Project Babylon

The Babylon Project, a project to create a series of super - guns , was launched under the patronage of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s . The design is based on research from a 1960s HARP project led by Canadian artillery specialist Gerald Bull . Despite the fragmentary information, it is known that there were four different devices that were included in this program. At least one of the Babylon projects (Big Babylon) used the modified principle of the “theoretical” (multi-chamber) artillery gun . In addition to the usual throwing charge located in the breech chamber, the gun also had an elongated propellant charge attached to the projectile, which moved with the projectile as it moved along the barrel, thereby maintaining constant pressure in the barrel. Nine tons of a special super-cannon propellant could fire a 600-kg shell at a range of up to 1000 kilometers, or launch a 2000-kg missile. Such a projectile could launch a 200 kg satellite into orbit at a price estimated at $ 600 per kilogram ^[1] . Gun caliber 1000 mm. It is known about the testing of the prototype 350 mm caliber.

In March 1990, Gerald Bull was killed in Brussels, and parts of the super-gun were confiscated in Europe on the way to Iraq. However, during the Gulf War, the Iraqi government announced that the captured units were oil pipes and not parts for weapons, as the UK claims. The remaining components of the project in Iraq were destroyed by the United Nations after the Kuwait war in 1991 .

Two versions of the gun are known. The small version had a caliber of 350 mm and was supposed to be a test platform. The second final version was supposed to be much larger - a caliber of 1000 mm, surpassing the German super-cannon of Dora during the Second World War

The history of the “Babylon Project” formed the basis of the action-packed espionage novel by Frederick Forsythe “The Fist of God” ^[2] .

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•   Wikimedia Commons has media related to the Babylon Project
• BBC Report (1990 )
• Royal Arsenal Fort Nelson - of. site (English) .
• Fort Nelson Weapons Museum

• 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)
• Eric Frattini, Mossad, los verdugos del Kidon (La Esfera de los Libros, Madrid, 2004)