UPDATE / THE ‘SUPERGUN’ MYSTERY : 402-Ton ‘Barrel,’ a Slain Expert, More Intrigue

Is it a gun? Is it a missile launcher? Is it oil refinery piping?

The case of the mysterious “Iraqi supergun” continues to intrigue arms experts and officials in several countries.

It involves the reputed assembly from components from various nations of the world’s longest-range cannon, constituting a possible nuclear or chemical threat to Israel and involving tips from intelligence agencies and the murder in Brussels of a leading artillery specialist.

The issue also surfaced at a recent Arab summit meeting in Baghdad, where President Saddam Hussein again denied that his country had contracted for a supergun to threaten Iran or Israel.

But in London, British customs officials say they are sure they have confiscated parts of a supergun, the Defense Ministry maintains an official silence and the manufacturers argue that the seized material is piping for use at a petrochemical plant.

“We have no doubts that the material violates the arms export laws,” a customs official maintains. “Whatever it is, it isn’t piping.”

The supergun story came to light April 10, when British Customs and Excise officers at Teesport, in northeast England, impounded eight steel tubes manufactured by Sheffield Forgemasters for export to Iraq for a “petrochemical project.”

The company had been granted export permission for pipe sections, each about 18 feet long and 39 inches in diameter. Company officials later said the impounded shipment was the last part of two 26-section orders of the finely bored pipe lengths.

Sheffield Forgemasters’ first reaction to the supergun charges was incredulity. As company official Tony Peck put it: “The allegations are utterly ridiculous. The 26 sections together weigh 402 tons. Try to imagine the support you would need for a 156-meter gun barrel weighing that much.”

At first some defense specialists agreed, suggesting that flanged sections of piping could not fire a projectile without blowing up or collapsing.

But the customs officials stood their ground and now say they were tipped off by intelligence agents that the piping was indeed designed to be bolted together to form a long-range gun barrel.

The resultant flap recalled the murder in Brussels on March 22 of ballistics scientist Dr. Gerald V. Bull, who was shot five times with a silencer in the apartment building where he lived under an assumed name.

Bull, 62, was Canadian-born but a naturalized American, a specialist in long-range artillery who worked for the Canadian and U.S. governments in the early 1960s in joint projects. He maintained that artillery could be made to shoot shells at extreme range--or satellites into space--more cheaply than rockets could.

In one project, Bull put together 16-inch-diameter U.S. naval guns from World War II to build three guns; one, with a 119-foot barrel, set an-altitude record, firing a projectile 112 miles into space.

At the time, Bull asserted that he could design a gun capable of firing a shell from Canada to Mexico. But the two nations preferred to develop rocket-missile technology, and his project was abandoned.

Next, working in a Vermont factory, Bull designed a long-range, self-propelled 155-millimeter gun, which he sold to South Africa through shadow companies in Spain and Antigua. It reportedly outperformed the best Soviet guns in the Angola war.

Bull’s plant was raided by the FBI, and he was convicted of violating U.S. arms embargo laws and sentenced to six months in jail in 1980. Released and embittered, he moved to Brussels, where in 1983 he set up his Space Research Corp., an arms-dealing firm.

In 1980, Bull had published a book in which he detailed how an artillery weapon could be made from sections of steel pipe.

Bull’s company supplied artillery pieces to Iraq in the Persian Gulf War--and, arms experts suggest, quite possibly to Iraq’s rival Iran as well. Later, Bull received contracts from Iraq for the development of a long-range artillery system, according to his son, Michael. Bull’s company farmed out the orders to small European suppliers--always officially listed as equipment for oil refineries.

After the British crackdown, similar equipment has been intercepted in West Germany, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Baghdad called the seizures a “big lie” orchestrated by Israel.

As events unfolded, Sheffield Forgemasters acknowledged that Bull’s company acted as “middleman” for the piping order. Meanwhile, in Brussels, Bull’s sons announced the dissolution of the firm.

So, the mystery of the supergun remains.