact this meant troops could carry more of them than standard grenades and still make one heck of a dent in the enemy sadly their production ceased in 1972 but even though they were tiny they definitely made a big impact bizarre bat bombs the kamikaze attack aircraft used by japan and world war ii were undeniably horrific weapons men would fly these aircraft and their built-in bombs directly into the target sacrificing themselves in the process while terrible it gave a dentist from pennsylvania won little adams an idea what if the us could train animals to be the kamikaze bombers they didn't want their human troops to be after the attack on pearl harbor in 1941 he sent a crazy proposal to the white house strapped tiny incendiary bombs to thousands of bats release them over the island of japan and they nest in all the nooks and crannies of the country's wooden buildings in theory they'd caused thousands of uncontrollable fires across the country an idea that was as ingenious as it was baddie as luck would have it similar research being undertaken at the time into bat's echolocation abilities strengthened adam's proposal and the national research defense committee began testing a demonstration was conducted where the bats carried dummy bombs and after being considered viable the operation was finally given the designation project x-ray so how would the mechanics of this project work first the bats would need to be still while they were being transported so they were stuck in little ice cube trays and kept cool forcing them into a hibernate state then a cardboard container would release the bats automatically from the plane and as they warmed up on their descent they'd spread their wings and fly but this didn't go to plan during one test a few of the loaded bats set fire to a hangar and general's car well at least they knew it worked ultimately the marine corps spent some 2 million dollars trying to get this crazy idea to take off but in the end the project was scrapped in favor of the atomic bomb sorry atomic bomb man i think i've got batty real big guns in the 1790s the world's first flintlock pepper box guns were created revolvers with multiple barrels that used a flint striking ignition mechanism this multi-chambered fast-firing gun was a game changer but it wasn't long before people began taking the design to new heights some variations featured six or eight chambers each holding a bullet which would rotate around to the firing pin in succession but by the 1850s some adventurous designs featured up to 18 barrels though one went even further designed by a belgian gun maker called mariette featuring a mega 24 barrels what i wouldn't give to see that feature in a western they could call it the good the bad and the utterly insane 24 barrel gun while it would have taken a short time to fire loading each bullet and placing the percussion caps needed to fire them on each barrel would have taken between 40 and 60 minutes so super cool but not exactly a quick load luckily in the 21st century the great great grandson of this mega barrel pepper box is a little easier to load and fire say hello to metal storm technology unveiled back in 1997 this company developed a volley gun with a whopping 36 barrels the prototype gun demonstrated that metal storm technology could achieve a maximum fire rate of an impossible sounding 1. 62 million rounds per minute in this configuration it could fire almost literally a wall of 24 000 9 millimeter rounds at more than 3 800 miles per hour which would eat through just about anything in its way it worked by stacking multiple projectiles nose to tail in each barrel which were then electronically triggered individually in rapid succession this meant they fired in waves delivering maximum damage without knocking into one another in 2007 the us navy announced it had purchased some metal storm tech but it was never used in action as its applications were very circumstantial it'd be great in an ambush scenario but whoever this stationary weapon was being aimed at would just have to step to the side to avoid becoming a fine pace that's a pretty limiting drawback unable to secure many contracts the company went into administration in 2012. looks like they hit a wall hopefully not one made of a million bullets under fire now there aren't many weapons out there that trigger my trypophobia that is my fear tightly sometimes irregularly packed holes but the tos-1 is unlike many weapons first developed by the soviet union back in 1988 these scary-looking machines are actually rocket launchers capable of using thermobaric warheads sometimes called aerosol bombs or somewhat terrifyingly vacuum bombs thermobaric weapons basically use up all the oxygen in a given area to generate a high temperature explosion they release a chemical cloud that ignites the air underneath it resulting in fires that can burn and suffocate anyone who stands in their path the rocket launchers themselves sit on a t-72 tank chassis there are 24 220 millimeter rockets that are loaded into 24 tubes and the rockets each weigh around 400 pounds in short this is not a weapon you want to be anywhere near even when it's not firing reap what you sow you can probably tell just by looking at some machine guns that they're heavy even light machine guns tend to weigh around 22 pounds so being a soldier out on patrol must be tiring if you're lugging one around and that's where australia's reaper came in developed by advanced accuracy solutions the reaper is a backpack mounted pole and sling combo designed to redistribute the weight of the attached gun stabilizing it and allowing for more accurate aim it's a good albeit weird looking contraption one that the australian army trialled back in 2015 but the disadvantages quickly came to light it really wasn't camouflage friendly it couldn't integrate with knight fighting equipment and it posed a lot of issues if the user had to quickly get in a vehicle or aircraft ultimately the aussies concluded the reaper was more of a burden than a boon and decided not to integrate it into their service well if their army ever find themselves needing to disguise their troops as human coat hangers at least they'll know who to call it takes balls in 1936 a texan inventor by the name of aj richardson got to thinking about the horrors of the first world war what if instead of launching mortar bombs at trenches and hoping they hit the target they could send heavily armored motorized bunkers over the fields like steel bubbles richardson drew this design up and for the most part it seemed like a solid idea the motorized ridged outer shell would allow the ball to conquer just about any terrain the three men inside were sealed against gas attacks and the heavy driving motor would prevent it from rolling sideways there was just one problem there were no windows richardson had forgotten to take into account that the men inside needed to see where they were rolling and shooting as such this tumbleweed tank never got past the design stage but that didn't stop others from creating similar designs like germany's weirdly mysterious kugelpanzer less than five feet in diameter with a small trailer wheel at its rear this ball tank was manned by a single crew member sitting on a motorcycle style saddle powered forward by a 25 horsepower engine the shell was a mere five millimeters thick and was solid all the way around save for a viewpoint at the front that had a slot for a machine gun underneath weighing in at 1.
