WEBVTT - The Man Who Built A Gun To Shoot Space 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans uh, 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:09.360 and this is a podcast about the worst people in 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:11.880 all of history. And this week we are talking about 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:17.960 some very uh creative men who liked to design them 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.639 some weapons. Uh. My guests uh this episode as with 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:26.600 last episode, Uh, Carl Casarda from Enranged TV. Carl, how 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.400 are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. I'm sitting here 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.000 contemplating my my future with a Maxim machine gun. Let's 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.159 let me teach me more about something that I probably 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.360 need in my life but I'm not aware of. Well, yeah, 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:39.480 I mean this, this would this would be a little 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.040 bit harder to the weapons we're talking about today, would 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.320 be slightly harder to acquire than a maximum gun UM 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.159 and require somewhat more space. UM. As a spoilier for 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:50.239 where we're going, you will need a hill or a 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.840 small mountain to properly use this UM. So you know, 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:56.880 I don't know how much property you have, but but 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.920 maybe set like a good sized hill. Aside, um, you 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.600 need about a thousand meters So, as we discussed last 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.440 episode here in Maxim may be directly responsible for more 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:13.120 deaths via his invention than any other arms designer in history. Now, 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.440 our next subject was equally brilliant in his ability to 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.120 design guns. He's probably better at it than here him was. 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:21.880 He may be better at it than anybody was. Um. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:24.640 The fact that his creations killed fewer people is not 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.600 through lack of trying. Although his goal was never to 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.520 make weapons of war. That was just kind of an 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:32.920 un that was kind of a necessary asside to the 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.480 thing he really wanted to do. The guy we're talking 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.680 about today is Gerald Bull. And when I say guns here, 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.680 we're talking about the big stuff like artillery pieces. We're 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.120 not talking about anything you can fit in a jacket, 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.920 you know. Um. Gerald Vincent Bull was born on March 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:53.200 nine night in North Bay, Ontario. You may recognize this 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:55.600 as being part of Canada. And the fact that two 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.240 of the three great gun designers in North American history 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.400 were from nowhere near the south is a fact of 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.120 some shame from my people. Um. Most Browning was born 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:09.280 in what Utah? So yeah, still come on South, somebody 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.160 figure something out. But I know that Gerald's father was 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.520 George Toussaint Bull. He was a lawyer and he was 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.280 He and his wife were very productive during the brief 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.720 time that they were alive, spreading a lot of kids 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.079 out over the land. Ten children. Um. They were quite 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.000 comfortable financially for a little while until about a year 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.920 after Gerald was born when the stock market crashed. You know, 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.440 n not a great year for anybody, really. George had 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.720 taken out a bunch of loans for investments during the 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.480 bull market, and he wound up broke when they came due. 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.200 After the crash, the family had to move to Toronto 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:47.320 for work. Now, Gertrude Bull, Gerald's mother kept having kids, 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.720 and she suffered severe complications after giving birth to her 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.160 tenth child. So Gerald was kid number nine. Um. A 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.680 couple of years later she has child number ten, Gordon, 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.680 and she doesn't go great. She died is in April 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:05.280 of nineteen thirty one, which sets uh Gerald's dad, George, 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:07.680 on a sharp decline. He becomes an alcoholic, He has 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.840 a nervous breakdown, and he abandons his children and leaves 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.960 them with his sister Laura, who dies almost immediately afterwards. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.640 So by the time Gerald is five, he has had 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.480 he's been through the ringer. That's a rough set of 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.600 cards to draw as a five year old child. Wow, yeah, 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:27.840 you kind of wonder how that influences someone to the 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:30.600 to their adulthood, right, I mean, yeah, losing your mother, 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.200 you're essentially part of a litter. You know, brothers and 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.920 sisters have a litter. Yeah, you've got a litter. Your 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.800 dad just fox right off. Your second mom dies, Like 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:45.000 it's not great, No, it's not great. Yeah. Um, and 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.080 we will talk a little bit about how this influences him. 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:53.480 But definitely not a stable upbringing, right. Um, So George, 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.840 his dad falls in love with somebody else, gets married, um, 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:00.560 and does not take his children back. He's married in 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.920 a more stable position. Instead, After his sister dies, he 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.320 gives up his kids to an assortment of relatives. He 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.360 just kind of like splits them and then goes off 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:09.920 and does his own thing. He's like, I don't want 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:13.080 these kids around anymore. I'm trying to doing a new life. 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:15.080 You get a kid, you get a kid, You get 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:17.160 a kid. Everyone gets a kid. You know the rule. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.760 Your mom's dead. I ain't your dad anymore, said this ship. 