World's First Bomb Designed To Miss - Against The Odds 2018

exactly seriously hello everybody and welcome to the yorkshire air museum now we are here for the against the odds event inside there is a bunch of re-enactors dressed in period costumes they have the aircraft out of their hangars and it's all about a good show the museum is an old raf bomber base from world war two and such to have a great selection of vintage equipment including some of the most unique bombs ever dropped by an airplane in this video we will have a specific look at two massive bombs used during world war ii but before that i'd like to give you a brief introduction to the against the odds event celebrated every year with hundreds of reenactors inside the unique setting of a restored world war ii base there's a good chance i'll be up at the event this year again so if you do come by and see me come up and say hi [Music] and [Music] how we sing as we limp through the air here's a handy page halifax a heavy bomber from the raf from world war ii and it's actually only one of two survivors restored to this state in the world we have a full episode inside this aircraft going for every crew station so make sure to check that video out after this one but for now let's show you some bombs all right just to give you guys a specific sense of scale here i'm standing next to a world war ii 500 kilogram bombs this is roughly 000 pounds it's pretty big and it's pretty powerful right next to it we have a 250 kg bomb that's 500 pounds again not as big as the 500 kilo one one but it can get the job done but if these two aren't enough well i have something for you my friend we have this thing this is the tall boy and it's one big boy the towboy was designed by barnes willis his idea was to create a bomb that would be specifically designed to penetrate a target or smash into the ground with a near miss there it would embed itself deeply into the ground before exploding this way the bomb would essentially create an artificial earthquake damaging not only the structure but the very foundation of the target leaving it completely ruined hence the name earthquake bomb because of this artificial shock wave a near-miss was even considered to be potentially better than a bullseye initially wallace received no contract but the air ministry told him to go ahead developing his bomb anyway after all he was a man with a reputation and he would also design the bouncy bomb later used during the dam buster raid tallboy had a weight of 12 000 pounds and a length of 12 feet 6.4 meters with a diameter of 38 inch nearly a meter it represented one of the biggest bombs ever built during that time the actual explosive content was 5 200 pounds that's 2400 kilograms of torpex d1 encased in a one-piece high tensile steel with a tail designed to give the bomb a spin as it plummeted to the earth this was necessary as the bomb was meant to penetrate the ground at high speeds and survive before exploding with its delay fuse the construction of the bomb was difficult and especially the filling process with torpek's was a timely affair as such these bombs were observed for exceptional targets only and crews unable to drop their payload in their heavily modified lancasters were instructed to return home with the payload rather than dropping it haphazardly as they would with normal bombs starting in 1944 towbays were specifically used against german harbors u-boat pens large bridges v1 and v2 rocket sites and were also responsible for the capsizing of the german battleship tirpitz however believe it or not tobay was only the second largest non-nuclear bomb used during world war ii the biggest you ask well that's the grand slam but before we talk about that beast here is a unique exhibit you can't find in many places right so i'm standing next to a nuclear bomb this is the we 177 type b bomb and it has an explosive capacity of 400 kilotons obviously it's been disarmed but it is only one of two that are on display in the united kingdom so if you want to see one of these come down to the yorkshire air museum and check it out now this particular weapon was used in planes like the vulcan the buccadier and the scimitar and size-wise it doesn't is it isn't that impressive but obviously with it being a h-bomb it really gets the job done now the one thing that is pretty cool here in york is that i can show you how to set this particular kind of weapon that's what i'm going to do right now on second fought the kind folks over at youtube would probably lose their collective schnitzels if i showed you how to arm a nuclear bomb so here's someone on a bike and an raf rescue pigeon that should be advertiser friendly no a big thank you at this point to all my patrons that support our channel with their monthly contributions in the face of continuing youtube demonetizations if you want to support military aviation history check out the description below [Music] there's a field [Music] coming in what do we have scott we have uh cluster 80 600 pound bombs so these are bombs with many bombs inside of bombs with bombs like the first world war and things like that yeah i think we signed a treaty that stopped us from using these a good few years ago as well now there are museums there were all sorts of demonstrations going on at the against the order events just like this one here ever wanted to know how bombs get disarmed well here was a man you needed to listen to even so sometimes you get what's called a retrograde explosion and the main charge only partially exposes so it's not only common to find a bomb it's only half gone off or if you wanted to have a look at some of the vintage equipment used during the time well you could have talked to the paras there was also the reenactment of an original bomber crew briefing that was going on and if you want to be a little bit more practical well do you fancy yourself a good shot check out the defensive gunner simulator my cameraman and ex-service squaddy unsurprisingly beat me hands down oh well i'll stay in a cockpit for now [Music] so [Applause] and here we've got some of the friendly chaps that featured in an earlier video showing off world war ii bomber crew gear we even managed to get them to occupy their positions in the museum's halifax which was pretty cool so you've seen the tallboy but what about its bigger meaner and more powerful cousin well if you really want something blown up get a grand slam the principle behind the grand slam is exactly the same as the tourboy it's an earthquake bomb with a near miss being considered potentially better than a direct hit set at 22 000 pounds or 10 000 kilograms this represents the biggest non-nuclear bomb of world war ii it is filled with an explosive charge of nine thousand pounds four thousand kilograms in fact after filling the bomb with molten torpex the explosive content it had to rest multiple weeks to cool and set before the construction could finish reaching the squadrons in early 1945 only 42 grand slams were ever dropped while not every mission produced results it was successfully used against various sub-pens and large vehicle bridges especially the inconvenient profile of bridges long and narrow made them hard to damage with conventional bomb but with one of these buggers a near-miss was good enough as an interesting side note american president truman actually measured the yield of the nuclear bomb dropped on hiroshima not in kilotons but in grand slams saying that little boy had more than 2 000 times the blast power of the british grand slam if you enjoyed this video make sure to share and to support us on patreon as always have a great day good hunting and see you in the sky you

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 792,941

Rating: 4.8597636 out of 5

Keywords: Grand Slam, Tallboy, WW2, Bombing, Halifax, Museum, RAF, Strategic

Id: 1kCes13DLG4

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Berzerkerlord]

"loose their collective schnitzel" :D

[u/ExplosiveDisassembly]

EISENHOWER- "Our bombing accuracy is horrid. We can't hit shit and we are dropping literally thousands of bombs"

Engineer- " I have an idea. What if we...try to miss.... And just make the bomb massive"

[u/Octoploppy]

Gib now plz.