When it comes to war, the primary thought running through the head of a typical soldier is ‘Shoot them before they shoot me.’ The primary thought running through the heads of defense contractors and military generals, however, is ‘Build better guns, fast!’ Well, sometimes the ‘fast’ outweighs the thought put into ‘better.’ That’s when you get articles like this, exploiting some of the truly impractical weapons actually used.

The Davy Crockett

The Davey Crockett was a portable nuke-launcher mass produced to be used overseas during the cold war against soviet troops. Throughout the Cold War, the war in which no shots were allegedly fired (that we know of), both the U.S. and Russia were doing anything and everything they could to prepare to kick the other guy’s ass. That meant lots of weapons, debatable budgets, and the occasional lapse in judgement, which leads me to the Davey Crockett specifications. It was manned by 3 personnel, and could fire a nuclear warhead up to 1.2 miles. The problem? Yeah, that 1.2 miles still puts the operating crew right in the danger zone of falling debris and radiation. Don’t worry, though. The U.S. government immediately saw the danger they were putting the soldiers in with this little launcher and ceased production after 3 prototypes. Wait, what? Oh, it appears they made about 2,100 of them.

The Cornershot

The German MP44 with cornershot attachment is the next item on our list. Not so much the MP44 because, as anyone who’s played Call of Duty World at War can tell you, it pretty much kicks ass. No, it’s the cornershot attached to the front that we’re calling into question. The germans produced over a hundred of these bad boys during WWII in order to shoot around corners and kill Allied forces without even having to look at them. The barrel had a 90 degree curve, the sight had a mirror, and special ammunition was used. The ammo was shorter, and more rounded, so it could go around the curve in the barrel. Production ceased after a month when the Nazi big-wigs realized the issues with this gun. The first impracticality is that you had to change your MP44′s magazine, load in special bullets, and equip the attachment in order to shoot around corners. At this point, whatever Allied targets the Nazis were going after probably rounded the corner and shhot the Krauts to death with their straight barelled Thompsons. Also, the Nazi administration realized their soldiers were shooting more Germans around corners than Allied soldiers. Perhaps now we should thank the manufacturer for aiding in the defeat of the Nazi regime?

The 50BMG Flechette Rifle

This was not the first, nor was it the last, rifle to use fletching round, which basically amount to a gunpowder-propelled dart. Imagine an MG42. It’s one hell of a gun. Now imagine if the bullets were pointy, slower, and more difficult and expensive to make. That’s what the fletching gun amounted to. In addition to the elevated cost of round production, and the fact that unlike 7.62 mm NATO rounds, extra ammunition didn’t drop off enemy soldiers (preventing you from adding it to your inventory after walking over them), the fletching rounds weren’t very accurate. The reason bullets are as accurate as they are is because their density and size contribute to the ideal velocity and trajectory.

Velocity decreases proportional to the weight of the projectile, so wind would blow these babies off course. Hell, with enough of it, they might just blow back in your face. Being shot by this gun can be likened to having several hundred angry 5-year-olds throw darts at you. It doesn’t kill enemy soldiers as well, so it just leaves them in intense pain, allowing them to shoot bullets at [b]your[/b] ass while very pissed about the needles in [b]their[/b] ass. In fact, the only person we could see purchasing one of these babies is a very mean pediatrician…

Schwerer Gustav

The Schwerer Gustav AKA Dora was the Nazi German 80 cm K (E) railway gun. This weapon was essentially an oversize train car that ran on tracks toward it’s destination. The behemoth weighed a scale shattering 1,350 tons, and we refuse to make a Jessica Simpson joke right there. This weapon remains the largest caliber rifled weapon in the history of armed combat, and has fired the largest shells (up to 7 tons) in the history of armed combat. Dora was designed for penetrating and decimating enemy fortresses, blockades, and the Maginot Line. There was, however, the largest impracticality you could imagine with a weapon like this. Because of it’s size and caliber, it had to fire only in the direction of the tracks, since any deviation would knock the thing over forever. That means the trajectory, range, and angle of this weapon is entirely dependent on the train tracks it’s on. And since it rode on dual tracks, they obviously had to be specially laid, signalling far in advance the weapon’s intended use (and target). Also, because of the recoil, the damn thing flew back on the track, up to 2 miles after each and every shot. Now imagine the 3 Stooges in the military firing a shot, and running up the rails after Dora. Yeah, it made us chuckle too.

LeMat Revolver

The LeMat Revolver was issued to the Confederate Army in the U.S. civil war. Well, as anyone who’s been involved in a war, let alone a civil war, will tell you, it’s chaos. As for weapons, ammunition, you luck out there; you just have to go to the local depot or armory and you are issued either. This little piece, however, had specially crafted amunition that varied from gun to gun, but was generally either a .38 caliber or .44 caliber round. How unique was this ammunition? You had to make it your damn self. That’s right. In the middle of a war, between getting shot at, shooting, eating your issued meals, and capturing enemy flags forts, you had to find time to hunker down around a really hot fire, and melt metal into a mold you carry with you everywhere to make your own damn bullets. To put that into a modern equivalent, that’s like being required to complete a Sudoku puzzle in order to unlock the .50 Cal on the roof of your HMMWV.

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