Gerald Bull

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Gerald Vincent Bull (March 8, 1928 - March 22, 1990) was a Canadian engineer who developed long range artillery. He moved from project to project in his quest to economically launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece. To this end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for the Iraqi government. He was shot outside his home in Brussels, Belgium.

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[edit] Early life and education

Bull was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. Originally intending to study medicine, he switched over to engineering. He graduated from the newly founded Institute of Aerophysics (now the Institute for Aerospace Studies) at the University of Toronto in 1951, the youngest Ph.D. in the history of the university (a distinction he still holds today).

[edit] Career

[edit] Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment

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.

At CARDE he was eventually promoted to head of the Aerophysics department of CARDE in 1958.

[edit] 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 aboard 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 (3048 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 of 125 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.

[edit] Space Research Corporation

Main article: Space Research Corporation

Canada cut the funding for the project in 1967. Bull 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 155 mm 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.

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. He spent six months in a US jail in 1980. On his return to Quebec he was sued and fined in the amount 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.

[edit] European Poudreries Réunies de Belgique

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.

Bull then 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 (39 inches). It was to be capable of placing a 2000 kilogram projectile into orbit. The Iraqis then 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 Sheffield Forgemasters and Matrix Churchill as well as in Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

[edit] Assassination

Bull concurrently 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 theories are that either; the Israeli Mossad was responsible due to the method used (small-caliber, sound-suppressed pistols), (although reportedly the type used was not that most commonly used by Mossad) or that it was Iranian Intelligence VEVAK, who had the motive and capacity to easily have it done. Neither VEVAK nor Mossad representatives have denied responsibility for his assassination. 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 therefore killed Bull. However most experts and analysts believe that either Israeli Mossad or Iranian VEVAK are the key suspected ones behind the assassination. Both strongly had the capacity and motive to stop Saddam from acquiring such an intimidation/terror weapon. A fictionalized version of this story is in the movie Doomsday Gun. Gerald Bull had worked for so many parties in so many critical defence projects that he became an asset and a liability for several powerful groups at the same time.[1]

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.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Murphy CH, Bull GV: A review of Project HARP. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1966; vol.140(A1): pp.337-
  • Murphy CH, Bull GV, Edwards HD: Ionospheric winds measured by gun-launched projectiles. Journal of Geophysical Research, 1966; vol.71(19): 4535-
  • Murphy CH, Bull GV, Wright JW: Motions of an electron-ion cloud released at 100 kilometers from a gun-launched projectile. Journal of Geophysical Research, 1967; vol.72(13): 3511-
  • Murphy CH, Bull GV: Inonospheric winds over Yuma Arizona measured by gun-launched projectiles. Journal of Geophysical Research, 1968; vol.73(9): 3005-
  • Murphy CH, Bull GV: Gun-launched probes over Barbados. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1968; vol.49(6): 640-

Murphy CH, Boyer ED, Bull GV: Gun-launched sounding rockets and projectiles. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1972 Jan.25; vol.187: 304-

  • William Lowther, Arms and the Man: Dr. Gerald Bull, Iraq, and the Supergun (Presidio, Novato, 1991) (now Doubleday Canada Ltd) Published in England as:
  • William Lowther, Iraq and the Supergun: Gerald Bull: the true story of Saddam Hussein's Dr Doom (Macmillan, London 1991) (Pan paperback, London 1992) ISBN 0 330 32119 6
  • James Adams, Bull's Eye: The Assassination and Life of Supergun Inventor Gerald Bull (Times Books, New York, 1992)
  • David Michaels, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Rubicon, New York, 2004)

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Bull, Gerald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Canadian artillery engineer, entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH North Bay, Ontario, Canada
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1990
PLACE OF DEATH
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