Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted (edited)
9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I seem to recall in the Lancaster there is just a window so you can see whether your bombs have hung up. Probably the Halifax too. I dont believe there was anything you could do, other than just land really very carefully. Or Bail out and flip the pilot the bird, which is another option for inveterate cowards like myself.

Another thought occured to me. In some cases these German Flak shells could fail to detonate. Checking on the weight of a German 128mm flak shell, Im guessing they dont have a lot of HE filling, weighing in at only 57lb. But of course they could fragment, which could perhaps cause a certain amount of shrapnel damage if they detonated on impact, and failing that, 57lbs falling from 48 thousand feet is going ot have a certain amount of terminal velocity. And who wants to admit glorious war winning Reich tech doesnt always work?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12.8_cm_FlaK_40

The explosive filling of a 12.8cm AA shell was 3.4k of amatol.  The nominal 'ground range' of the 12.8cm Flak 40 was 20475 metres.  I suspect that a bomb hitting a house would do a bit more than blow the back wall off, whereas that 3.4k of explosive would seem like a bomb going off.

Edited by DougRichards
typo
  • Replies 67
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted

I have been in Israel when HAMAS hammered places. I did like the Iron Dome spectacle, most of others thought I was crazy.

For me, it was nothing special. 

Posted
11 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I seem to recall in the Lancaster there is just a window so you can see whether your bombs have hung up. Probably the Halifax too. I dont believe there was anything you could do, other than just land really very carefully. Or Bail out and flip the pilot the bird, which is another option for inveterate cowards like myself.

Another thought occured to me. In some cases these German Flak shells could fail to detonate. Checking on the weight of a German 128mm flak shell, Im guessing they dont have a lot of HE filling, weighing in at only 57lb. But of course they could fragment, which could perhaps cause a certain amount of shrapnel damage if they detonated on impact, and failing that, 57lbs falling from 48 thousand feet is going ot have a certain amount of terminal velocity. And who wants to admit glorious war winning Reich tech doesnt always work?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12.8_cm_FlaK_40

Certainly something that might have contributed! There was however a crater in a nearby street that apparently spanned the entire street which was several meters across. That seems a little large for an AA shell I think. Also a bomb penetrated the wall of a house (on a different raid btw) but failed to detonate. Unfortunately there are no photos of this it seems. 

1 hour ago, DougRichards said:

The explosive filling of a 12.8cm AA shell was 3.4k of amatol.  The nominal 'ground range' of the 12.8cm Flak 40 was 20475 metres.  I suspect that a bomb hitting a house would do a bit more than blow the back wall off, whereas that 3.4k of explosive would seem like a bomb going off.

I don't know whether that was a direct hit or a close miss, so I can't say whether the damage fits a bomb or not. I also can't vouch for the accuracy of the her recountings. She was a child, and probably a quite traumatized one at that, when all that happened. I do think it's safe to say that there were several bomb hits across the different raids though.

Posted
7 minutes ago, DB said:

Sometimes the entire bombload was one large HE bomb and a lot of incendiaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb#/media/File:Lancaster_I_NG128_Dropping_Load_-_Duisburg_-_Oct_14_-_1944.jpg

 

There was this:

First drop HE to take them out of their skins.

Then firebombs to cook them.

 

 

Posted

Weird things tended to happen occasionally.

There was incident near Cacak, Serbia in WW2 where a single bomb fell from a US bombers passing overhead and killed a flock of sheep, much to the dismal of the shepherd who survived with slight wounds. Just one, not emergency ditching, nothing, just a single bomb. Heavens know what has really happened and no realistic way to even know. Local researcher found out bombers were B-24s going for Romania, but did not find anything unusual about that mission in NARA archives. So either description of event was wrong, or bomber crews did not bother to report one bomb "lost along the way".

 

Posted

Maybe one gunner wanted to have more Norden bomb sight training time. If the sheep run, you missed. If they don't, you didn't. Easily distinguishable from way up.

