Post amazing pics of military ordinance

[hidetheelephants]

Crafty_ said:

Regulus Cruise Missile


USS Growler by c20let, on Flickr

Was there an HMS Clunge?

[newdogg06]

Not so much ordnance, but been to visit these two places in Northern France which would have caused us some serious damage with V2s had they been completed. A sobering experience going here.



La Coupole, near St.Omer




Blockhaus d'Eperlecques

[Crafty_]

hidetheelephants said:

Was there an HMS Clunge?

As per the other thread there is a USS Ponce apparently!

[RedLeicester]

hidetheelephants said:

Crafty_ said:

Regulus Cruise Missile


USS Growler by c20let, on Flickr

Was there an HMS Clunge?

[pacman1]

Ranger 6 said:

I will dig out the one 'contact' I had with the East Germans (not the Russians) and scan the photos.

Cheers, that would be interesting. Fewer people these days remember how things were before the wall came down.

[Seeker UK]

Now this is a proper bomb...

[Streetrod]

So which bomb had the largest non nuclear yield?

[onyx39]

Streetrod said:

So which bomb had the largest non nuclear yield?

probably this beast..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs

[steve j]

Skywalker said:

BL-755 CBU

Edited by Skywalker on Thursday 26th January 00:03

Nasty things, I have vivid memories of cleaning up after trials of these at teign and west freugh. Unexploded BL755 gets messy and commands the utmost respect, of course weapon technology has come a long way since the 1980/90s.

[onyx39]

apparently they 30,000 "bunker buster bombs" that the US have currently, are just too small... bigger is needed...





http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2012/01/pentago...

[Seeker UK]

onyx39 said:

apparently they 30,000 "bunker buster bombs" that the US have currently, are just too small... bigger is needed...





http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2012/01/pentago...

From the comments:

Mark said...
I am really disappointed that the biggest conventional bomb has only like 5,300lbs of explosive material (with the rest the shell and hardened material to get it through)... comon guys.. you can do better than that!

:-)

[Seeker UK]

steve j said:

Nasty things, I have vivid memories of cleaning up after trials of these at teign and west freugh. Unexploded BL755 gets messy and commands the utmost respect, of course weapon technology has come a long way since the 1980/90s.

"Hunt the bomblet" is not a fun game. At all.

[nellyleelephant]

Seeker UK said:

steve j said:

Nasty things, I have vivid memories of cleaning up after trials of these at teign and west freugh. Unexploded BL755 gets messy and commands the utmost respect, of course weapon technology has come a long way since the 1980/90s.

"Hunt the bomblet" is not a fun game. At all.

I attended trials at West Freugh in '02. I was with Hunting Engineering at the time ensuring that 'things all still worked'

Happy days. A Tornado flew up and dropped it, we got a wave of the wings before it cleared off down south again.

We were there measuring the spread of the bomblets and extent of damage, effective weapon!

[steve j]

Seeker UK said:

"Hunt the bomblet" is not a fun game. At all.

Indeed it isn`t, a colleague of mine was killed during these tests, they had a habit of exploding after laying on the ground for a while.

[hidetheelephants]

steve j said:

Seeker UK said:

"Hunt the bomblet" is not a fun game. At all.

Indeed it isn`t, a colleague of mine was killed during these tests, they had a habit of exploding after laying on the ground for a while.

Is that not what they are supposed to do? That is if they don't go off immediately, they are effectively boobytraps for anyone cleaning up or transiting the area afterwards?

[nellyleelephant]

hidetheelephants said:

Is that not what they are supposed to do? That is if they don't go off immediately, they are effectively boobytraps for anyone cleaning up or transiting the area afterwards?

That was the party trick of JP233.

BL755 was supposed to detonate all of its bomblets if I remember correctly! I think there were about 140 ish of them.

[bobthemonkey]

RedLeicester said:

There is a USS Ponce.

[steve j]

nellyleelephant said:

That was the party trick of JP233.

BL755 was supposed to detonate all of its bomblets if I remember correctly! I think there were about 140 ish of them.

147 bomblets in all, they were meant to detonate on impact if all the relevant mechanical components had run and aligned the explosive train. A piezo crystal initiated the firing voltage, sometimes though the electrically initiated detonator failed. I was informed that in the fully armed condition a static discharge could set it off.

[tank slapper]

OldJohnnyYen said:

How does a laser guided bomb work? Does the plane firing it keep a laser on the target? It will always need a line of sight wouldnt it?

Laser guided bombs can be designated either by the aircraft that drops them, another aircraft, or by ground troops. The attacking aircraft drops the bomb in a similar way that it would an unguided one - the closer the initial aim, the less correcting the bomb has to do in flight. If it is being designated by the dropping aircraft, it can either be designated on release, a set time before impact, or manually. The less time the laser is painting, the less time the bomb has to correct its flight, but the more time a potential target has to react - some armoured vehicles have laser detectors for example.

The bomb looks for the reflected laser spot, which is coded so that the bomb locks onto the correct point. It compares its trajectory to the spot and adjusts the fins to bring them back into line. Paveway IIs use full scale deflection guidance, where the fins always move to their maximum extent, meaning they constantly oscillate around the beam until impact. Paveway IIIs use proportional guidance so can correct their course more finely.

[tontoro]

MartG said:

I always loved this pic of a laser guided bomb hitting a ( dummy ) truck driver in the left ear :-)

i had a book when i was very young (probably before I could read even). I read it repeatedly and obsessively for years. It had this photo in it, for years and years I thought it was a truck with a gun mounted on the cab!