10 Most Extra Ordinary Weapons of The World

[abbasniazi]

when it comes to weapons, man’s creative and dare I say artistic, ingenuity comes to the fore. If it is possible to have one weapon, then why not turn that weapon into two by fixing a blade or a club on it? As for pistols – let’s have six barrels, a muff pistol, a palm pistol, or a ring pistol. This is a look at some interesting and some unusual antique guns that gunsmiths have created in the past.
Also here, is the gun described as “the most beautiful gun in the world”

(Cased Percussion Pepperbox Pistol)

The Development of the Firing Mechanism
In simplistic terms, the earliest forms of firing mechanism involved manually placing a burning ember or flame to a hole in the top of the barrel of a “gun”. This was replaced by a matchlock, which basically was a method of securing a very slow burning fuse (known as a match) to the side of the gun, which was introduced to the touch hole to explode the powder in the gun.

Of course wet conditions or an ember in close proximity to the powder were not the most favourable of situations and accidents with muskets were not uncommon

The breakthrough came with the invention of the Wheellock.

This involved mechanically moving a scored disk of steel against a piece of mineral called pyrite to cause sparks. The easiest way to understand this is to look at a modern flint cigarette lighter. This works in basically the same way.

The mechanism of the Wheelock was rather complicated and there were attempts to simplify it. There were several variations but one of the most popular was a Dutch invention called the Snaphaunce. (Derived from the Dutch “snap haan” meaning snapping hen, a reference to the movement of the arm containing the flint.) There were problems because of a need to have a moveable cap over the ignition hole, to stop accidental ignition and to keep the powder dry.

However it was not until the invention of the Flintlock in France by Marin Le Bourgeoys that a far more reliable mechanism came into being. This involved an arm containing a piece of flint striking a metal L shaped plate. This not only caused a spark but forced the plate to uncover the touch hole at the same moment.

This was a system that would last for around two and a half centuries until the development of percussion methods of firing took over.

Of course as well as working on the firing mechanism, gunsmiths were also looking at ways of developing the guns themselves
Combined Pernach Mace and Wheellock Pistol

The oldest weapon here is a combination of a pistol and a mace. It is from Northern Europe, from Saxony, from the last quarter of the 16th century (1575-1600). It is on display in The Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps (founded in 1703 in St Petersburg, Russia by Peter the Great.)



This gun/club almost signals a time of transition from knight in armour to cavalryman or infantryman. It is interesting to note the straight stock-style handle and the intricate decoration. The decoration indicates that the weapon would have been made for a member of a wealthy family and not a “commoner”.

Over and Under Flintlock Pistol

The problem with a muzzle loaded gun is that once it has been fired it is necessary to pause to reload with ball and powder. Not very helpful if you are being attacked by more than one assailant. One alternative would be to have more than one gun. Again not very comfortable for a man about town wanting to protect himself from a mugging. Much lighter would be one pistol with two barrels. Several companies began manufacturing double barrel pistols such as the one shown above made by the gunsmiths Hill of London.

Six Shot Percussion Pepper Box Revolver

If two barrels were useful, how much more useful six barrels would be. Like this one manufactured by Blunt and Syms of New York.

The pepperbox or pepper pot pistol has appeared with all the various firing mechanisms previously mentioned. The principle has always been basically the same. A solid unit consisting (in this case) of six barrels rotates around an axis. Each pull of the trigger caused the barrels to rotate through 60 degrees thus lining the next barrel up for firing. Because of the problem of weight, the barrels were usually no longer than three inches (3.5cm) long. It is easy to see from this, how the potential for reducing the size of the barrels to form chambers and putting one barrel in front of the chambers would lead to the development of the revolver.

The example shown above has a ring trigger.

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[abbasniazi]

Blunderbuss

An alternative to being able to shoot multiple shots from more than one barrel is to fire multiple projectiles from one barrel with one shot.

Rather than sending a single bullet to one target, the blunderbuss was designed to send multiple bullets over a given area. Its muzzle is wider than the rest of the barrel, intended to spread the shot over a given area. The early flintlock versions of the gun were very popular with guards on mail coaches and with householders for home defence.

Some of these weapons were issued to the army and the navy. It can be imagined that they would have been used by the navy in close combat, possibly to repel borders, or in boarding. It is probably for that reason, that the example above is fitted with a sprung over bayonet, as is the pair of pistols shown below.

Also note the ramrod held under the barrels for loading.

Blunderbuss Pistols with Bayonets

The date of this pair of pistols is from around 1820, and signed by Sherwood of London.

