The Barbados Supergun

An abandoned masterpiece

I came across the Barbados Supergun quite by chance.

I had no knowledge of it, and though an initial and accidental inspection suggested that it probably had been used for sending some sort of projectile seawards what was it for? The only supergun I had heard of was the one metre caliber fixed base device crafted in kit form for Saddam Hussein by a historic Coventry precision engineering firm, with the substantial steel pieces forged by a similarly eminent Sheffield establishment, to be shipped as oil pipeline components. You can see a section of this bolt-together barrel today at Duxford in the American Aviation building, next to the SR71 Blackbird. The story was that it was intended to shoot a large shell into Iran, though the size and weight of this assembled gun barrel required that it be built as part of a hillside, restricting the intended target area to somewhere along the same straight line.

A later rumour, following the Iraq/Iran team-up, featured Saddam lining up a suitable hillside in the west of his country, aimed at Israel — changes of sides and plans all round, and a tangled web of international and domestic political and secret service manoeuvring resulted, too bizarre and plain silly for a credible Le Carré novel: the bare truth is less thought out than the fiction.

A walk along the cliffs

By 1990 I’d recently visited Barbados a number of times, in the interests of Concording and windsurfing. It must have been a few years before my retirement from the Concording part in January 1997 that I’d decided to take a look at the first Barbados registered airliner. It was a DC3, resting in the stony pasture east of the airfield, and one cliff step down from the aerodrome proper. ‘It was put there for fire department practice’ someone told me.’ It had obviously lain there for some time: a bit mangled, no undercarriage, missing the engines and some peripheral parts, some of which could be seen here and there in the rocky grass astern. There was not much roof left, but much of various paint jobs remained, to tell a story.

The last operator’s name was visible - could it have been Caribbean Airways? Something similar, anyway, and was that an American star still showing through, near the tail, behind the door where the paratroops jumped out? Its final registration could not have been more optimistic — 8P-AAA. You can’t get more previous than that, but what had happened to it. Had the fire brigade manhandled it across this rugged terrain and left it a few hundred yards down the slope and a bit right of the extended centreline. I doubt it, and a look in the cockpit put the pieces of my story together. The left hand throttle was wide open, the right one closed. Other engine controls were set here and there, but all was corroded solid. I took away the impression that this aircraft had ended its last flight in its present situation as the training session had left it. The same thing has happened before and since.

A little further to the east and one joins a vehicle track which has a version of the black and yellow pole which bars road entry. All the war films have one. Alongside, there’s the ragged remains of a red flag and a notice. ‘Danger! Military Firing Area. No Entry when Red Flag is Flying.’ But the pole is up now, There’s no one here, nor is there a fence or rope. The pole and its two supports stand alone, a gesture at a past that has generated a confused future.

The guns

Further into this deserted range there are indeed a few pieces of rusting artillery, scattered in haphazard fashion, overgrown, pointing in a variety of directions, and of quite different design and lineage. ‘Auction of collectable international artillery. Vintage Guns, condition as seen. Buyer collects. No returns.’ might be the story line, but what are they doing here? What was Barbados doing with this stuff? It’s a mystery.

But then something different catches the eye, a long horizontal white thing, resting on its support ramp, pointing towards the sea. Compared with the scattered Artillery Piece Collection it’s huge, and ridiculously long for a gun, but that’s what it must be, otherwise why is it here? A closer look shows that the seaward end is indeed the barrel of a large gun, but the other two thirds are more like the surreal creation of a science fiction props department. The substantial rectangular grid shape made by the pattern of external reinforcing steel webs immediately suggests a revolutionary work of art - We Salute Our Brave Welders, perhaps - but such intricate design also looks businesslike. What kind of bang is supposed to go off inside, that needs such imagination and creativity? Then there’s the arrangement of the giant external turnbuckle bracing struts and their heavy-duty lugs, similarly welded on. I’m guessing already, and imagine that such a long and massive thing would still bend under its own weight, just a bit, when pointed other than vertically upwards. So do they fine tune these struts each shot to get straight perfection when this monster is pointed up at the correct angle?

The butt end of this shooting device must contain its own ignition end of a barrel, but there was little evidence of this. Certainly the several large oleo-style pistons along the sides suggested a means of absorbing recoil forces, but where did you light the blue touch paper and shut the breach? This load and launch area of whatever went inside looked more like a well-reinforced steel bunker, attached to the gun, of course. You could tell nothing by looking, and the size of this end of the device required a substantial pit to accommodate its bulk when the muzzle was pointed upwards. Clearly, this gun could not be rotated in azimuth so were they going to shoot at anything in particular? Possibly not.