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, DougRichards said:

The explosive filling of a 12.8cm AA shell was 3.4k of amatol.  The nominal 'ground range' of the 12.8cm Flak 40 was 20475 metres.  I suspect that a bomb hitting a house would do a bit more than blow the back wall off, whereas that 3.4k of explosive would seem like a bomb going off.

Yes, as I say the blast damage would seemingly be a lot less. However, being thin walled, I have to ask the question, with lots of shattered windows and doors, would most Germans really appreciate the difference between a 128mm shell coming back down, and a 250lb bomb? If they havent already been personally hit by one, they will probably believe what they are told.

 

9 hours ago, Samsa said:

Certainly something that might have contributed! There was however a crater in a nearby street that apparently spanned the entire street which was several meters across. That seems a little large for an AA shell I think. Also a bomb penetrated the wall of a house (on a different raid btw) but failed to detonate. Unfortunately there are no photos of this it seems. 

I don't know whether that was a direct hit or a close miss, so I can't say whether the damage fits a bomb or not. I also can't vouch for the accuracy of the her recountings. She was a child, and probably a quite traumatized one at that, when all that happened. I do think it's safe to say that there were several bomb hits across the different raids though.

Ok, so you made me think of some other possible explanation (I hope this isnt being a bore for you).

The big hole to me sounds most likely to be a 4000lb cookie. So a couple of possible explanations.

(Apologies, I see DB beat me to this one)

https://www.lancaster-archive.com/lanc_bomb_loads.htm

You can see the Lancaster had verious different bombing configurations for different operations. If you look at the one for area bombing effects, 'Usual' you see a 4000lb bomb, surrounded by containers for incendiary bombs.

So the idea for this was fairly nasty, the Cookie would blow the roof of any properties, and the incendary bombs, which were quite fragile little things that could shatter on a slate roof, would find it fairly easy to gain entrance to a building. If there wasnt anyone on fire watch, it would likely burn out. I assume this is the one they used on Dresden.

So... I dont know enough about the Lancasters bombing console to really be sure about this, so this is speculation on my part (I could probably look up the manual somewhere, they are about). What if the bomb aimer selects the wrong switches, pickles the cookie and its 'Oh shit skipper, I screwed that up, shall we go round again?' 'Fuck that,' says the Skipper ' im off home, pickle them here'. And you suddenly get a wide spread of bombs, away from the cookie impact.

There is another theory that should have occurred to me before, and to me seems the most likely explanation from what you just said . That what they suffered was 'just' a Mosquito nuisance raid. It was RAF practice in the night bombing campaign to send off Mosquitos ahead of the main force. Some of them were weather recce which they could transmit to the force, others Pathfinders to mark the primary target, but others would go and attack other cities. Part of it was a distraction effort, to get the Luftwaffe their fighter force to commit to other cities. The logic also was it would cause Germans in those cities a bad nights sleep, affecting morale and productivity.

They did this quite a bit. For example, on the Peenemunde Raid in March 1943, the RAF launched a distraction raid on Berlin, to pull the fighter cover off. It largely worked, till the fighters saw flak guns and markers going down in the distance, and they fell on the tail of the raid. Clear night, so it was a bit of a slaughter.

Mosquito's could easily carry a cookie (I say easily, I think they had to bulge the bomb doors a bit). So, whilst the others are possible explanations, if there were no area effects, Id suggest it was probably a Mosquito nuisance raid. If you could pinpoint roughly the date to the Month, you could probably look this up and prove it.

CH-12621.jpg&ehk=AOV7RD825mm2SGRBWPktayP

Ill shut up now. :D

 

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted
5 hours ago, bojan said:

Weird things tended to happen occasionally.

There was incident near Cacak, Serbia in WW2 where a single bomb fell from a US bombers passing overhead and killed a flock of sheep, much to the dismal of the shepherd who survived with slight wounds. Just one, not emergency ditching, nothing, just a single bomb. Heavens know what has really happened and no realistic way to even know. Local researcher found out bombers were B-24s going for Romania, but did not find anything unusual about that mission in NARA archives. So either description of event was wrong, or bomber crews did not bother to report one bomb "lost along the way".

