peashooter85:The Bizarre Gyro Jet Rocket Pistol,The 1950’s and 1960’s were an odd time when bizarre
peashooter85:The Bizarre Gyro Jet Rocket Pistol,The 1950’s and 1960’s were an odd time when bizarre concepts in firearms technology were tested. One of those concepts was the Gyrojet, invented by Robert Mainhart and Art Biehl. The duo behind the Gyrojet believed that their new concept would revolutionize firearms, after all conventional firearms are so limited. Take for instance, ballistics. After fired a bullet will tend to drop over time, a victim to gravity like all other objects in the universe. As a result, with longer distances a shooter has to compensate by either adjusting his sights or aiming higher. The Gyroject compensated for this because it did not fire standard bullets, but rather a small rocket with four exhaust ports which propelled the projectile through the air. In other words the Gyroject was a space age mini rocket gun. At first the Gyrojet was horribly inaccurate. This was due to the fact that the bullet did not spin while in flight, and thus had little stability. At first the designers tried adding stabilizing fins to the rocket, which turned out to be a complex process and was even dangerous. Then a solution was found by using diagonal vented exhaust ports on the rocket which caused it to spin while in air. Projectiles came in .49 caliber (Mark II) and .51 caliber (Mark I). It is interesting to note that the Gyroject had low muzzle velocity, however the velocity of the projectile increased to 1,250 feet per second after it left the barrel.The Gyroject was made in two pistol models, a carbine model, and an assault rifle model for the military. Plans were also made to develop a machine gun and an underwater rifle. There were advantages to the Gyrojet; it was lighter than most other firearms, and had much less recoil. However the Gyroject had several flaws that were revealed in during testing by US Army Ordnance. The weapon proved to be very inaccurate compared to traditional designs, and often suffered from reliability problems such as misfires and failure of the exhaust vents to cause the bullet to spin properly. The mechanism was complex: the weapon was cocked by sliding forward a lever above the trigger to pull a round into the gun; the lever sprang back when the trigger was pulled. The lever hit the bullet on the nose, driving it into the firing pin. As the round left the chamber, it pulled the lever forward again to recock it. What was most undesirable of all was that the Gyroject lacked a detachable magazine. Instead, the Gyrojet had a fixed internal magazine which held six rounds and was loaded one at a time through the open action. Thus reloading was a slow process.As a result the Gyroject was a flop. Only 1,000 pistols were produced, a few of which were issued to US troops in Vietnam, while most were purchased by civilians as novelty items. In an attempt to garner a market for the Gyrojet, its designers went to Gene Roddenberry, who was fascinated by the design, to convince him to feature the weapon in his new science fiction TV series Star Trek. However Gene Roddenberry was more interested in ray guns than projectile weapons. Today the Gyrojet is highly sought by collectors, with ammunition being especially rare, costing as much as $100 a round. -- source link