Not far across the grass behind the breech end was a little concrete hut with evidence of cables and connections, with a more substantial version sitting at the top of the cliff, behind - at a suitably judicious distance. This must have been some sort of launch control centre.

The Stop and Stare experience

For many years the Barbados Harriers have organised a Sunday circular experience on foot, starting times 6am or 3pm (unless you want to do both). It’s free, and anyone can go along. There are three levels of difficulty; proper runners, moderate joggers or a guided stroll — the Stop and Stare group. The large number of different routes meant that many Sundays would pass before a repeat was encountered, and the variety of subject matter, both in general conversation with fellow walkers and information delivered by our guide when we stopped and stared, provided fascinating interest. It was some time after my chance discovery of the huge and forgotten white-painted artwork on the cliffs that I found out more about it. It had not been forgotten, just politically and officially disappeared, I was later to discover.

Dr Colin Hudson, our Stop and Stare guide, was a remarkable man, and a perfect example of the Oxbridge polymath of days gone by; the perfect example of what education is supposed to do (nothing to do with getting a fake job by waving a fake degree). A botanist by qualification he came to a British Barbados to assist the sugar growing industry, and stayed. But, true to the tradition, covered a great variety of subjects during the stops in strategic places. History, geology, anthropology, sociology, botany and biology, naturally, with a certain amount of philosophy thrown in when appropriate. I remember one Sunday morning where the route covered the historic if unpretentious backstreets of Bridgetown. Celebrated and now slowed down calypso star The Mighty Gabby (I don’t give a damn if I’ve got my Chicken and Ram) tagged along in his flip-flops, I think because this is where he grew up. And we stopped and listened by the old cemetery where Colin gave us a comforting sermon about death, and the reassuring prospect that, for most, this was not an event to be feared. Food for thought, anyway, but it was his eccentric professor demeanour and wide-ranging knowledge base, called upon with understanding, educated sympathy and love of life, that made the Stop and Stare much more than a walk. It was a truly educational, life-enriching experience.

As we started out on the relevant south coast walk which would pass the supergun I wondered if it would be quietly ignored as we walked past. Most of the DC3 had now gone, and was therefore not a potential subject for observation, and I wondered if I should volunteer an impromptu mini-lecture of my own on what I had already surmised when we got to the unknown long white thing. But this was not necessary. When we got to the supergun Colin invited us to sit on the grass, assembled an easel and arranged some diagrams explaining the HARP gun - the High Altitude Research Project.

High Altitude Research with a gun - what for?

Nothing that follows can be claimed as comprehensive fact. It’s a compendium of an innocent member of the public’s understanding of what physics can do, and the complications of this subject when secrecy becomes a closely guarded essential feature of national security. Does anyone know the whole story? No. If you do and say anything the CIA may kill you anyway. That’s how it works, so I’m told. It could be that some readers may be reluctant to believe this, but I offer it for their consideration.

As we dutifully sat around on the grass, Colin told us that this unusual device was the brainchild of Dr Gerry Bull of McGill University, Montreal. He was a ballistics genius (it appears there is no other suitable word). The HARP project was a sophisticated way to shoot a projectile a considerable distance through the atmosphere, so the deliberate trail it left could be analysed for local wind velocity at increasing altitudes. I’ve since read that Canadian support was withdrawn from this project in 1969, three years after Barbados gained its independence from Britain, and the freedom to readjust its alignment with less West-orientated politics.

It had not fired for thirty years, and the local tradition of allowing the forces of nature to dismantle your rubbish was slowly taking effect. Since my first discovery of it several years before this al fresco lecture, the grass was longer, and the bushy undergrowth more insistent in camouflaging the structure. Rust was beginning to change its character from something unusual and rather special into another abandoned piece of industrial or farming equipment — too heavy and uneconomic to move. Public interest had waned, as nature with salt slowly took over the disappearance story, as did the effort to maintain a security presence at the ‘military firing range’. This permitted the vandalism of time and weather to continue its exponential work on any work of art, be it a building or unique piece of machinery.