Ladies Muff Pistol

From the 18th century small concealable pistols for self protection, were manufactured in Europe in large numbers. The picture shows a flintlock example manufactured in 1820 from Birmingham England.

Measuring just over 4 inches (11.8cm) these lightweight guns were intended mainly for women. As they could easily be concealed in a Ladies hand warmer, they gained the name of Muff pistols.

Like many of this type of weapon it is fitted with a sliding safety catch to prevent accidental discharge.

A Palm Pistol

A palm pistol is one of the latest weapons shown here.

Patented around 1883 the earliest was known as the Chicago Palm Pistol. This percussion weapon was able to be concealed in the palm of the hand and operated by holding the fingers over the lugs either side of the barrel and squeezing with the palm of the hand.

The photograph above is of a unique design called “The Protector” from 1891-1892 by the Minneapolis Firearms company.

According toFlaydermans Guide to Antique Guns,9th edition, these were actually built by James Duckworth of Springfield, MA. It features a 7-shot cylinder which is really more like a rotating turret.

Ring Pistol

This weapon made in the late 19th century is a rare six shot pin firing revolver. It is a silver ring that fits the finger and features a hand rotated pepperbox barrels locked by a bar catch. The ring is engraved with the words “La Petit Protector”

Duelling Pistols and “The Judas Pair”

Should a “gentleman” feel that his honour had been offended, he would call on the offender to take part in a duel to remedy the offence. Formerly fought with swords, with the advent of the gun, duels would now take place with pistols. The wealthy families would be able to commission fine sets of duelling pistols which would be passed on from father to son.

The duellists would meet discretely, usually just after dawn. With them they would each have their own “seconds.” (A term which is now carried on in the boxing world.)

The duties of the seconds were several fold. Firstly they were there to try to settle the dispute verbally before the parties resorted to the duel. They were also to attend to any injuries resulting from the duel.

Another duty was that they were supposed to check that neither of the weapons contained rifling. (Grooves manufactured into the inside of the barrel to make a bullet travel more accurately.) This was supposed to be “ungentlemanly”. It has been suggested that on some occasions one of the pair may have been rifled and the other not.

It is possibly this that led to the story by Jonathan Gash called the “Judas Pair”. A pair of duelling pistols that, where one fired honestly, the other pistol had a mechanism which released the shot backwards to kill the person using it. But that’s just a story…isn’t it?

Duelling was finally banned in England in 1810.

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[abbasniazi]

Tschinke

A tschinke was a light hunting rifle used mainly for shooting birds. It takes its name from Teschen in Poland (where this type of weapon was developed) and was a popular hunting weapon among the north European nobility during the seventeenth century. The nobility were able to afford to have, beautifully, ornately inlaid decoration on their guns, like some of the examples shown below.

It can be seen that there is not a great distance between the trigger and the end of the stock. This is because the gun was not used by cradling into the shoulder. The stock was placed against the cheek. The gun itself absorbed most of the recoil.

“The Most Beautiful Gun in the World”: Louis XIII Fowling Piece

“As a curator, Bullock was frequently involved in acquisitions. One of the most extraordinary of these was the museum’s long effort to acquire the fowling piece of Louis XIII of France. That legendary long gun was then owned by William G. Renwick, a reclusive gun collector who kept his prizes hidden from sight in his home in Tucson, Ariz.

“The Louis XIII hunting weapon is not only considered the most elegant 17th-century long gun in existence, but it is also one of only three flintlocks known to have been made in the workshop of Pierre and Marin Le Bourgeoys of Lisieux, the gunsmiths who invented the flintlock ignition mechanism.

“Bullock was one of three Metropolitan curators beginning in the 1920s who tried to acquire the weapon, which they called “the most beautiful gun in the world,” before it could be snatched away by the Smithsonian Institution, another museum or a private collector.

“Several times it appeared that Renwick had been wooed and won, but he always backed off at the last minute. Then, after his death in 1972, his collection came up for auction at Sotheby’s in London. Bullock pounced, and an agent for the Metropolitan bid $300,000 and gained the prize.”

 

[Evil Flare]

So Magical Art

Really Impressed

 

[Daghalodi]

Great Work!!!!

 

[praveen]

AK-47 I think you forgot that

 

[abbasniazi]

AK-47 I think you forgot that

No doubt thats one of the best assault rifle ever produced like the machine gun, however, the images i have posted are related to the most beautiful weapons.

AK47 is of entirely different generation of weapons, why don't you post some images of the beautiful weapons of the present generation brother?

 

[Comet]

Good work...

