Shadowing Practice: These Dumb Weapons Actually Existed - Learn English Speaking with Video

Dumbest weapons in history.

War between humans is bad enough, so it gets rather depressing when innocent animals are dragged into the mix.

But honestly, animals have been used in warfare for ages.

War elephants, attack dogs, carrier pigeons, bat bombs.

Wait, bat bombs?

Yep, bat bombs.

Just one letter off from being a very nice, relaxing evening, the bat bomb is anything but.

Dubbed Project X-Ray, the bat bomb was an experimental weapon developed by the United States for use against the Japanese in World War II.

Initially thought up by a friggin' dental surgeon, no less, the bomb would work like this.

You stuff a bunch of angry bats into a little canister.

Mexican free-tailed bats to be specific.

Why?

Well, because they're small and cute, that's why.

But they're also very fast, which is probably way more conducive to the task at hand.

These flappy boys can soar through the air at around 100 miles per hour.

Okay, fast bats.

Cool, got it.

But how were they bombs?

Glad you asked.

There were actually little bombs just straight up strapped to their chests, of course.

Each bat was equipped with a tiny 1 ounce incendiary device, which was just a small pouch of napalm that would detonate after a timed delay.

So, now you have your explosives.

Just cram them all into a small capsule and find a target.

Easy enough, right?

Once the bat bomb was dropped over an intended target, a parachute would deploy, opening the bombshell, and releasing over 1,000 bats.

In theory, the bats would scatter across the landscape and look for places to roost and go sleepy by.

Anywhere that a bat could squeeze into and honk some me-me-me's was a suitable target.

Since the bats would likely spread over a wide range to multiple targets in the area, they would prove to be very effective little terrorists as small fires would spring up across the city

and be difficult to contain.

So how did it do?

Well during a test run in a US airfield hundreds of armed bats were accidentally released and took refuge next to,

for perfect comedic effect, a giant friggin fuel tank.

Don't.. move.

Though effective, Project X-Ray was cancelled because World War II ended before testing was fully complete.

Maybe next time, fellas.

Nuclear bombs dropped from the sky are pretty cool, but how about a bomb that you could bury in the ground, waiting for victims to roll over it?

Like a land mine?

Yes, like a land mine.

But a bigger, better one.

Enter the Blue Peacock Nuclear Mine.

by the British in the 1950s, the goal of this bomb was to stop potentially invading Soviet forces from taking over recently war-torn Germany.

You know, if they decided to do that sort of thing.

Oi bruv, you want Germany?

Well, come on then.

Oh, I ain't gonna tick.

Oh.

Yeah, come on then.

It was a great exit strategy to render the area completely useless as everything was now reduced to atoms and irradiated.

I can't have it, no one can, said the British.

Though to level a whole city, these things had to be massive, and they were.

Each bomb weighed around 16,000 pounds.

The bomb would lie in weight underground to be detonated remotely if any invasion took place.

The problem with a bomb being underground and unattended is that a lot can go wrong.

Detonation mechanisms could fail and refuse to detonate, or it could detonate prematurely like a bad date night.

One particular concern was the preservation of the detonation mechanisms during the cold winter when the ground froze over.

So what would be a suitable way to prevent a bomb from freezing?

Well, you probably want some heat, but from what?

Heated water?

Eh, not practical.

Electric heat?

Eh, too dangerous.

Wait, I've got it.

Body heat.

No, Ron, get off the bomb, put your clothes back on.

Cool.

I'm talking body heat from this.

Yep, it was proposed

that live chickens would be stuffed into the bombs to provide enough body heat to maintain operation during cold spells.

They would be given a supply of food and water as they enjoyed their stay in the 5 star volatile vessel.

In the end, only two of the 10 proposed bombs were ever built, but neither were ever detonated, and the project was scrapped after a few years of development.

The Imperial Russian Navy was looking to revolutionize naval warfare in the 1870s.

The basic premise is that the bigger the guns, the better the navy.

Well, to have bigger guns, you need bigger ships, but when you build bigger ships, they could probably hold bigger guns.

But then why not just build even bigger ships to hold even bigger guns?

