300px|thumb|Two sections of Big Babylon that have been bolted together at [[Fort Nelson, Portsmouth|Royal Armouries, Fort Nelson, Portsmouth.]]

Project Babylon was a space gun project commissioned by then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. It involved building a series of "superguns". The design was based on research from the 1960s Project HARP led by the Canadian artillery expert Gerald Bull. There were most likely four different devices in the program.

The project began in 1988; it was halted in 1990 after Bull was assassinated, allegedly by Israel, and part of the superguns were seized in transit around Europe. The components that remained in Iraq were destroyed by the United Nations following the 1991 Gulf War.

Devices

300px|thumb|A section of the Iraqi "supergun" from [[Imperial War Museum Duxford]]

Baby Babylon

The first of these superguns, "Baby Babylon", was a horizontally mounted device which was a prototype for test purposes. It had a bore of 350 mm (13.8 inches), and a barrel length of 46 metres (151 feet), and weighed some 102 tonnes. After conducting tests with lead projectiles, this gun was set up on a hillside at a 45-degree angle. It was expected to achieve a range of 750 km. Although its mass was similar to some World War II German "large-calibre guns", it was not designed to be a mobile weapon and was not considered a security risk by Israel.

Big Babylon

The second supergun, "Big Babylon", of which a pair were planned (one to be mounted horizontally, at least for test purposes), was much larger. The barrel was to be 156 metres (512 feet) long, with a bore of 1 metre (3.3 feet).

Most of the barrel sections for Big Babylon were delivered to, and assembled on, a site excavated on a hillside, instead of being suspended by cables from a steel framework as originally planned. Calculations had shown that the original support framework would be insufficiently rigid. It was never completed.

In early April 1990, United Kingdom customs officers confiscated several pieces of the second Big Babylon barrel, which were disguised as "petrochemical pressure vessels". The parts were confiscated at Teesport Docks. More pieces were seized in Greece and Turkey in transit by truck to Iraq. Other components, such as slide bearings for Big Babylon, were seized at their manufacturers' sites in Spain and Switzerland.

After the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqis admitted the existence of Project Babylon, and allowed UN inspectors to destroy the hardware in Iraq as part of the disarmament process.

Several barrel sections seized by UK customs officers are displayed at the Royal Armouries, Fort Nelson, Portsmouth. Another section was on display at The Royal Artillery Museum, Woolwich, London, until 2016.

In media

The events of Project Babylon are dramatized in the 1994 HBO movie Doomsday Gun starring Frank Langella as Bull, with Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, and Clive Owen in supporting roles, and in Frederick Forsyth's novel The Fist of God.

The novel Splinter Cell, written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels, refers to Project Babylon and Gerald Bull as the antagonists in the story who develop and manage to fire a new supergun, "Babylon Phoenix."

The novel Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny also revolves around the story of Gerald Bull and Project Babylon.

The Babylon Project also provided the inspiration for the Golgo 13 manga story "The Gun at Am-Shara", in which the title character assassinates a fictional weapons designer who created a much larger variant of the Babylon gun.

In Conflict: Desert Storm II, the Babylon guns are the objective of the final mission, requiring the player to mark them for airstrikes; a scene highly reminiscent of the climax of The Fist of God.

The video game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction reimagined the gun as the "Type 07 supergun".

See also

  • Al-Fao (Iraqi supergun)
  • Iran–Iraq War
  • French support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war
  • Schwerer Gustav
  • Space Research Corporation
  • From the Earth to the Moon
  • The Fist of God (fictitious retelling of Project Babylon)

Notes

References

  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Project Babylon Supergun / Federation of American Scientists: PC-2
  • BBC News: Customs seize 'supergun'
  • Babylon Gun on Encyclopedia Astronautica