 

[sohailbarki]

The gun of my choice Six Shot Percussion Pepper Box Revolver

 

[abbasniazi]

The gun of my choice Six Shot Percussion Pepper Box Revolver

Good Choice Brother, what about having two of these monsters, one in each holster on the right and left? .....

 

[abbasniazi]

Made in Germany, 1940-1945

The Second World War was a period of remarkable advances in technology and many new weapons were invented during this period, some of which entered production and actually saw service in the war, while others never left the drawing board.

Most of us are familiar with the secret weapons the Nazis had at their disposal in the last months of the war that were expected to turn the tide against the Allies. However, Germany had a reputation as a scientifically advanced nation well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. At the beginning of the war, the Germans had a significant advantage in many areas of military technology, although it lost the lead, for a variety of reasons, as the war progressed.

For the naval war, Germany built some submarines that could:
- stay submerged for an entire patrol
- used advanced sonar so they could target the enemy without raising the periscope
- were equipped with the first electric powered torpedoes which left no trail of bubbles to give away the sub’s position
- some even had stealth coating, rendering them invisible, when surfaced, to Allied planes using infra-red searchlights.

This was years ahead of its time, similar to the radar absorbing coating of modern stealth aircraft. Germany also developed synthetic fuel from coal, in order to lessen its dependence on imported oil for its petroleum needs. And very early in the war, German bombers operating at night used fixed radio transmitters, with receivers installed in the bombers, to very effectively navigate to their target areas. This system was the forerunner of GPS that we are familiar with today and for the first couple of years of the conflict at least, Allied air forces had no comparable system.

Thinking the war was already won, Hitler placed less emphasis on weapons development. Later, when the war turned against them, Germany turned to new, highly sophisticated weaponry in a desperate bid to turn the tide. These wonder weapons, or wunderwaffe, mostly reached the field of combat too late to make a difference, although some, like the V2 rockets, were deployed and were superior to anything possessed by the Allies at the time. Most of these weapons were very advanced for their era and with the exception of the gigantic tanks, were all developed by other counties in the subsequent decades. There are too many to cover in detail in this article, but here are some of the most fascinating ones.

WunderWaffe 1 - Vampire Vision

The Sturmgewehr 44 was the first ever assault rifle, similar to the modern M-16 and AK-47. The ZG 1229, also known by the code name Vampir, was an infra-red sight designed so that this rifle could be used by snipers at night. It was first used in combat in the last months of the war and weighed about five pounds, but was also connected to a thirty pound battery support pack, strapped to the soldier’s back.

WunderWaffe 2 - Shooting Around Corners

"The idea of weapons capable of proving aimed fire from around corners has always existed, and eventually materializes in the form of working pieces. One such device was "Der Gebone Lauf" ("The Curved Barrel"), created by the Germans in WWII, seen below fitted to an MP44 7.92 x 33 mm (7.92 Kurz) caliber assault rifle."

WunderWaffe 3 - Super-Heavy Tanks
German engineers worked on a number of designs for super-heavy tanks and the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus was the heaviest model of which a working prototype was made during the war. This tank weighed in at around 180 tonnes and this ended up being its principal problem. No engine was powerful enough to allow the tank to achieve the desired speed of 20 km/h, with only 13km/h being reached and that under ideal conditions. It was also too heavy to cross bridges. However, because the tank stood relatively high off the ground, it could actually ford deep streams and for deeper rivers was able to go underwater and drive along the bottom. However, to do this it had to be partnered with another tank, which supplied the electrical power through a cable. Amazingly, a long snorkel, allowing the crossing tank to submerge to a depth of 45 feet, fed air to the submerged tank’s crew.

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[abbasniazi]

"Design studies found at Krupp showed a version of the Maus carrying a 305mm breech-loading mortar, named 'Bear', and a giant 1500-ton vehicle with a 800mm gun as main armament plus two 150mm guns in auxiliary turrets on the rear quarters. This vehicle, put forward by two engineers named Grote and Hacker, was planned to be powered by four U-boat diesel engines!

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[abbasniazi]

This image shows how the Tiger tanks grew in size throughout the war:

WunderWaffe 4 - "The Walking Tank", the mine-clearing vehicle

One of the MinenRaumers - "In 1944, Krupp built a prototype of this super heavy mineclearing vehicle. The 130t vehicle was articulated in the centre, and was suspended on 2.7m diameter steel wheels. These were set on different track widths at front and rear, so as to sweep a wider path. Each section of the Raumer S was powered by a Maybach HL90 motor. It was captured at end of the war by the U.S Army."

