Tankball: just the thing to bring to Fight Club.

Tank paintball. Now this looks fun. (Hey, is that Michael Moore in the turret?)

Stuart had the guns removed and contacted Jez Smith, 26-year-old local engineer and serial inventor, to make the biggest paintball gun ever seen. Their chosen ammunition, fired by compressed air, would be paint-filled ping-pong balls.

The first attempt blasted a ball into orbit. Jez lost sight of it after a mile-and-a-half when it passed the church spire. It also sent a small potato through the sound barrier. Over time, he calmed it to a legal and relatively modest 200mph. Jez then designed a 40mm, 8ft steel barrel to slot into the turret and the company now has five. "Obviously, these aren't proper guns with rifled barrels or they'd be illegal," says Stuart, 38. "But a ping-pong ball full of liquid doing 300ft per second is lethal. That's why we operate with sealed hatches."

Comments

[Ryan Coombs]

Michael Moore visited UVSC a year and half ago - he wouldn't be able to fit into a tank, so it couldn't be him. Sign me up for a chance to shoot some paint at him though!