David Porter on military history’s doomed inventions
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Sometimes poor quality-control can be as lethal as bad design – this was certainly true in the case of HMS Glatton.
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Although Vasa was designed and built by an experienced Dutch shipbuilder, Henrik Hybertsson, she was larger than any vessel he had previously
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The mid 19th century saw a revolution in naval weapons technology – smooth-bore muzzle-loading artillery, which had changed little for over 300
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The idea ‘took off’ in the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation, when a German invasion seemed imminent and there was a critical
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It was a futuristic-looking aircraft, which Lockheed publicised as ‘a missile with a man in it’.
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Although its ‘high-tech’ features, such as an auto-loader for the main armament and its ultra-compact multi-fuel engine, were superficially impressive, they proved
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One of the oddest inventions was the Supermarine Nighthawk, a massive twin-engine quadruplane night fighter designed to fly patrols of anything up
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In the 1950s, the Cold War was at its height. To many, it seemed to be a question of when, rather than
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When the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force arrived in Britain in mid-1942, it was confident that unescorted formations of B-17 Flying Fortresses could
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