47 Facts About Gerald Bull

Gerald Vincent Bull was a Canadian engineer who developed long-range artillery.

Gerald Bull moved from project to project in his quest to economically launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece, to which end he designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.

Gerald Bull's assassination is believed to be the work of the Mossad over his work for the Iraqi government.

Gerald Vincent Bull was born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, to George L Toussaint Bull, a solicitor, and Gertrude Isabelle Bull.

George Gerald Bull was from a family from the Trenton area and had moved to North Bay in 1903 to start a law firm.

George Gerald Bull was offered the position of King's Counsel in 1928.

The next year Gertrude Gerald Bull suffered complications while giving birth to her 10th child, Gordon.

Gerald Bull gave up the children to various relatives: Gerald ending up living with his older sister Bernice.

In 1938, Gerald Bull was sent to spend the summer holidays with his uncle and aunt, Philip and Edith LaBrosse.

Gerald Bull was sent to an all-boys Jesuit school, Regiopolis College, Kingston, Ontario.

Gerald Bull wrote to Bull, who was in Kingston, having found room in the medical school.

Gerald Bull declined the offer and instead asked LaBrosse if a position in the new aeronautical engineering course was available.

Gerald Bull applied and was accepted at Patterson's personal recommendation, as Patterson felt that any lack in academics was made up for by Gerald Bull's tremendous energy.

Gerald Bull was assigned to work with fellow student Doug Henshaw, and the two were given the task of building a supersonic wind tunnel, which was at that time a relatively rare device.

Gerald Bull had largely finished his PhD thesis on the same topic in 1950, when a request from the DRB asking that the Institute provide an aerodynamicist to help on their Velvet Glove Missile project arrived.

CARDE was researching supersonic flight and a variety of rocket and missile projects when Gerald Bull was asked to join.

Gerald Bull asked to build a wind tunnel for this research, but his suggestions were dismissed as too expensive.

Gerald Bull returned to CARDE, now on the DRB's payroll, and continued working on the instrumented guns.

Gerald Bull met Noemi "Mimi" Gilbert, the doctor's daughter, and the two soon started dating.

In 1954 Gerald Bull decided that a wind tunnel was too important to ignore, even if he could not arrange for funding through the DRB.

Around this time Gerald Bull further improved the data-collection capabilities of the system by developing a telemetry system that could fit in the models.

DRB staff thought the idea was unworkable and worked against having it funded, but Gerald Bull shuffled his own department's funding and went ahead and developed it anyway.

Gerald Bull then moved on to hypersonics research and the study of infrared and radar cross sections for detection.

Gerald Bull was vocal about this turn of events, calling the Liberal government of the day "second-rate lawyers and jumped-up real-estate salesmen".

Gerald Bull then used the same method to work on the Avro Arrow, discovering an instability that led to the use of a stability augmentation system.

Gerald Bull had long prepared for this event, and soon re-appeared as a professor at McGill University, which was in the process of building up a large engineering department under the direction of Donald Mordell.

Gerald Bull remained in contact with his counterparts in the US and the University of Toronto, and set about equipping the university with the instrumentation it would need to be a leader in the field of aerodynamics.

Gerald Bull donated the land to be used by McGill and turned into a new ballistics lab, a private analog of the CARDE site.

In late 1961 Gerald Bull visited Murphy and Trudeau at Aberdeen and was able to interest them in the idea of using guns to loft missile components for re-entry research, a task that was otherwise very expensive and time-consuming aboard rockets.

Gerald Bull met with then Premier Errol Barrow who became Barbados' first Prime Minister after Barbados received its Independence from the UK in 1966.

Gerald Bull encouraged the locals to use the project as a stepping-stone to a science or engineering degree of their own, and his efforts were widely lauded in the press.

Gerald Bull had been working on a last-ditch effort to launch a Canadian flag into orbit in time for the Canadian Centennial, but nothing came of this plan.

Gerald Bull returned to his Highwater range, and transferred HARP's assets to a new company.

Gerald Bull invoked a clause in the original contract with McGill that required them to return the range to its original natural condition.

At SRC Gerald Bull continued the development of his high-velocity artillery, adapting the HARP smoothbore into a new "reverse rifled" design where the lands of a conventional rifling were replaced by grooves cut into the barrel to make a slightly larger gun capable of firing existing ammunition.

Gerald Bull solved this problem by using an additional set of nub "fins" near the front of the shell to keep it centered in the barrel, allowing the driving band to be greatly reduced in size, and located wherever was convenient.

Gerald Bull called the new shell design "Extended Range, Full Bore".

Gerald Bull purchased the base bleed technology being developed in Sweden, which allowed for further improvements in range.

Gerald Bull was rewarded for success of this program by a Congressional bill, sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater making him retroactively eligible for a decade of American citizenship and high-level American nuclear security clearance.

Gerald Bull was granted citizenship by an Act of Congress.

Once these shipments had been uncovered, Gerald Bull was arrested for illegal arms dealing in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 418 for arms export to South Africa.

Gerald Bull left Canada and moved to Brussels, where a subsidiary of SRC called European Poudreries Reunies de Belgique was based.

Gerald Bull continued working with the ERFB ammunition design, developing a range of munitions that could be fired from existing weapons.

Gerald Bull continued working with the GC-45 design, and soon secured work with the People's Republic of China, and then Iraq.

Gerald Bull received a $25m down-payment for the project on condition that he continued the development work on the Al-Majnoonan and Al-Fao guns.

On 22 March 1990, Gerald Bull was shot five times in the head and back at point-blank range while approaching the door of his apartment in Brussels.

Project Babylon was stopped when supergun parts were seized by Customs in the United Kingdom in March 1990 leading to most of Gerald Bull's staff returning to Canada.