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.760 We got to find me another uterus destroy. Yeah, we 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:26.640 don't get a ton of to tail about George Bull, 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.560 but he definitely sucks pretty bad. Um. Gerald winds up 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.440 being raised largely by his older sister, Bernice Um and 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.480 when he was nine or ten, he starts spending the 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:38.719 summer with his aunt and uncle, who were well off 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.520 and able to send him to an all boys Jesuit school. 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.040 So he does have a large family who takes care 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.000 of them. He's kind of an orphan, but he's taken 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:49.360 care of by his family who are comfortable enough that 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.080 like he's not a financial burden to them, and they're 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.800 they actually like put a lot of resources into him. 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.320 So it is a rough childhood, it's not nearly as 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.039 bad as it could be. Right, he doesn't wind up 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.679 in an institution or something. Um. He has a loving family. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.240 His dad is just a massive piece of ship. So uh. 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.159 He starts doing better at this point once he gets 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.039 to the Jesuit school and he shows an aptitude for engineering. 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.320 He had a hobby of designing and building model airplanes 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.919 out of balsa wood. Um, not like a kit for 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:18.800 an airplane. Would just get raw wood and he would 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.920 make his own planes and fly them. So Gerald graduates 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:27.479 in nineteen forty four and he was accepted to Queen's University. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.920 His initial plan was to join the military as an officer, 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.600 but he found himself really really taken by engineering. He 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.560 transferred to the University of Toronto, where he'd been accepted 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.960 by their new aeronautical engineering school. This was an undergraduate program, 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.680 and Gerald was sixteen years old when he starts it, right, 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:46.920 so he is he is not just in college, he's 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.320 in a graduate program for aeronautical engineering when he's a 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:55.240 sixteen year old. Um, so, very very smart kid, right uh, 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.280 and also a very ambitious kid. But the uncertainty and 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.320 abandonment in his childhood had left keen marks on him. 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.040 Classmates noted that he could be difficult to work with 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.720 and prone to anger, something that would be commented on 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.760 by his peers for the rest of his life. Charles Murphy, 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.440 who worked closely with Gerald as an adult, later told 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.120 interviewers in a sense, he was an orphan and that 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.240 affected his personality a lot. He wanted people to like him, 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.080 and he felt hurt and rejection, keenly and kind of 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.080 like Maxim, He's one of these guys that when someone 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:25.320 wrongs him or he sees someone is wrong, he never 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.599 is able to let this ship go. Um. They're both 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.840 men who take which I find interesting, who takes slights 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:35.000 extremely personally and like cannot deal with with the idea 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.880 that somebody has wronged them. Uh Bulls program was funded 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.719 by the Defense Research Board of Canada and his first 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.839 project as a student was to build a supersonic wind tunnel. 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.559 He used this as the basis for his nineteen forty 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.960 nine Masters thesis, and by nineteen fifty he'd almost finished 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.800 his pH d thesis, which is an insane rate of 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.960 productivity for a young ecademic, going from Masters to pH 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.480 d thesis in the space of about a year. UM. 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.920 He is a really smart kid. Now. That year, the 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:05.120 d r B asked the school to provide them with 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:09.120 an aerodynamicis for a missile project code named Velvet Glove. 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.119 He proved to be exceptional at practical engineering, and gerald 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.160 Bull was quickly selected to participate in this joint Canadian 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.440 British Defense Department program to study artillery and develop new 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.680 methods for shooting people with big guns. The program that 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.320 he worked with next had been started during World War 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.280 two UM in Canada to keep British weapons developments out 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.040 of German hands, and now that the Cold War was on, 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.640 the purpose of the program switched to ensure that the 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.000 Commonwealth had the most accurate artillery possible that they could 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.560 use if things got hot again. He helped to design 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.920 some of the first segmented aluminum SABO rounds. He's like 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.400 the guy who really in like is a heavy part 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.400 of obviously it's teams, but he's one of the people 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:50.480 who invents like the concept of a SABO round and 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.520 makes it actually effective. And that's when you have like 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.720 a big smooth bore gun and there's basically rifling in 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.920 this SABO thing that gets discarded as the shell travels 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.480 out of the barrel, and it allows you to do 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.720 things like later on they'll do stuff like the the 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.960 art the artillery piece will almost be a rocket, and 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.240 when the sabo is discarded, wings pop out or fins 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:14.720 pop out that allow it to like stay more aerodynamic. