Some russian guns you may not have seen before | Homestead Security | Forums

"N.F. Makarov designed a curved barrel assembly and K.T. Kurenkov developed a ball-shaped mount. They performed all the work required to create a curved barrel machinegun with a 90 deg. barrel curvature. The machine gun was intended to arm tanks, more precisely to protect them in the "dead zone" that cannot be engaged by conventional straight-line machinegun fire. To resolve the problems of disabled or trapped tanks it was decided to mount such machineguns on the turret hatch. The tankmen were not very enthusiastic about it, to say the least. Consequently, the idea to protect tanks by curved barrel machineguns was abandoned and all activity to this effect came to an end."

It might be one of the stupidest ideas I've ever seen. But then, we spend tons of money here on fail military projects.

The Germans had a curved barrel in WWII, worked okay and the barrel was good for about 100 shots...would be a heck of an addition to a collection...don't think I would pull the trigger on it.

Reminds me of a barrel they had for paintball.  It was supposed to put a forward spin on the ball to increase range.