 

Same thing happened in my local town. German bomber coming back from a raid, possibly on Bristol or even Birmingham, dropped its bombs on the town of Tetbury, of absolutely no bloody significance then or now. Not entirely sure why, but the most likely explanation is that either he got damaged on the way out and pickled his bombs, or weather socked in the target and picked them on the first place he saw.

Interesting story, it did no damage other than blow up a cow shed killing at least one cow. Very sad, but the local townfolk got beef for the first time in ages due to rationing, so it wasnt all bad.

Interestingly enough, you could, at least as recently as the 1980's, still see the whitewash on a wall in the housing estate which replace the cowshed. Caused my friends no small amount of boredom my pointing this out. :D

 

Posted
7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I have to ask the question, with lots of shattered windows and doors, would most Germans really appreciate the difference between a 128mm shell coming back down, and a 250lb bomb?

It was a relatively universal experience in all countries and all wars with air attacks where AAA was used in defense that a lot of civilians were killed or injured by falling shrapnel (just google for "WW2 AAA death by falling shrapnel"), in some attacks the number of casualties from falling shrapnel may have rivalled or even exceeded the number of dead by aircraft bombs.

A 250lb bomb will rip a multi-story hole into a building and make at least two apartments uninhabitable. A 12.8cm artillery shell that fell unexploded into a building had the potential to crash through maybe two or three floors, to destroy one room or two of a building if exploding on impact (assuming that the timer fuze mafunctioned). Of course if it embedded itself deep inside the building and only then went off, the damage could be bigger.

For a kid that distinction may have been a bit subtle, but yeah, I think most people at the time would have been able to recognize the difference (though possibly still with a lack of appreciation).

Posted (edited)

Stuart

I'm not sure a 'big hole' in anything but a row of houses is diagnostic of a Cookie. IIRC they were specifically designed not to blow big holes in the ground, being intended as blast bombs. The whole LC series (Light Case) of bombs were marginal penetrators and I believe always fused as sort as possible to minimise penetration and maximise blast. The Cookies were the lightest of built of the lot, air fused specifically to avoid penetration. If a cookie landed in the road, it'd demolish the houses for a radius of whatever meters and scar the road, but not leave much of crater.  :)

Edited by Argus
Posted
7 hours ago, Argus said:

Stuart

I'm not sure a 'big hole' in anything but a row of houses is diagnostic of a Cookie. IIRC they were specifically designed not to blow big holes in the ground, being intended as blast bombs. The whole LC series (Light Case) of bombs were marginal penetrators and I believe always fused as sort as possible to minimise penetration and maximise blast. The Cookies were the lightest of built of the lot, air fused specifically to avoid penetration. If a cookie landed in the road, it'd demolish the houses for a radius of whatever meters and scar the road, but not leave much of crater.  :)

Are we sure that is also the case with nuisance raids however? They were after all intended to cause maximum disruption.

Ill be honest, Ive little to hand on the Cookie, other than this. It talks of there being an intent to give a delayed action fuse (presumably with the parachute to create something like the German Parachute Mines) but this was later dropped, along with the parachute.  Presumably there was nothing to say they couldnt give it one later, I assume the fuse pockets would have been standardised?

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107:4000lb-high-capacity-bomb&catid=43:bombs&Itemid=60

I certainly agree they had light cases, which implies they were not great penetrators. OTOH, we dont know that the weapon described ever went off. It might just have hit the road, deformed, failed to detonate and broke into a drain.

As I say, Im out of ideas at this point. :)

 

Posted

Just because a bomb doesn't "dig in" before going off doesn't mean it won't leave a crater when exploding at ground level. VBIEDs are a good proxy for that. The gas flow alone from the explosion is sufficient to take pieces of earth with it, and eventually (after a few milliseconds) to form a crater in the ground. It won't be as deep/prominent as with bombs with delayed impact fuze, but it will be there.