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:17.720 Like the fact that you have this that you build, 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.640 this discarding SABO system allows you to do all sorts 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.280 of stuff with with artillery rounds that people couldn't really 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.239 do before. It will also enhance the capabilities of existing 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.960 artillery because you're taking on existing smooth bore and by 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:31.720 changing the projectile you're probably giving it higher accuracy and 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.040 greater range. Yeah, that's exactly and that's exactly a big 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.680 part of this is, you know, the militaries and whatnot 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.000 are always like, there's always budgetary concerns. We have all 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.440 these big guns. The SABO allows us to massively upgrade 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:44.439 their capacity and we don't have to actually make new 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:47.600 fucking guns, um, which nobody really wants to deal with. 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.960 Um So, yeah, he helps design some of these the 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.040 first of these rounds. He also helps to design new 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.040 methods for testing powerful artillery that's much more like the 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.280 artillery they're making shoot so much further and faster than 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.920 it ever has. They have to invent new ways to 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.640 decide to figure out how fast they're shooting it, right, Like, 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.559 they didn't actually have the equipment to determine how fast 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.520 are we firing these shells because they never needed to. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:12.880 So he's he's not just making the rounds. He's also 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.000 helping to figure out how are we actually going to 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:17.480 analyze and test this stuff, because that needs to be 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.120 invented right alongside it. Um. In nineteen fifty one, at 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.080 age twenty one, he gets his PhD, becoming one of 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.400 the youngest PhDs in the university's history to this day. 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:30.800 UM So, life's pretty good for bolt during this period. 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.000 On a fishing trip in the early fifties, he meets 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.040 the daughter of a local doctor, Naomi Gilbert. The to 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.880 start dating and then get married. In nineteen fifty four. 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:41.560 Her father gave the couple of house as their wedding gift, 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.640 and the very next year, their first son, Philip, was born. 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:49.520 Michelle followed soon after. Now Gerald was exceptional enough at 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.079 what he did that in nineteen fifty three he received 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:57.120 attention from McLean's magazine, which titled him Canada's boy rocket scientist. 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.280 His cantankerous nature, though increasingly a aserted itself as a 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:06.800 fundamentally pragmatic, experiment driven scientist. He expressed hatred for theoretical researchers, 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:11.640 who he called cocktail scientists. He also grew increasingly furious 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.400 with red tape, which restricted the kind of weapons projects 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.720 that he could embark on. So he's he really hates 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.720 anyone who's not getting their hands dirty actually like making ship. 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.560 He has no time at all for like theoretical physics 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:24.360 or anything like that. He wants to go out and 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:26.160 build things, and if you're not doing that, he thinks 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:27.679 you're kind of full of ship. Well, that kind of 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:29.480 smells like I'm the smartest guy in the room, sort 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.160 of simplex complex, does it not? Like all these other 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:33.920 people are just holding me back. Get out of my 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.040 way and watch what I can do. He's probably a narcissist, 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.880 Like you can't diagnose someone based on this, but he 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.160 he has in it and he's he's he's a genius. 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.040 But he also has this extremely high opinion of himself 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:48.640 and gets enraged whenever someone is like, no, we don't 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:50.920 really want you to do that. I wonder, I mean, 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.079 I wonder. I don't think I'm not I'm not a psychiatrist, 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:54.800 but I wonder how much that comes back to being 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.280 sort of discarded as a child. Yeah, yeah, I really, 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.480 I mean it's it's it's it's interesting to think about, 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.920 like it's it must have had some sort of impact. Um, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.160 and yeah, he really he never is able to handle 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.640 being told no. So an early example of both of 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.360 these things came in n when Bull was working on 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:15.360 a smooth bore gun that could fire explosive rounds at 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.520 four thousand, five d and fifty miles per hour. This 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:22.160 would be the fastest and most accurate artillery piece ever made. 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:24.640 Now to make his gun work. He had to design 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.640 a special telemetry system to even collect data on how 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.800 the weapon functioned. His plans to do this were considered 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.000 impossible by staff at the organization he was working at, 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.080 and several of them went to the mat to try 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.120 to stop Bull from moving forward. To thwart them, he 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.600 sneakily moved his departments funding around, paying for the project 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.040 under their noses, and it worked. Bull continued his work 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.439 more or less without fanfare for the next decade, experimenting 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.840 with anti ballistic missiles and radar, eventually impressing the director 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.520 of the U S Army Research and Development Division enough 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:57.760 that a model of one of Bull's guns was brought 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.760 to the States and test fired over the Atlantick. The 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.320 US team had to use the fire control radar from 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.600 a Nike Hercules missile to track the shells fired by 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.760 Bulls gun, which reached altitudes of a hundred and thirty 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.920 thousand feet. So this is like, this is a gun 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.280 that shoots at such ranges and so quickly that you 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:20.880 have to use like the radar systems on a fucking 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:25.240 missile to track the projectiles at fires. It's fascinating because 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:26.800 like I was just kind of making a joke about 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:28.240 being the smartest guy in the room, but he might 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.960 legitimately have been. He's very smart. Yeah. Yeah, Like when 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:37.120 we say he's making guns, he's making like like he's 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:41.800 making like fantasy weapons like these are these are uh, 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:47.680 extremely advanced weapon platforms. So at this point, yeah, he's 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.560 making guns that can basically fire into space. Like he's 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.440 he's he's making weapons that can shoot projectiles damn near indoors. 