The following HARP description appears to date from the 1960s, for public consumption, but I don’t believe it’s the complete picture. However, it gives an idea of the astonishing physics involved. The missile that experienced the 15 thousand G acceleration was a Canadian Martlet, encased in a four-piece wooden sabot (French for clog) which fitted the smooth barrel carefully. How could the Martlet’s electronics take this punishment? I have heard, among many other snippets, that solid state is the answer - like setting your transistor radio in a bath of Araldite, I suppose. Might it carry a solid laser light shift accelerometer, unaffected by 15k G? Possibly; and another launch performance wheeze was pe-launch Clingfilm over the end of the barrel, and pump all the air out. During the 119ft initial acceleration run it would have no air to push aside. Here is the initial story for the ordinary people:

16-inch gun systems [edit]
High Altitude Research Facility [edit]
The 16-inch HARP gun at Barbados held the record for the largest gun in the world with a barrel length of 119 ft and weighing 200 tons. It consisted of two 16-inch U.S. Navy gun barrels welded together and smooth-bored to 16.4-inch diameter. It was capable of achieving a muzzle velocity of 2,164 m/s (7,100 ft/s, or 4,207 kts) with a maximum acceleration at launch of 15,000 g. It launched an 181-kg shot with an 84-kg payload that could reach an altitude of 181 km (595,000 ft).[9] For propellants, the 16-inch gun used either the solvent type WM/M.225 or the solventless M8M.225, both of which were manufactured by Canadian Arsenals Limited. During testing, a camera station set up on the islands of Barbados, Saint Vincent, and Grenada were used to photograph the trimethylaluminum trails released from the projectile during launch, which provided data on upper atmosphere wind velocities for different altitudes.[29]

Filling in some details

I’ve left the Wikipedia [edits] in because few know the complete story, or if they do they’re not telling. But conversation with those who might know something, as well as the odd small hint one might read somewhere, built up a more comprehensive picture of who might actually be behind this astonishing project. I asked a Swiss meteorologist friend where we got our Concorde upper winds and temperatures from. First of all there isn’t much wind above 50,000ft; temperature is more important; but he told me that modern satellites can look down and ‘see’ the wind and temperature anywhere you like. No one needed a supergun wind finder. A more realistic supergun explanation emerged. First of all it was American backed, and the thought was that a suitable gun could replace the relatively massive first stage of a satellite launch for small devices on their way into orbit. Of course Barbados is not far from the equator, therefore of more use than the equivalent supergun somewhere in the United States when it comes to making the most of the 1,000 mph advantage of equatorial rotational speed. The reader may now understand that this story is about tiny Barbados’ relationship with the traditionally connected USA, UK and Canada’s sense of duty when it came to leaving no stone unturned in the quest for weaponry, intelligence and strategic advantage.

When the project was dropped, Gerry Bull was immediately snapped up by the South African government, currently battling left wing forces in Africa. ‘We would like more accuracy and range from our field guns, and you’re just the man. Name your price.’ The assorted artillery pieces that keep the sleeping supergun company were used for this new project. Great advances were achieved in Barbados, and a gun emplacement at East PoInt, on the seaward side of the lighthouse, is a novel choice of firing point. This was the cross wind test track. A shell fired north along the east coast usually has to do so through a steady ENE trade wind. A boat with courageous occupants would go to the target area up abeam North Point and accurately spot the splash. They never got hit, and the results were helpful. Great improvements in range and accuracy were achieved. The South Africans were pleased, but we will never know whether history was changed.

A lot of Barbadians were employed in the 1960s Bull projects, but, like many other scattered parts of the British Commonwealth, independent Barbados was becoming less British and more non-aligned, particularly non-aligned in the general direction of Africa. The implied Barbados assistance with the South African National party war against Soviet and Cuban assisted freedom fighters in Angola did not go down well in non-aligned circles so Gerry and his hobby had to be expunged from Caribbean history: overnight really, except for the helpful smoke trails.

Gerald Bull: difficult childhoods, the loneliness of genius and the political necessity of alternative truths.

