As you all probably know at last stages of WW2 Nazis resorted to their Wonder weapons or Wunderwaffe (miracle weapon) which in most cases were just propaganda tools and were not real but some projects existed and many experimental weapons were created. Recently I read a book called Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer, who was the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. He mentions some of this Wunderwaffe projects and interestingly, he wrote about one occasion when some scientists asked him whether he could provide specialized parts needed for construction of a Ray Cannon. Even he was skeptical, but nevertheless managed to provide the scientists with all the parts except for one critical component which could not be produced by technology of that era. I guess they were really desperate so they experimented with everything.
Back to the subject, years ago as a teen I found info about this Nazi Sonic Cannon but never really thought about it until recently. Here is a photo of it.
Basically, this cannon incapacitates humans by causing fatal vibrations in the body. Sound pressure waves are generated in the methane gas combustion chamber, which pulse detonated at a frequency of about 44 Hz (44 pulse detonations per second). This chamber leads to two parabolic dishes which magnify these produced sound waves or pressure waves.
It could cause vertigo and nausea, by vibrating the middle ear bones and the fluid in the inner ear. Since our bodies are mostly water, and sound pressure waves travel through water I guess this frequency can damage cells and tissue by vibrating water molecules in them, 44 Hz is a lot.
I am sure some people will not understand precisely what I say so here is the link from Wikipedia that explains how this cannon works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed- ... al_weapons
I am sure you probably experienced how sound travels through your body, for example, if you ride in someones car that has huge strong speakers. I experienced that several times, you can feel it in your chest.
My question to you is how this methane combustion chamber is able to generate 44 pulse detonations per second (44hz)? I know that I could build a hybrid cannon and produce one detonation, but if you ask me to design a combustion chamber that makes 44 detonations per second, I would tell you that you are crazy.
Do you have any clue how such combustion chamber should look like? How would you design it? If you have any information about this, please send it to me. Can you hypothetically then build an automatic combustion cannon if you replace these dishes with a barrel and a magazine similar to a paintball gun?
One last thing, what if you build a huge burst disc hybrid cannon that has a big parabolic dish for focusing or magnifying pressure wave instead of a barrel? Could that thing potentially damage someone's ear drums if you aim that dish at a person, for example at 5-10m distance(I am not advocating for the construction of such a device)? Food for thought.