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:59.280 It sounds like something you'd read into Jules Verne novel. Yeah. Um, 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:01.480 he must have like Jules Verne as a kid, and 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.760 his work here was as much rocket science as it 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.120 was anything like what Maxim and other men were doing 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.080 a generation or two earlier. Right, And so in like 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:12.480 literally like a generation or two, we've gone from making 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.800 a water cooled gun that that is recoil operated to 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:23.199 I am shooting missiles into the into space. It is 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.760 again just like a mark of how quickly things change. Now. 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.040 It was at this point in the late nineteen fifties 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.800 that Bull and his colleague and friend Gerald Murphy started 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.400 talking about doing something totally new with their cannons. Instead 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.600 of just firing munitions, might it be possible to use 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.319 them to launch aircraft. They started with model airplanes. And 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.480 when I say model airplanes, scale models of airplanes one 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.600 one scale models of airplanes that they are shooting out 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.280 of cannons to see, like, can we launch planes this way? Um? 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:54.959 One of the weapons one of the planes they launched 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.800 through a cannon this way is a supersonic jet called 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:01.760 the Avro Arrow. US work yielded early results, and it 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.559 actually revealed a flaw in like one of the stabilization 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.200 systems in the Arrow because they were shooting it so quickly. 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:10.040 That leads to this very important safety upgrade in the 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.120 plane that makes it a lot safer to fly. So 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.680 there's immediate results to this. But the institute he's working 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.760 at cancels the program immediately after like this, and he's 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.400 enraged again, right, he wants to keep shooting planes out 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.480 of guns, and the university is like, now we feel 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.480 like that's all we need to know about shooting a 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:29.480 plane out of a gun, like so we're gonna take 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.040 your funding away. And he's livid, you know, in his eyes, 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.720 these cocktail scientists have robbed him of a chance to 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:36.720 do a thing he thought was cool. It does sound 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:39.239 like a lot of fun. It does sound it sounds 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.880 as hell. Yeah, absolutely, I would have loved to get 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.160 to hang out and just watch him shoot planes out 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.880 of guns. That sounds neat. So in nineteen fifty seven, 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:51.560 Russia does a spot nick, which we today see as 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.440 rad but Americans and a lot of Canadians found terrifying 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:56.800 at the time. And there's this whole mania over Well, 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:58.880 now we gotta get a fucking satellite up there, right, 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.360 this is this is also base race stuff. Everybody's probably 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:05.880 broadly familiar with this. Um So Gerald Bull takes this 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.440 as an opportunity and he leaks a story to the 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:11.480 press that Canada was about to put their own Sputnik 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.160 type satellite into orbit by building a high velocity cannon 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.720 into the nose of a red Stone missile. Now this 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.200 was a complete lie, but he wanted he wanted to 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.000 make this thing, so he figured, I leaked this to 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.280 the press, there will be a frenzy in Canada for 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.160 me to launch a satellite, and then I'll get to 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.200 build this. And again this this is one of the 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.640 most insane ideas I've ever heard. He's talking about like 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:36.320 a nuclear ballistic missile and you replace the explosive in 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.720 it with a gun built into the front of the 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.400 missile so that the missile shoots up into the sky 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.440 and then the gun fires the satellite into space from 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.280 the missile. So that's the second stage. It's a fucking 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:52.160 insane idea he's and he's also like really incredibly playing 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:56.040 the media. It's really fascinating. Like he sees he's looking 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.840 at this missile the size of a fucking building and goes, 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:00.920 I bet I could stick a gun on that and 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.240 that'd be pretty And if I put this out in 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.640 the news and say that Canada's making it and they 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.800 don't make it, it olympariss them, so now they have 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.680 to make it. Well that was his hope. It doesn't 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.680 quite work out. So the leaked story was obviously a 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.560 calculated act, but it causes an uproar in the Canadian 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.120 government and the Prime Minister, a guy named deefend Baker, 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.320 loudly denounces the idea as bogus to