Adonis Diaries

“Big Bertha” Gun, and Dr. Gerald Paul

The German industrial giant Krupp produced 3 giant guns by the end of WWI. The giant gun could reach target 128 km away, the bomb/missile was 3 feet long, with a power charge of 12 feet long. The missile could go up 42 km before landing.

The big gun was transported on rails and required 80 gunners to operate. Since March 23, 1918, Paris suffered three deadly hits. The military investigators could locate nothing around Paris: They didn’t figured out that such powerful guns could be made operational.

The British planes discovered the guns but were unable to disable any. One gun blew up and killed 5 gunners, and the other two were never found, not even after the war.

In 1965, a German elder woman visited Canada and wanted to get in touch with any renowned scientist to hand him documents. She was a relative of the German designer at Krupp, Fritz Rozinberger, who designed the big guns.

Dr. Gerald Paul, chief of the research team for high altitude propulsion engine at MacGill University, got hold of the detailed drawings of the gun. Dr.Paul dream was of placing orbits in space using a big gun.

The US and Canadian governments funded Dr. Paul experiment in Barbados Island where he tested the biggest gun ever: Length 36 m, caliber 424 mm. Gerald claimed that if the two government supported to test a solid fuel engine, his 200-pound gun could have reached a target at 4,000  km or go up at 250 km.

In 1968, Dr.Paul was pressured to leave Barbados and he nurtured deadly animosities against bureaucrats. He exported 50,000 shells to Israel and the USA, and was awarded an honorary US citizenship.

Gerald sold his most performing gun GC-45 to apartheid South Africa, with the blessing of the US, and the licence to fabricate them, guns that were used in Angola.

As Gerald came back to the US, a court sentenced him to a 6-month prison term for illegal arms trade. After his release from prison, Gerald returned to Canada and settled in Belgium where he opened his own company with the funding of “Poudreries Reunies de Belgique”

In the early 1980’s Iraq of Saddam began a 8-year old war with Iran of Khomeini. Dr. Paul sold 200 GC-45 to Saddam Hussein; the guns were manufactured in Australia, and shipped to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Gerald convinced Saddam to build him the largest of guns: 150 m in length, weighting 2,100 tons and a caliber of 1,000 mm. Gerald started with a smaller version called “Little Babel”, 45 m long.

Gerald designed the two guns Majnoun (Crazy) and Faw and improved on the Scud missiles.

For the biggest gun, Gerald was importing special huge iron pipes from the European countries: The secret services knew that these pipes were not for oil pipelines, but the western countries were allied with Saddam.

Israel assassinated Dr. Paul on March 22, 1990 as he was returning to his flat on Okel Street in Brussels: He was shot 5 times in the back of the head.

Note 1: Story extracted from the Arabic version of “Mossad” by Michael Bar Zohar and Nassim Michaal.

Note 2: Israel had bombed Iraq nuclear facility “Tammouz” in 1981.