 

According to the German Wikipedia, which is never wrong, a Cookie bomb was equipped with impact fuze (not air detonation... (!)). "Cookie" was the HC4000lb, 1790kg total mass, of which 1350kg were Amatol (~1080kg TNT equivalent) HE filling (later models had 1500kg RDX). That's comparable to a van sized VBIED, half the size of McVeigh's bomb, which left a crater of 2m depth and almost 10m diameter. So, sure, not an "impressive crater" for half the amount of explosive, but enormous destruction for the buildings all around it even if no incendiaries followed (which always did).

Posted

There was a good article I dug up on Die Welt, which indicates that over the past 5 years (The article was written in 2016) 7 Cookies had been found. Which suggests a high dud rate among cookies (or at least a remarkable statistical anomaly). That there wasnt fins to stabilise it, there is some suggestion here that if it hit on the flat end, there was a chance of it not going off.

https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article160597191/Zwei-Tonnen-schwere-Luftminen-Spitzname-Cookie.html

Im far from certain this is the answer to the question, because everyone I think has had some good ideas on other possiblities here, all of which look entirely possible. But ultimately you have to go with occams razor. What aircraft do we know dropped bombs in singleton, and what bomb seems to have had a high dud rate?

 

Posted

it was interesting that in past they found lot of unexploded bombs using USAF/USAAF films taken during raids. They could see from film if bomb from "stick" didn't go off.  

Posted

There was quite an interesting article on Bellingcat, where they took the video footage taken on each raid, and figured out where each bombing sequence was filmed.

Posted
1 hour ago, Sardaukar said:

it was interesting that in past they found lot of unexploded bombs using USAF/USAAF films taken during raids. They could see from film if bomb from "stick" didn't go off.  

A lot of post-war bomb disposal activities have been initiated based on looking for entry holes for bombs on BDA photographs - the point being that most bombs with instant/very short fuses would be craters instead.

It was discovered, however, that bombs that had delay fuses would tend to explode a significant horizontal distance from their entry point. They would often describe a curved trajectory underground and could end up back at the surface and then explode, yielding a crater that could be in any direction (!) This meant that you couldn't simply dig up the ground around where the holes had been to find the unexploded ones.

Posted

There was also a problem with bombs, presumably detonating during the curved path underground. It would create an underground crater called a Camoflet. If you watch Danger UXB or period footage, you can see the bomb disposal guys wearing parachute harnesses, just in case the bomb they were excavating had already detonated. Supposedly in the early days an EOD crew escavating a bomb had one of their number fall into the camoflet and suffocated from the fumes before they could get him out.

 

Posted

Here's a cookie that is on display in Koblenz.  It was discovered embedded in the river mud.  The newspaper on display with it showed the large area that was evacuated while it was defused.  

Cookie.jpg

Posted

They did a real nice job of restoring it.

About 1984, I can remember going to the British Army's show at Aldershot, which was a real big thing back in those days. There was a section that showed EOD work, and they had a German Herman bomb they had trepanned and recovered on display. At that time it was nearly the same size I was. :D

 

Posted
9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Are we sure that is also the case with nuisance raids however? They were after all intended to cause maximum disruption.

Ill be honest, Ive little to hand on the Cookie, other than this. It talks of there being an intent to give a delayed action fuse (presumably with the parachute to create something like the German Parachute Mines) but this was later dropped, along with the parachute.  Presumably there was nothing to say they couldnt give it one later, I assume the fuse pockets would have been standardised?

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107:4000lb-high-capacity-bomb&catid=43:bombs&Itemid=60

I certainly agree they had light cases, which implies they were not great penetrators. OTOH, we dont know that the weapon described ever went off. It might just have hit the road, deformed, failed to detonate and broke into a drain.

