Designed by Art Biehl and Robert Mainhardt, manufactured by MBAssociates c.1965~68. 13mm/.51 Gyrojet 6-round fixed box magazine, semi-automatic, reloaded through the open breech of the gun. The Gyrojet series of firearms was designed during the Cold War by two people with one simple dream : what if instead of shooting bullets, guns fired tiny solid-fueled rockets ? To their credit they managed to create just that. Each round of Gyrojet ammunition was a whole projectile with fuel -much like the century-old rocket ball interestingly enough- and spiraling exhaust vent in its base. This gave it spin and stability. The light-weight zinc-alloy gun -it basically just works as a launch ramp- was cocked by pushing a small lever down on the left side of the frame, which would be released by a pull of the trigger onto the nose of a bullet, slamming it into the firing pin and setting it off. While travelling down the barrel, the projectile would push the lever back down for the gun to be fired again. This gave it a rate of fire of about a round per second, as the rounds exited the barrel pretty slowly. Being rockets and all, instead of just exiting the barrel at maximum velocity and dropping speed from there, Gyrojet bullets increased in velocity for about a tenth of a second/30ft until all their fuel was spent, after which they would behave like a regular projectile. Recorded max speeds tend to hover around the speed of sound, giving each round twice the power of a .45ACP Bullet. Despite being lighter and cooler than a regular gun, the Gyrojet pistol and carbine had an almost 1% failure rate and fairly low accuracy, unacceptable standards by that time in history.
Don0303 