The World's Worst Weapons (From Exploding Guns to Malfunctioning Missiles) (U)

The World’s Worst Weapons is an entertaining and informative guide to the small arms, artillery, tanks, ships, missiles, and aircraft that proved to be utter failures in battle. Examples of ill-conceived weapons include WWII Soviet dog mines: dogs carrying explosives which were trained to run under German tanks, which in practice preferred the tanks of their own side, with disastrous results. Or the Douglas X-3 Stiletto aircraft, designed in the 1950s to explore the “supersonic flight environment” but seriously underpowered and incapable of passing the speed of sound in level flight. Each weapon is illustrated with a full-page photograph, annotated to show particularly bad, dangerous, or unusual features. The lively text provides an insight into the history and (lack of) development of each weapon, alongside archive images from the weapon’s brief heyday, artwork, or diagrams. Featuring some of history’s weirdest, ugliest, and most dangerous (to the user) military equipment, this is an excellent guide to the weapons that went badly wrong.