Although meteorological weapons are rare, they do exist in the world. The most famous use case is the chemicals used during the Vietnam War, which directly led to the torrential rain for several months. In fact, meteorological weapons already existed during World War II. Allies and Germans both use fogging agents to artificially create dense fog. The difference is that the Germans are trying to protect the target from being bombed, while the allies are trying to hide crossing the river with dense fog. Different from this fogging agent, Germany also developed a cannon that can make small tornadoes in World War II, in an attempt to use it against the allied large bomber forces.
Tornado cannon
This equipment is not a mobile weapon platform like a tank. It is a huge defensive weapon, which belongs to the German air defense project and was developed by designer Mario Zippermayr and others.
It is not easy to make a tornado. Even the explosion of 460mm naval gun ammunition is only a flash storm compared with natural tornadoes. However, the designers did not give up. They designed a device that can continuously provide rotating wind power for a short time.
tornado
The main body of this tornado gun is a welded cast iron pipe with a diameter of 3 feet (about 0.914m) and a length of about 35 feet (about10.66m), and the top is curved. This "gun barrel" is connected with hydrogen and air injection equipment. When in use, by igniting the mixed gas in the "gun barrel", the deflagrated mixed gas will be quickly ejected from the conical muzzle. The muzzle is also equipped with a fast rotating nozzle, which makes the high-speed "out-of-chamber" gas rotate to form a small artificial tornado.
So how powerful is this tornado gun? In the actual test, the performance of the equipment is not good. First of all, it must be affirmed that it can indeed make small tornadoes, but the height of tornadoes is only about 300 meters, and the height that can really affect the normal flight of aircraft is only about 200 meters. In the test of ground targets, a log cabin more than 100 meters away was destroyed when the cannon of the flat muzzle "fired", which is said to have caused some damage to the 25 mm thick formwork structure at 200 meters.
Tornado cannon
Regardless of the performance of the artillery, the Germans did use this weapon in 1945 and arranged a door on a bridge on the Elbe River. The shelling did not achieve any results, and it is said that the allied forces have obtained its wreckage.
This tornado gun was undoubtedly a failure, and even Germany itself didn't pay much attention to this project at that time. First of all, it should be pointed out that the power of this gun is too small. Allied strategic bomber forces will never fly into low altitude, and other aircraft such as ground attack aircraft can easily bypass tornadoes. Although some people think that deploying in some windy areas can amplify tornadoes with the help of natural forces, and even artificially create tornadoes to produce real tornadoes, this imagination has never been realized. Even if it is realized, it may not be possible to kill the enemy by adopting the attitude of "disowning six relatives" in nature.
Tornado cannon
Another problem with the tornado cannon is its huge size. The huge gun barrel with equipment such as gas tank can only be unfolded in a fixed way, which is not convenient to move and transfer. It is also a good target in front of the air force, and fighters can effectively destroy it by giving it a series of random shots.
After World War II, people stopped developing such weapons. In the field of meteorological weapons, it can produce heavy rainfall, snowfall, or use explosions to trigger tsunamis. Of course, not all meteorological weapons are destructive. At present, artificial rainfall is a mature technology to alleviate drought and other disasters, which is helpful to human production and life. As for the tornado gun, it is only an attempt of early meteorological weapons.