Tallboy explosion in Poland

[BrettMRC]

Some mangled quotes/facts from Edwyn Grays "Hitlers Battleships":

11th September 1944
27 Lancasters from 9 & 617 squadrons + 1 photographic lanacaster attacked Tirpitz at Kaajford.
The bomber crews claimed no hits, but one did hit the bows and blew a 150sq/ft hole at the waterline. Two other near misses caused more chaos and to add to the problems, the main engines seized up.

At this point the Captain Junge sent a request that Tirpitz be removed from active duty. The request was denied and she was towed 200miles to Tromso for repair and refit. This meant she was in direct striking range for the RAF, without the need to stage from Russian airbases.

29th October 1944
32 tallboys dropped on the target - but it had been obscured by smoke and cloud. Again pilots reported no direct hits, but the series of near misses had effectively finished off Tirpitz. (Port propeller shaft and the rudder were seriously damaged and there was extensive flooding at the stern)
Tirpitz was now incapable of moving under her own power.

12th November 1944 she was attacked for the final time by tallboy equipped Lancasters:
"...One of the 6-ton Tallboy bombs struck turret Bruno while a second smashed through the armoured deck amidships and exploded deep inside the bowels of the battleship. The blast wave from two others peeled back the hull plating like the opened lid of a sardine tin. The Tirpitz, her guns still blazing, lurched sharply to port, and, almost before anyone had time to gather thair breath and assess the damage, the magazine under turret Ceaser erupted in a sheet of white flame. The great ship, mortally wounded, slowly turned turtle, leaving her keel exposed above the waterline as her superstructure grounded on the bottom of the shallow fjord..."

[Countdown]

Bullet-Proof_Biscuit said:

Thinking about it you'd expect such a heavy pointy thing to burrow deep out of harms way especially bashing into the mud. Cue someone points out they tumble and belly flop and don't go deep at all. Several possible potential innuendos in that, apologies..

IIRC they were designed precisely to burrow deep and then damage their target via the earhquake/tremors effect. Their tailfins were designed so that they would spin whilst falling and that would stabilise them vertically.

I would highly recommend Paul Brickhill's book about 617 Squadron.

[warch]

The earthquake bomb was designed to go deep into the ground, preferably near to a structure where it would explode creating a big void known as a camoflet. This would collapse and undermine or damage the structure. It avoided a common problem with conventional bombing where only a direct hit would cause any damage.

[aeropilot]

Countdown said:

Bullet-Proof_Biscuit said:

Thinking about it you'd expect such a heavy pointy thing to burrow deep out of harms way especially bashing into the mud. Cue someone points out they tumble and belly flop and don't go deep at all. Several possible potential innuendos in that, apologies..

IIRC they were designed precisely to burrow deep and then damage their target via the earhquake/tremors effect. Their tailfins were designed so that they would spin whilst falling and that would stabilise them vertically.

And likely there might have been a problem with this bomb that it didn't do this, and may have even hit tail first, which might explain it not going off, as it was found tail end down, with just its nose poking from the river bed last year during dredging operations.

This raid was filmed by a Mosquito, and can be found on YouTube, and if you look at the bombs hitting and exploding, you can see one much smaller splash in the water, which when you compare with the film of teh bomb exploding is almost certainly the water splash from this bomb hitting and not expoding.
Screen shot of both films frozen of it hitting the water (red arrow) and exploding some 75 years later.

[Eric Mc]

Countdown said:

IIRC they were designed precisely to burrow deep and then damage their target via the earhquake/tremors effect. Their tailfins were designed so that they would spin whilst falling and that would stabilise them vertically.

I would highly recommend Paul Brickhill's book about 617 Squadron.

Do you mean "The Dambusters"?

That book is very old now (first published, 1951) and was not exactly truthful about some aspects of 617 Squadron activity, ESPECIALLY about the dams raids - as aspects of the raid were still on the top secret list at the time the book was written. There have been lots of books written on the Dams Raid and 617 squadron since so I would be inclined to search them out.

[Ayahuasca]

The dredger crews have been lucky!

[Simpo Two]

Yertis said:

They should have been tested before they left the factory.

A capital idea Sir!

[Countdown]

Eric Mc said:

Do you mean "The Dambusters"?

That book is very old now (first published, 1951) and was not exactly truthful about some aspects of 617 Squadron activity, ESPECIALLY about the dams raids - as aspects of the raid were still on the top secret list at the time the book was written. There have been lots of books written on the Dams Raid and 617 squadron since so I would be inclined to search them out.

Yes.

Interesting - I hadn't realised it was inaccurate. It was very readable anyway.

[Gargamel]

saaby93 said:

Surely at most you need about 100 people to operate those guns. What are the other 900 doing?

Edited by saaby93 on Tuesday 13th October 18:20

Even the saltiest sea dogs need to sleep so whatever you need, you need two or three of.

[Ayahuasca]

Gargamel said:

saaby93 said:

Surely at most you need about 100 people to operate those guns. What are the other 900 doing?

Edited by saaby93 on Tuesday 13th October 18:20

Even the saltiest sea dogs need to sleep so whatever you need, you need two or three of.

Cooking, cleaning, mending, engineering, navigating, stoking, sleeping, signalling, radioing, doctoring, storing, moving stuff, welding, spicing, polishing, ironing, training, leading, painting, peeling ...

[Halmyre]

Countdown said:

Eric Mc said:

Do you mean "The Dambusters"?