Well, it's not that simple.

By design, ships are rather narrow, leaving weight distribution pretty limited in a geometric sense.

So why not widen the ship to be more, I don't know, round?

Surely that would solve the problem.

No, that would just be a dumb design.

But Imperial Russia didn't think so, and thus in 1874, many, many Russian rubles were put towards developing and building...

The Novgorod.

This absolute unit of a warship measured 101 feet in diameter and was protected with 12 inches of plated armor.

Equipped with two 11-inch cannons, it was basically a fully strapped lily pad.

Any good warship is fast with reliable steering.

Was the Novgorod?

Nope.

By contrast, it was painfully slow and hard to steer.

At top speed, the circular ship cut through the waves at a staggering 7.5 miles per hour.

Slightly slower than the average male running speed, according to Google.

And funny enough, with its circular design, recoil from cannon fire would often cause the ship to unintentionally rotate,

slowing down any formidable suppressing fire in a warfare setting while the ship resets position.

Not that it mattered too much because each cannon took 10 minutes to reload between shots.

Despite her shortcomings, she participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877

but was ultimately used for shoreline defense instead of active naval warfare.

Her career was surprisingly long, lasting 29 years before being decommissioned and eventually sold for scrap.

Even today, the Novgorod is regarded as one of the worst naval ships ever designed.

The ship had many flaws, sure, but experimentation is how we improve as people.

Or at least that's what they tell us.

Ever have an annoying bug buzz in and out in front of your face

100

so you try to get rid of it by blowing some air at it?

101

Yeah, not very effective is it.

102

And neither was the wind cannon.

103

This 90 degree ass silly cylinder was almost one of the Nazi's Wunderwaffen or wonder weapons.

104

Almost.

105

It was a 3 foot diameter, 35 foot long cast iron cannon, and it worked like this.

106

A bunch of hydrogen and oxygen would be compressed into the cylinder, and if you paid attention in any chemistry class, you'd know that hydrogen is very flammable,

107

as the Hindenburg found out first hand.

108

Oxygen, while not flammable, typically makes fire bigger, so if you compress the two gases together and ignite them, you're gonna end up making a big kablooey.

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All that air pressure needs somewhere to go, so it all rushes to the path of least resistance, which happens to be the end of this cannon tip here.

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It's essentially a giant potato gun, but instead of a potato, it's a giant air bullet.

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But how much harm could that really do?

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Well, during tests, the cannon was impressively able to destroy a stationary,

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one-inch thick board over 650 feet away.

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Sooo it didn't really do much.

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It proved even more useless against moving aircraft which fly several thousand feet high.

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You'd honestly have better luck just hucking rocks at the dang things.

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The cannon was only ever used in warfare once

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when it was installed on a bridge and it didn't yield any significant results, which is why it's in this video.

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Look at it.

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Look how dumb it is.

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Even the Soviets were in on the whole experimental weapons thing in World War II.

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Everyone was really out there trying new things and seeing what stuck.

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Take, for example, tanks.

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Tanks are good.

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They drive around on the ground and shoot shit, right?

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Well, what if they could also fly?

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No, no, no, not like an airplane.

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Well, actually, yes, like an airplane, but only to make it to the battlefield quickly to drive around on the ground and shoot shit.

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Previously, tanks were haphazardly airdropped with their crew dropped separately, and that's just too slow for warfare.

130

Enter the Antonov A-40 Flying Tank.

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It's a tank strapped to a glider.

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The operating principle is that these bad boys would already have their crew aboard while a bigger plane does the heavy lifting.

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Once approaching the battlefield, the plane would just dump its load, releasing the glider to the ground below.

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Once landing safely, the wings could be dropped and the tank could ride right into the heat of battle.

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The tank used in the experiment was the Soviet T-60, a rather small light tank typically used for scouting.

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But despite being classified as a light tank, the thing still weighed almost 6 metric tons or just over 13,000 pounds.

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So it was far from light.

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But how is this thing gonna fly, you might ask?

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The answer is, not well.

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In order to lighten the load and reduce drag, the tank's secondary guns were removed.