That’s the trouble with making your hobby your job. Unusual people sometimes do this, and it’s often the result of a special focus in a lonely or troubled childhood. The hobby/profession replaces a number of generally desirable qualities of the mature, sociable and considerate human, by default. Once assembled at an early age, this personality hardware cannot be changed. People pretend, but this is tiresome, stressful and patently false — something that specialised geniuses don’t like. By repute Gerry Bull could be difficult to deal with. Is this another way of saying did not suffer his fools gladly? There is a sea of problems waiting for such genius if it is not restrained by political tact. There was no shortage of job offers or the money to go with them, but he appeared to be immune to the idea of political risk. He ended up living a quiet life in an agreeable Brussels suburb called Uccle, close to the Royal Observatory and Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, still working on Saddam’s giant supergun. He stayed true to his hobby and was shot dead as he entered his apartment in the evening of March 22nd 1990. A professional job, for sure. The world of Le Carré had caught up with him. To this day nobody officially knows who did it, but there must have been many who did not want to get caught up in world war three. Apart from Iran and Israel other possibles are listed as the CIA, MI6, Chile, Syria, Iraq and South Africa. The obsession with his hobby was getting out of hand.

A great story

As the years went by I thought the Barbados supergun would make a good story, especially as its deliberate factual abandonment was doing the structure no good at all. And I was well aware of the possible fate of Concorde G-BOAE that sat outside for two years before a hangar was made for it. Then, few Barbadians would talk about the supergun, now silent for 35 years. Why not? I had spoken to some who could describe the firing experience of the 1960s. ‘Was there some kind of siren warning of the impending launch, then a big bang?’ I might ask. ‘Not a bang, exactly, more of a huge boom, a crescendoing roar.’ The photograph of a firing is impressive.

People in Barbados told me that the supergun was no more. ‘The Americans took it away.’ That, of course, was the official story. I think it possible that the US Navy was engaged to lay on a publicity venture and take away one spare barrel lying in the grass close to the brother still there - stamped with its New England Navy Yard maker and date stamp 1920. To a surprising degree, the public in general appeared prepared to believe what they were told by their leaders: or have I got it wrong? Perhaps everyone knows, but the cohesive power of a small community accepts the alternative truth principle universally.

Maybe as late as 2004, with the supergun significantly overgrown and in a pitiful state of decay, my Silver Sands bar-owning neighbour handed me the phone one evening, between Banks beers, and some conversation about the supergun and its sad state of deterioration. ‘It’s my brother in Canada,’ he said. ‘He can tell you about the supergun.’ The scientist or engineering brother assured me that the supergun had been taken away by the Americans years ago. Of course my neighbour had phoned him so that, as a credible informant, he could put me straight on their ‘facts’. Perhaps they were puzzled by my inability to ‘get it’.

Of course a plain language tip off would have done. ‘Look here, Mike, we all know about the supergun but everyone who lives here goes along with the takeaway story because of our sensitive political position. As a ‘local’ you put us in a difficult situation if you don’t pretend like everyone else when there are Bajans about.’ But no true local felt courageous enough to do this.

Before proceeding, I should point out that the bar-owner himself was no gullible or superstitious local. He was a returner, having left for Britain many years ago, spent his time there on the London buses and was a useful member of the LT cricket team. Like many returners he then built his own house and the pub. Famous and imposing retired fast bowler Joel Garner would call in of an evening. He never talked about cricket.

The latest news of the Barbados Supergun

When I anticipated the spark of interest my blog article might rekindle, following decades of non-aligned blackout, I re-googled the subject to see if any historic posts remained - as a fact checking reminder. Imagine my surprise to find lots on the subject, in particular recent reports that a respected Bajan (Barbadian) figure was praising the national involvement in this historic and splendid project, and encouraged restoration of the sadly abandoned device as a tourist attraction and a boost to education, Caribbean technological achievement and so on. Bring it on. Facts had been restored as yet more alternative truth.

When the Barbados Concorde finally got a roof over its head Phil Als, celebrated with Randal Valdez as the first Caribbean team to have achieved the rowing challenge from The Canary Islands to Barbados, told me that I could have a future job in the Barbados I was planning to leave, as a real Concorde person attached to this exhibit. I thank him for his suggestion, and in retrospect wonder if he wasn’t right. We all learn from life experience. For many of us whose growing up was delayed by early conditioning, this comes too late to make that backtrack to our ideal position in time and place.

If, however, we’re talking the spectacular results of technological progress involving fire, energy, noise, speed, amazing physics and sheer fun, count me in. Gerry Bull has gone, someone else has to carry the torch . . . I have the lecture title already:

Captain Mike (S level physics) presents Fire and Speed in Barbados - Concorde and Supergun - 2 unique ways to travel. B$20 at the door - free rum punch. Fun guaranteed for the ever-young from 9 to 90.

For much more informed reading click here or rummage about for pictures under Barbados Supergun.