UNKNOWN RAPID FIRE WEAPON

[GRANVILLE]

Came across this today. Can anyone offer further information about it as the publication it's in has little to say about it. Described as: American experts firing a gun employing centrifugal power, a revolving wheel automatically releasing many 100's of bullets.

Dave Upton

[Radlad]

LOL. The Americans have had a love affair with centrifugal throwing devices from before the war between the States to the present day. The US patent list for them is quite extensive and think the US military finally decided they were useless during trials straight after WW1. Not sure, but I think the 'Lombard' was about that time.

[centurion]

A reincarnation of an old failed 19th Century idea using the effect created by a rapidly rotating wheel to fling projectiles with considerable force. In effect some of the energy stored by a flywheel would be transferred to a lead ball. Once the wheel was spinning at maximum speed multiple shots could be made as rounds could be continuously fed into the wheel and the centrifugal effect would fling them out to its edge and away. In Britain Henry Wilkinson the famous gun and sword maker created several designs for such a projectile machine and employed an engineer to attempt its development. In the United States such a machine was actually constructed in 1837. It appears to have been a large device with handles on either side by which a cranking crew could spin the wheel up to speed. It was able to fling a 20 ounce lead ball over 130 yards with enough force that hitting an iron target would flatten it. However it must have been very difficult to aim and it would be impossible to achieve transverse fire. In any case it broke down after only a few rounds had been fired. The stresses imposed by the flywheel would have been considerable. Wilkinson attempted to perfect the design but by 1840 little progress had been made and the project was abandoned. Some years later a steam powered cetrifigal weapon with a horizontal flywheel was built by Ross Winans a Baltimore industrialist with known Confederate sympathies based on patents belonging to a Mr Dickinson. This gun was taken into Confederate army service.The gun together with a boiler was mounted on a four wheel (horse drawn) carriage and protected by an armoured semi conical shield. It was en route from Baltimore to the Confederates at Harpers Ferry when it was captured by a unit of the Massachusetts Volunteers. The gun was then used to protect the Washington Junction viaduct on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad – effectively being treated as another bridge gun. How effective it would have been in open combat is a moot point, bullet hitting the pressurised boiler would have had a spectacular effect.

My drawing of Winans' weapon (based on contemporary newspaper engravings)

[Radlad]

I think the last patent filed for such a device was in 2003 for the ' DREAD Weapons System', but there are many pages of instructions on the internet for making similar devices to fire paintballs, so the idea hasn't died yet. Google 'centrifugal guns' for more information.

Also, a link showing the Lombard Model of ww1 vintage

http://thedonovan.co...tidying_up.html

[Rob Connolly]

"Mythbusters" tested their own version of a steam-powered device that threw metal balls at a target. It was prone to breakdown, inaccurate and - when the "bullets" actually hit the target - not very effective.

[Radlad]

"Mythbusters" tested their own version of a steam-powered device that threw metal balls at a target.

It was made using the original blueprints for Joslin and Dickensons machine of 1860 (sometimes attributed to Winans)

[Tom W.]

Came across this today. Can anyone offer further information about it as the publication it's in has little to say about it. Described as: American experts firing a gun employing centrifugal power, a revolving wheel automatically releasing many 100's of bullets.

I can't identify that particular model. There were many submitted to the War Department. There was the Judge, the Czegka, the Rice, the Dickinson, the Moore...

This paragraph from a 1922 Labor Digest explains how everybody felt about the concept by the end.

http://books.google.com/books?id=D2HOAAAAMAAJ&dq=centrifugal%20gun&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q=centrifugal%20gun&f=false

[centurion]

The French and the Italians both attempted to develop bomb throwers using a centrifugal effect.

[Old Tom]

In the picture posted at 1 the wheel seems to be belt or gain driven by an electric motor. The picture does not include the source of power. Perhaps, tongue in cheek, a large rheostat could control rate of fire or range.

Old Tom

[Stoppage Drill]

Why would a weapon like this be in any way desirable ? Conventional small arms had achieved near-perfection 20 years before the War broke out.

Silence maybe ?

[GRANVILLE]

Why would a weapon like this be in any way desirable ? Conventional small arms had achieved near-perfection 20 years before the War broke out.

Silence maybe ?

I would suspect that they were naturally interested in any device capable of effectively mowing down the enemy and at the same time doing it at a significantly reduced cost. No doubt those behind the development of such a weapon will have put forward both suggestions to encourage the authorities to take a closer look. In theory, I guess the designers were on the right lines in that if they could get the delivery centrifuge spinning fast enough all they then had to do was feed it with the projectiles that would ultimately do the killing and wounding. This obviously did away with the need for individual cartridges and their contents, much of which in the heat of battle became 'lost' to salvage once they had been fired. As a wayward youth, working in a timber yard, I well remember how impressed we used to be at just how far a powered up circular saw could fling an off-cut of wood dropped onto the blade - a crude representation of the weapon being tested in the picture.

Dave Upton

[centurion]

Apart from the not inconsiderable strains on the structure of the weapon one problem was that at rotational speeds high enough to achieve an effective missile (and I don't believe that the Myth Busters got anywhere near that) the whole thing becomes a gyroscope which resists any attempt to alter the direction in which it is pointing and so becomes impossible to train.