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Headlights and peripherals were stripped, and ammo and fuel were kept to a minimum, rendering it almost useless.

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In the end, only one T-60 tank was ever equipped with the glider wings and dropped.

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When it was tested, the tank landed rather roughly, and 180'd back to base almost immediately.

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Those overseeing the project were all, Hmm, this tank cannot fly good.

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And the project was immediately abandoned.

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All right, there you have it.

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A bunch of us- Don't forget the gun.

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Wait, what?

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Oh yeah.

150

Um, yeah, I've got one bonus for ya.

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Roll it!

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As an honorable mention, we have the Krumlauf, which will certainly make you lauf your ass off.

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This is a German weapon attachment used to theoretically shoot around corners, but would you be surprised if I told you it was extremely ineffective?

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The barrels would only get through a few hundred rounds before just destroying itself.

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Not to mention that the bullets would be shattered into fragments upon exiting this curved monstrosity.

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Imagine the last thing you see being a weird curved pipe

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coming around a corner before your melon just gets converted into jelly jammed by Hans' Looney Tunes ass gun.

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I'd be pretty irate.

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Not that my face could express it.

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Alright, now I'm done.

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But you're not done watching, so click here to watch more.

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I'll see you over there.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “These Dumb Weapons Actually Existed”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: bomb, bat, tank, bigger, ship. This video has 162 sentences and 1822 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:44. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
cannon noun	/ˈkæn.ən/	A complete assembly, consisting of an artillery tube and a breech mechanism, firing mechanism or base cap, which is a component of a gun, howitzer or mortar…
warfare noun	/ˈwɔɹfɛɹ/	The waging of war or armed conflict against an enemy.
detonate verb	/ˈdɛtəneɪt/	To explode, blow up
glider noun	/ˈɡlaɪdɚ/	One who glides.
equip verb	/ɪˈkwɪp/	To supply with something necessary in order to carry out a specific action or task; to provide with (e.g. weapons, provisions, munitions, rigging).
strap noun	/stɹæp/	A long, narrow, pliable strip of leather, cloth, or the like.
compress verb	/ˈkɑmpɹɛs/	To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume.
detonation noun	/dɛtəˈneɪʃən/	An explosion or sudden report made by the near-instantaneous decomposition or combustion of unstable substances. Specifically, combustion that spreads…
flammable adjective	/ˈflæməbl̩/	Capable of burning.
frigging noun	/ˈfɹɪɡɪŋ/	Masturbation.
warship noun	/ˈwɔɹˌʃɪp/	Any ship built or armed for naval combat.
steer verb	/stɪɹ/	To guide the course of a vessel, vehicle, aircraft etc. (by means of a device such as a rudder, paddle, or steering wheel).
render verb	/ˈɹɛn.dɚ/	To cause to become.
scrap noun	/ˈskɹæp/	A (small) piece; a fragment; a detached, incomplete portion.
airplane noun	/ˈɛɹˌpleɪ̯n/	A powered heavier-than-air aircraft with fixed wings: a fixed-wing aircraft with at least one engine or electric motor.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come around verb	/kʌ.məˈɹaʊnd/	To change one's mind, especially to begin to agree or appreciate what one was reluctant to accept at first.
cut through verb		To take a shortcut through.
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
get off verb		To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.
roll over verb		To make a rolling motion or turn.
slow down verb		To decelerate.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are dragged · was equipped · was dropped
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	fast, which is · device, which was · results, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 23 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, don't, gonna. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: detonation /dɛtəˈneɪʃən/, warship /ˈwɔɹˌʃɪp/, bombshell /ˈbɑmʃɛl/, decommission /diːkəˈmɪʃən/, experimentation /ɪkˌspɛɹ.ə.mənˈteɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: detonation /dɛtəˈneɪʃən/, diameter /daɪˈæmɪdɚ/, decommission /diːkəˈmɪʃən/, experimentation /ɪkˌspɛɹ.ə.mənˈteɪ.ʃən/, haphazardly /hæpˈhæzɚdli/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cannon, warfare, detonate.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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