That book is very old now (first published, 1951) and was not exactly truthful about some aspects of 617 Squadron activity, ESPECIALLY about the dams raids - as aspects of the raid were still on the top secret list at the time the book was written. There have been lots of books written on the Dams Raid and 617 squadron since so I would be inclined to search them out.

Yes.

Interesting - I hadn't realised it was inaccurate. It was very readable anyway.

Not inaccurate as such, embellished is more like it.

After the final raid on the Tirpitz the Royal Navy rather huffily declared that she wasn't really sunk since bits of her were still above the surface.

[aeropilot]

Halmyre said:

Countdown said:

Eric Mc said:

Do you mean "The Dambusters"?

That book is very old now (first published, 1951) and was not exactly truthful about some aspects of 617 Squadron activity, ESPECIALLY about the dams raids - as aspects of the raid were still on the top secret list at the time the book was written. There have been lots of books written on the Dams Raid and 617 squadron since so I would be inclined to search them out.

Yes.

Interesting - I hadn't realised it was inaccurate. It was very readable anyway.

Not inaccurate as such, embellished is more like it.

After the final raid on the Tirpitz the Royal Navy rather huffily declared that she wasn't really sunk since bits of her were still above the surface.

Not to mention there's been an ongoing 75 years of banter and ribildry between 617 and 9 Sqn, as it's pretty certain that it was indeed Tallboy's from a 9 Sqn Lanc that performed the 'coup de grace' on theTirpitz.

When I was growing up the next door neighbour was ex-RN and spent most of the war on MTB's in the Med, but at the end of the war, the MTB's were pulled out and sent to Norway for the liberation/invasion and he had a great photo up on his garage wall, of him standing on the upturned hull of the mighty Tirpitz, and some great stories.

[slartibartfast]

aeropilot said:

Not to mention there's been an ongoing 75 years of banter and ribildry between 617 and 9 Sqn, as it's pretty certain that it was indeed Tallboy's from a 9 Sqn Lanc that performed the 'coup de grace' on theTirpitz.

I fly model aircraft from Ex-RAF Bardney (9 squadron) where the Lancaster WS-J/W4964 ‘Johnnie Walker’ took off from to bomb the Turpitz. (so it's believed)

Occasionally we get veterans come visit and there is a story that during the war the local village copper of Bardney was a bit of a dhead so one night one of the crew took his bicycle, rode it back to base and loaded it in the bomb bay of a Lancaster for it to be delivered to Germany the next day

Edited by slartibartfast on Wednesday 14th October 18:56

[louiechevy]

slartibartfast said:

I fly model aircraft from Ex-RAF Bardney (9 squadron) where the Lancaster WS-J/W4964 ‘Johnnie Walker’ took off from to bomb the Turpitz. (so it's believed)

Occasionally we get veterans come visit and there is a story that during the war the local village copper of Bardney was a bit of a dhead so one night one of the crew took his bicycle, rode it back to base and loaded it in the bomb bay of a Lancaster for it to be delivered to Germany the next day

Edited by slartibartfast on Wednesday 14th October 18:56

Did it go off?

[slartibartfast]

louiechevy said:

slartibartfast said:

I fly model aircraft from Ex-RAF Bardney (9 squadron) where the Lancaster WS-J/W4964 ‘Johnnie Walker’ took off from to bomb the Turpitz. (so it's believed)

Occasionally we get veterans come visit and there is a story that during the war the local village copper of Bardney was a bit of a dhead so one night one of the crew took his bicycle, rode it back to base and loaded it in the bomb bay of a Lancaster for it to be delivered to Germany the next day

Edited by slartibartfast on Wednesday 14th October 18:56

Did it go off?

No idea but somewhere in Germany there might be a 'British Police' Bicycle rusting in a tree

[LotusOmega375D]

Should I call the RAF about the Tallboy we have in our bathroom?

[twister]

lufbramatt said:

Didn’t seem “that” big of an explosion- Does the explosive degrade over time? And I’m guessing the water damps it down too. Certainly puts the Beirut dock explosion into perspective.

Indeed it does. Tallboy yield was around 3.5tonnes TNT equivalent, whereas the estimates for Beirut suggested a yield between 140-310x higher...

[saaby93]

twister said:

lufbramatt said:

Didn’t seem “that” big of an explosion- Does the explosive degrade over time? And I’m guessing the water damps it down too. Certainly puts the Beirut dock explosion into perspective.

Indeed it does. Tallboy yield was around 3.5tonnes TNT equivalent, whereas the estimates for Beirut suggested a yield between 140-310x higher...

It's not so easy to drop a warehouse of explosive from a 1940s plane

[Ayahuasca]

twister said:

lufbramatt said:

Didn’t seem “that” big of an explosion- Does the explosive degrade over time? And I’m guessing the water damps it down too. Certainly puts the Beirut dock explosion into perspective.

Indeed it does. Tallboy yield was around 3.5tonnes TNT equivalent, whereas the estimates for Beirut suggested a yield between 140-310x higher...

Were not the disposal people trying the burn the explosive out? Perhaps some burned, and only the remainder exploded, having said that, it looked a big explosion - also it was at the bottom of the canal, which would reduce the size of what you see.

[twister]

saaby93 said:

It's not so easy to drop a warehouse of explosive from a 1940s plane

Not with conventional explosives at least, no... Though it's worth noting that, despite its size and mass, Tallboy (and Grand Slam) was classed merely as a medium capacity bomb by the RAF - over half of its mass was taken up with the hardened penetrator casing, so in terms of yield it wasn't that impressive given its bulk, but then it wasn't designed to make a *huge* bang, just to make one big enough in the right location...