Another design was even stranger, developed by Alkett, Krupp and Mercedes-Benz in 1942:

"The body of this strange machine built on the mounting of a heavy gun with a cabin including the compartment of combat, the engine compartment and which was surmounted by a turret of Panzer I (2 MG34). The shielding varied from 20 to 40 mm on the body of the machine. The lower part to be able to resist to the mines was of 80 mm. The direction was done using the small wheel located at the back, two larger wheels supplemented the suspension. The steel wheels were provided with steel shoes similar to those used by the German heavy guns at the time of the First World War. The wheels come from Caterpillar trucks. They were in theory to resist the explosive loads of the mines."

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[abbasniazi]

WunderWaffe 5 - the world’s first cruise missile
The Fieseler Fi 103, more familiar as the V-1, from the German vergeltungswaffe or vengeance weapon, was the world’s first cruise missile. The V-1 was powered by jets and carried an 1875 lb warhead with a range of 125 miles, the first ones being launched at England on June 13, 1944, just after D Day. The missile was sometimes delivered in the air from bombers, but was mostly ground launched, with long ramps hidden in wooded terrain. However, these were clearly visible from the air, so were usually bombed very quickly, forcing the German army to use mobile ramps instead, which they moved around the Pas-de-Calais region of the French channel coast.

Recreated launch ramp at the museum in Duxford, UK

Despite its fearsome reputation, although nearly 9,250 V1’s were fired against London and other English towns and cities, fewer than 2,500 reached their target, the others being destroyed by anti-aircraft fire, fighters, and even barrage balloons. However, V1 firing continued, at Antwerp and other cities on the European mainland as well as against England, until Allied forces finally captured the launch areas in late March 1945.

Variation: Rocket-Propelled Piloted Aircraft Bomb

Kamikaze "Ohka" (Cherry Blossom) ordered by Japan empire (U.S.S. "Essex" was hit by one of these.

\
V-1 used against London, and the new V-1 "BAKA", an interesting comparison

WunderWaffe 6 - the original long-range ballistic missile

The V1’s successor, perhaps a little predictably known as the V-2, was the original long-range ballistic missile and the first man-made object to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight. With a range of 200 miles and a 2150lb warhead, the V2 also traveled at 2500 mph, so it was impossible to intercept and hit its target from above faster than the speed of sound. There was no advance warning and although the V2 was far from accurate, it caused mass terror and panic when used against civilians. The rockets were also fired from mobile launchers, which were difficult to locate either before or after they were fired. Over 3000 V2’s were fired against the Allies, killing over 7000 people, both military and civilian, and the rocket threat was only finally ended when the German army was forced to retreat beyond the launch range.

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[abbasniazi]

The V2 was very expensive to produce, inaccurate and only carried a small warhead, but had the Germans had more time to develop it, the war might have taken a very different course. They may have been able to attach a nuclear warhead, and were working on using biological and chemical weapons in the rocket program. By the last days of the war, Germany had supplies of the nerve agents sarin, tabun and soman, but had never used them.

A rocket launching platform towed behind a submarine, intended for use against the North American continent, was successfully tested and scientists were also supposedly at work on the V9 rocket. This version would actually have a pilot, who was to bail out at the last minute with a parachute and be rescued at sea by a submarine. The V9 was to be armed with a one ton warhead, and be able to reach the US from Europe in just thirty five minutes.

At the end of the war, American, British or Soviet forces captured many German weapons, undeveloped projects and blueprints, plus the scientists who worked on them. Rocket scientists in particular played a large role in the space race and were instrumental helping the United States achieve the moon landing in 1969.

WunderWaffe 7 - the rocket-powered fighter plane
With aircraft, some of the German designs not only made it off the drawing board, but also flew in combat, although often not in sufficient numbers to alter the course of the war in Germany’s favour. The Messerschmitt Me 163 was the only operational rocket-powered fighter plane of the war, but although it was very advanced it performed poorly in combat and downed limited numbers of Allied aircraft.

The first turbojet fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262, first appeared in the skies over Europe in 1944. Although arriving too late to seriously impact the course of the conflict, the Me 262 still claimed over 500 Allied aircraft, losing around 100 Me 262s in the process.

Intended to be the successor of the Me 262, the Focke-Wulf Ta-183 fighter jet had only been tested in wind tunnels by the end of the war, although the plane’s basic design was developed in Argentina after 1945. Is thought that the Soviet MiG-15 was based on captured German plans, and the two planes do bear some resemblance, although Russian historians reject these theories.

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