the press, so 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:25.800 it does not work for him and heads rolled in 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.000 Bull's office. But the hubbub also led to massive press 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.560 interest in the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment or CARD, 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.160 which is where he was working at the time. Um 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.240 and the subsequent A lot of the media coverage that 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.400 comes out of this this leak and the around it 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.920 focuses on guns that Gerald Bold had built, so he 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:46.880 doesn't get his wish, he doesn't get to build his 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.320 missile gun, but he gets a lot of interest in 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.080 his the guns that he's already built, so it does 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.840 kind of work out for him. By the end of 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.160 the fifties, Bull was fed up with the timidity of 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:00.160 his superiors. In April of nineteen sixty one, he had 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:02.240 an argument with one of his bosses who wanted him 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.840 to complete paperwork before moving on to actually testing stuff. 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:09.520 Bull asked his boss which is more important, paperwork or 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.400 getting the work done, and his boss said, in this case, paperwork. 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.840 So Bold responded, you want paperwork, I'll give you paperwork, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.520 and he wrote out his resignation right there on the spot. 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:23.720 So he stops working for the University of the Canadian government. 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.200 This like big joint project. Um, yeah, you get a 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:28.840 sense of like the kind of duty. I have to 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:32.440 admit having a career in absolute security, I totally get that. 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:34.760 I can't tell you how many change controled documents I 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:37.080 never filled out right, I can't fucking handle that ship. 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:38.760 I just wanted to make routers do stuff and make 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.199 firewalls go. I didn't want to make paperwork go. I 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.160 get that, Yeah, I mean fuck paperwork. Like it's hard 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:45.800 not to be on his side with some of this, 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:49.880 just like, yeah, that that's I of course it would 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:51.960 be frustrating if all you want to do is build 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.679 guns into the into missiles and shoot them into space. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.359 If somebody wants you to fill out a fucking requisition 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.640 form um, that's just useful time you had spend making 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:04.560 your space guns. So according to the book Wilderness of 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.440 Mirrors a report, which is a book about Gerald Bull, 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.360 a Canadian Army intelligence report on Bold that came out 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.359 after his death later analyzed this incident that led to 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.320 him quitting card and concluded his tempestuous nature and strong 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.400 dislike for administration and red tape constantly led him into 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.119 trouble with senior management. In this is true, and you 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:27.600 get the feeling that, however understandable some of us may 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:29.760 have been, he was. He was an asshole to work with, 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.000 like he was not an easy man to have as 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.040 a colleague. Both transitioned pretty seamlessly to a professorship at 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:40.120 McGill University, where he kept helped to carry out more 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.359 experiments with aerodynamics and big guns. He and his wife 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:46.199 actually purchased a two thousand acre plot of land on 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:50.280 the Quebec Vermont border, which they donated to McGill University 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:52.159 to use as a ballistics lab to like us as 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:56.280 a shooting range. Bull quickly received funding from Project HARP, 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.080 which stood for High Altitude Research Project. It would a 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.520 joint operation by the U. S Department of Defense in 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.159 the Canadian equivalent, and the goal was to study the 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.520 ballistics of re entry using large guns to fire projectiles 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.240 at high speed and then watching those projectiles fall back 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:13.440 to Earth. So, right, this is part of the space race. 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:15.320 They know we're gonna be launching shi up and we're 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.280 gonna need some of it to come back without killing 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.160 people in it. So we need to shoot a bunch 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.639 of stuff up into the atmosphere and then let it 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.200 fall and take data on like what happens when ship falls, 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:27.640 because we haven't done that before, and the most efficient 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:29.200 way they can think of to do that is these 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.560 giant guns that Gerald Bull has been building. Because it's like, well, yeah, 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:34.399 we don't need to we don't need to actually be 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.719 getting it into space. We just want to look at 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:40.359 what's happening like aerodynamically as these things land. Let's have 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:42.280 him shoot a bunch of stuff up and take notes 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.480 on it. Are there bonus points of the projectiles land 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:51.199 on a small Polynesian island? Um? I don't, it's not 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.880 written about here. Um but maybe yeah maybe um? And 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.239 and these are not like ballistic route like these are 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:00.680 guns that could be used as artillery, but they're they're 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:03.159 like little models and stuff that they're basically shooting and 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.600 monitoring at this point, um. And Bulls work here is 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:09.679 very successful, and he's very supported by his boss, the 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.800 head of McGill's engineering department, Donald more Dell. Other professors 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.960 described quote second rate attempts at manipulation by both to 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.520