Gerald Bull
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Gerald Vincent Bull (March 8, 1928 - March 22, 1990) was a Canadian engineer who many consider to have developed long range artillery beyond what anyone else has accomplished. He was a driven man, who moved from project to project always chasing his dream of economically launching a satellite using a huge artillery piece. To this end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for the Iraqi government, during which he was murdered (allegedly by Israeli Mossad agents) outside his home in Brussels, Belgium.
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Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment
Bull was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. Originally intending to study medicine, he switched over to engineering. He graduated from the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Toronto in 1951, the youngest Ph.D. in the history of the university. After graduation Bull took his first job at CARDE, the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment, a joint Canadian-British operation (the UK had exported its advanced ballistics technology to safeguard from the Nazis during World War II). In the post-war era, CARDE was researching supersonic flight. Bull suggested the use of a "sabot" type artillery gun to shoot models to supersonic speeds instead of using an expensive supersonic wind tunnel. The system was built and used for research on CARDE's Velvet Glove missile, but when this project was cancelled in 1956 the system fell out of use. Bull then moved on to hyper-sonics research in the field of ballistic missile defense (Anti-ballistic missiles, or "ABMs"), primarily the study of infrared and radar cross-sections for detection.
Bull was very outspoken (and tactless) and generally detested by most people at CARDE. However his abilities were obvious, and he was eventually promoted to head of the Aerophysics department of CARDE in 1958. Here he continued to chafe, including speaking to the press on changes he could effect with more funding. Eventually, he alienated enough people that he was forced to leave.
High Altitude Research Program
In 1960 he left CARDE to become a professor at McGill University. He interested the US government, in using guns to loft missile components for re-entry research, a task that was otherwise very expensive and time-consuming on rockets. With money from the Pentagon and the Canadian Defense Department, he set up Project HARP (for High Altitude Research Program, not to be confused with HAARP) on a large plot of land in Quebec near the US border. There he began working with 5" and 7" artillery pieces.
When basic research was completed, he transferred operations to Barbados, where shells could be fired over the Atlantic Ocean. The new gun was a 16" (41 cm) naval piece, which normally fired a 700 kilogram shell to about 18 miles (30 km). The barrel was bored out to make a smoothbore of 16.7" (42.4 cm), and the barrel length was extended with the addition of thinner piping at the end. Using special shells and propellant it could fire a 150 kilogram projectile at over 10,000 ft/s (3600 m/s).
In 1963 Bull started a series of test-firings using specialized discarding-sabot rounds and finned projectiles named "martletts" (after the mythical bird without feet on the McGill University crest). By June these had been replaced by a dart-like shell known as the Martlett-2, which was soon reaching altitudes in excess of 60 miles (100 km). More tests of the Martlett-2 continued in 1964, while work on a rocket-powered projectile started as Martlett-3. At the same time, the gun itself was improved with the addition of a second length of barrel welded to the end of the existing one. Extensions like this continued until the gun eventually reached an ultimate length of125 feet (38 m). With this new gun and the added boost of the rocket engine in the Martlett-3, it was expected to be able to reach low Earth orbit.
Space Research Corporation
However, Canada cut the funding for the project in 1967 and Bull, now embittered, returned to his Quebec range, having managed to get the project's assets transferred to his own company- Space Research Corporation (SRC). With SRC, Bull set himself up as an international artillery consultant. Incorporated in both Quebec and Vermont, a number of contracts from both the Canadian and US military research arms helped the company get started.
An early success for SRC was the sale of 30,000 artillery shells, gun barrels, and plans for an advanced 155mm howitzer to Armscor of Pretoria- a deal suggested by CIA personnel, and shipped with the aid of an Israeli company, Israeli Military Industries. The artillery was vital to a war South Africa prosecuted with Angola.
However at this point Bull was arrested for illegal arms dealing with South Africa, in violation of the UN arms embargo after the administration in the US changed, and he spent six months in a US jail in 1980. On his return to Quebec he was sued and fined again, to the tune of $55,000, for arms dealing. It was at around this time that Bull began developing the G5 howitzer (the predecessor of Project Babylon) under an Armscor contract. Gerald Bull lived a few years in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec.
European Poudreries Réunies de Belgique
Now even more embittered he left Canada and moved to Brussels, where a subsidiary of SRC called European Poudreries Réunies de Belgique was based. He soon secured work with the Chinese, and then Iraq. He designed two artillery pieces for the Iraqis: the 210 mm Al Fao; and the 155 mm Majnoonan, an updated version of the G2. The guns were built and sold through Austria.
At this point Bull convinced the Iraqis that they would never be a real power without the capability for space launches. He offered to build a cannon capable of such launches, basically an even larger version of the original HARP design. Saddam Hussein was interested, and work started on "Project Babylon".
A smaller 45 meters, 350 mm caliber gun was completed for testing purposes, and Bull then started work on the "real" PC-2 machine, a gun that was 150 meters long, weighed 2100 tonnes, with a bore of one meter (three feet). It was to be capable of placing a 2000 kilogram projectile into orbit. However at this point the Iraqis told Bull they would only go ahead with the project if he would also help with development of their longer ranged Scud-based missile project. Bull, never sensitive to politics, agreed. Nominally, Britain did not support Iraq's armament programs, but as a matter of fact, British assistance in the Scud program was considerable, shipping vital missile components.
Construction of the individual sections of the new gun started in England at Matrix Churchill and also in Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
Assassination
Meanwhile Bull worked on the Scud project, making calculations for the new nose-cone needed for the higher re-entry speeds and temperatures the missile would face. At this point someone started "warning" him to stop working on the missiles; over a period of a few months his apartment was broken into several times but nothing was stolen. He nevertheless continued to work on the project, and in March 1990 he was shot five times in the back of the neck while opening his door.
The most common theory is that the Israeli Mossad was responsible, and Mossad representatives have uncharacteristically all but claimed responsibility for his murder. Others, including Bull's son, believe that the Mossad is taking credit for an act they did not commit to scare off others who may try to help enemy regimes. The alternative theory is that Bull was killed by the CIA. There are some reports that Bull was demanding both a presidential pardon and money from the CIA or he would disclose all he knew about illegal CIA activities in South Africa. Unwilling to be extorted, it is claimed that the CIA thus killed Bull. Likewise, Iraq and Iran are also candidates for suspicion. A fictionalized version of this story is in the movie Doomsday Gun.
The supergun project was stopped when its parts were seized by Customs in the United Kingdom in November 1990, and most of Bull's staff returned to Canada. The smaller test gun was later broken up after the Gulf War.
See also
- The Fist of God, a related novel by Frederick Forsyth
- List of assassinated persons
- DRE Valcartier
References
- William Lowther, Arms and the Man: Dr. Gerald Bull, Iraq, and the Supergun (Presidio, Novato, 1991
- James Adams, Bull's Eye: The Assassination and Life of Supergun Inventor Gerald Bull (Times Books, New York, 1992)
External links
- "The Guns of Saddam: America Shrugged While Gerald Bull Designed the Ultimate Cannon and Sold It to Iraq" -(Washington Post, February 10, 1991. William Scott Malone, David Halevy, Sam Hemingway)
- "The Man Who Made The Supergun" -(PBS Frontline, February 12, 1991)
- Dr. Gerald Bull: Scientist, Weapons Maker, Dreamer - excellent multimedia history from the CBC archives.
- United Press International: Israel to kill in U.S., allied nations.
- Haaretz -
- New evidence of Mossad involvement in Belgian murder case.
- Doomsday gun (a TV movie) at the Internet Movie Database
- Think of The Prestige - article by Bruce Sterling.
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