As I say, Im out of ideas at this point. :)

 

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/Research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal_45_Seminar_conventional_weapons.pdf

Page 32, but overall a great read,

Posted
4 hours ago, DB said:

A lot of post-war bomb disposal activities have been initiated based on looking for entry holes for bombs on BDA photographs - the point being that most bombs with instant/very short fuses would be craters instead.

It was discovered, however, that bombs that had delay fuses would tend to explode a significant horizontal distance from their entry point. They would often describe a curved trajectory underground and could end up back at the surface and then explode, yielding a crater that could be in any direction (!) This meant that you couldn't simply dig up the ground around where the holes had been to find the unexploded ones.

You can find the craziest things. If a dud hits the massive foundation of a building in the ground, it has shown to bounce of a like a billiard ball, if the soil around the building is soft enough. One bomb bounced from the foundation of one of the old Krupp factory halls directly under the base plate of another Krupp factory hall and has remained there undetected till last year. Finding that one was a pain.

Posted
14 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Are we sure that is also the case with nuisance raids however? They were after all intended to cause maximum disruption.

Ill be honest, Ive little to hand on the Cookie, other than this. It talks of there being an intent to give a delayed action fuse (presumably with the parachute to create something like the German Parachute Mines) but this was later dropped, along with the parachute.  Presumably there was nothing to say they couldnt give it one later, I assume the fuse pockets would have been standardised?

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107:4000lb-high-capacity-bomb&catid=43:bombs&Itemid=60

I certainly agree they had light cases, which implies they were not great penetrators. OTOH, we dont know that the weapon described ever went off. It might just have hit the road, deformed, failed to detonate and broke into a drain.

As I say, Im out of ideas at this point. :)

 

I believe the Cookie used a barometric fuse, three I think for redundancy, in the nose. Set up to sense the rising pressure of its own bow wave being reflected back to it basically. So at a guess that would sort of kick in around 'ground effect' point, which is about its diameter, so call it 3 foot. Allow for lock time and such, means it likely blew on or about contact with the surface, be that surface the ground or the roof of a building.  It was meant to be a daisy cutter, but either way the bomb's very construction  meant it was never going to be a penetrator. If memory serves, it couldn't actually survive hitting the ground, as it really was just the thinnest container they could fill with maximum HE and support its own weight.   

Posted
9 hours ago, Argus said:

I believe the Cookie used a barometric fuse, three I think for redundancy, in the nose. Set up to sense the rising pressure of its own bow wave being reflected back to it basically. So at a guess that would sort of kick in around 'ground effect' point, which is about its diameter, so call it 3 foot. Allow for lock time and such, means it likely blew on or about contact with the surface, be that surface the ground or the roof of a building.  It was meant to be a daisy cutter, but either way the bomb's very construction  meant it was never going to be a penetrator. If memory serves, it couldn't actually survive hitting the ground, as it really was just the thinnest container they could fill with maximum HE and support its own weight.   

 

15 hours ago, DougRichards said:

Thank you both.

I think its interesting how many of them seem to have been found in soft mud or water.

Posted
On 11/23/2022 at 9:32 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

[...]

l shut up now. :D

 

This stuff is very interesting, so no need to stop 😊

Regarding the Blockbuster bomb, I would be quite surprised if that was the case. As was common at that time the houses in the surrounding streets were, afaik, mostly terraced houses. I'd imagine an impact right in the middle of the street would flatten (or at least make unusable) a good number of those. My grandma did still remember the names of the individual families that lost their houses and had to find shelter with neighbors and elsewhere. From the number of those, it didn't sound like a very big part of the street had been destroyed.

Nuisance raids we're something that I had considered also though. Especially since the town had a few legitimate targets such as a railway station and a close by ammo factory (quite far from the purely residential area that was hit, but well...). Maybe some mosquitos were send in parallel to the bomber streams to hit smaller targets in the area.

I suppose it's very difficult to get a definite answer on this. Maybe I can check if there are any local archives next time I'm there. Thank you guys for the suggestions so far though!

 

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...