I had the honour as an engineering apprentice to meet Barnes Wallace. He also designed the Wellington bomber, the Bouncing Bomb that destroyed several German dams and many other innovative items. He was a quiet, warm-hearted man and so very easy to talk to. One of England's greatest engineers and an absolute gentleman.
When I was at school in England in the 60s Barnes Wallis visited and following the showing of The Dambusters film he gave a talk on his work followed by a Q and A session. A very amiable and interesting speaker and a privilege for us pupils to be in the audience of this brilliant engineer and inventor.
Nice. It's also worth noting that the Tallboy and Grand Slam were the brainchild of Barnes Wallace, who also designed the Upkeep mine used in the dam-busting raid in May 1943. The manufacture of the Tallboy and Grand Slam involved pouring tons of molten explosive into the bomb casing. I think this was done very carefully. Each Grand Slam had to be left for an entire week to cool down and allow the explosive to thoroughly solidify.
allegrofanasy Did you know also the US was manufacturing Tall Boys and Grand Slams for the Brits ??? and Post WWII UK received 100 B29 bombers so the Brits would have an atomic capable LONG rang bomber that could get above 20,000 Ft ??? Post WWII the US developed a T12 44,500 pound SUPER blockbuster bomb and dropped it from 25,000Ft from a B29 !!!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142Some models of the Lincoln were capable of flying above 30,000ft with a nuclear weapon but being unpressurised this was “uncomfortable”. They were used for test drops in Australia to develop ballistic data for the V-Bomber sights in the early 1950’s.
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Lincolns were in squadron service in 1945. They were initially known as Lancaster IV and V. The first squadrons were on route to Asia in August 1945. The most extreme examples were the six turboprop Lincolns used in Australia for nuclear weapons ballistic tests.
A small correction; The Tallboy and the Grand Slam was not blockbusters. Blockbusters was thinwalled high capassity (4.000-8.000 pounds) high explosives, made to go of at ground level, thus blow out the walls of a whole block at once. Allso called the cookie, and went in a standard mix with 250 and 500 pound GP bombs, and incendiaries by RAF.
The Bloxkbuster range of High Capacity Blast Bombs ranged from 2000lb to 12,000lb weapons. The Halifax III normally carried 2 x 2000lb HC Bombs plus other stores. The Lancaster's normally carried either the 4000lb or 8000lb weapon, while a modified Lancaster was required for the 12,000lb weapon as it needed enlarged Bomb bay doors to get the weapon into the bomb bay. 617 Squadron were the first Squadron to use the 12,000lb HC bomb in September 1943 and were the major user of the weapon in the RAF until the Tallboy came into service in mid 1944.
@@richardvernon317 _The Halifax III normally carried 2 x 2000lb HC Bombs plus other stores._ Having looked at multiple ORBs for Halifax-equipped squadrons, 1 x 2,000-lb HC was the standard, with a mix of 30-lb and 4-lb incendiaries making up the rest of the load (on fire-raising missions). _The Lancaster's normally carried either the 4000lb or 8000lb weapon_ The 8,000-lb HC was infrequently used, and required Lancasters equipped with bulged bomb bay doors. While some 68,000 of the 4,000-lb HC bomb were dropped during the war, only 1,088 of the 8,000-lb were dropped, and just 193 of the 12,000-lb HC.
@@richardvernon317 Some Mosquitos could carry the 4000 lb "Cookie" blockbuster bomb, but they required more bulged bomb bay doors than the standard bomber Mosquitos.
@@primmakinsofis614 Only read one Halifax III Squadron's records and 2X2000lb HC seemed to be standard for that unit who were doing G-H attacks on oil targets.
Excellent insight and research. You're doing a great job keeping history alive and the memories of all concerned in its creation. Thanks a lot. Colin UK 🇬🇧
Another excellent factual and trustworthy presentation by WWII US Bombers. 33.4 K subscribers. This is well below what other RUclips commentators who are fast and loose with the facts achieve on WWII technologies. Even that ""Professor" Simon Holland, who makes stuff up as he goes along, has three times as many subscribers - a very sad commentary on the RUclips community. People want to be titillated, not informed.
In one RAF base in Lincolnshire, post-WW2 as a 'gate guardian' they placed a Tallboy casing visible to all who drove by on the main road. Many years later, the road outside the base was being widened, so the Tallboy had to be moved. It could not be budged by the crane. It turned out to still be 'full' of Torpex and in theory 'live', whereupon it was eventually taken away for safe detonation.
That sounds unbelievable... but being an American service member I can say if you guys are like us you'll put live shit anywhere and everywhere from land nav courses to active office buildings .
This is completely true. It was Scampton. I saw it a few times. Had it detonated, then depending on the weather at the time, an awful lot of Lincolnshire would have been damaged!
It was the Grand slam on the gate that had the filling in it. They found it was live when trying to move it in 1958 when the A15 Road was being widened. The Lancaster on the gate at the time is now in the RAF Museum at Hendon.
I absolutely admire this work as a whole. If only it could be just a bit slower in presentation, since I find myself quite often in replay mode to read stuff. Really my one & only observation as to possible improvement !
Thank you for posting this video. I had never heard that any B-29s were considered for carrying either the Tallboy or Grandslam. So this is an interesting topic and discussion.
@ClimateScepticSceptic-ub2rg In The Dambusters book by Paul Brickhill, he mentions a German who survived inside the pens because he was inside a steel overhead crane cabin during the bombing.
Very nice video regarding the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs of World War II. Both of these bombs were the brainchild of English engineer Barnes Neville Wallis, who is more famous for his bouncing bombs used during the dam busting raids by 617 Squadruon flying modified Lancaster bombers. The U.S. adopted the Tallboy and the Grand Slam into its arsenals where these were carried by modified B-29 Superfortresses. A further American development that was applied to the 12,000 lb Tallboy bomb was when a radio guidance system was implemented. These became known as the 12,000 lb Tarzan bombs. These were intended to be used against Japan, but the war ended before they were ready to be deployed. They were used briefly in the Korean War but were withdrawn from service in 1951.
There's a picture of a B29 carrying 2 of those large bombs on a special rack on it's belly, one on each side of the fuselage just off center, I think I remember the caption saying they were Grand Slams but I don't think, I can't see one lifting 44,000 lbs or whatever their combined weight would be, I'd say 2 Tall Boys would be about the limit for that although I could be wrong, it might be 2 Grand Slams, but I couldn't imagine a runway on any of those south Pacific islands long enough to get one off the ground, in an interview Paul Tibbets said that when they started dropping dummy atomic bombs to practice for the missions the runway where they were testing in the states was made to the same length as the one on Tinian and had a gravel trap at the end of it, the engineers at Boeing told him it would take every inch to get one off the ground, when he took off the first time he got the B29 he was flying off the ground just as the end of the runway disappeared under the glass nose of the cockpit, after he flew that practice mission he went and looked at the end of the runway and about the first 6 inches of the gravel trap had tire marks in it, man, talk about close, so to get those B29's off the ground with even just one Grand Slam bomb I think the combat engineers would have had to lengthen a couple of those islands by at least few feet, unless since the missions were scheduled for September or later after the bombs had been obtained they planned on having an operational runway on Okinawa where length wasn't an issue, because the islands like Guam and Iwo Jima had runways that were limited to the size of the islands, I knew a guy who was a B29 crewman on Guam and he said they had their fingers crossed on every take off and that they were the scariest part of every mission, at a certain point down the runway there was a flag on each side, they marked the "point of no return" and once they reached them they were forbidden to attempt an abort because they'd never get one stopped before the end of the runway, all that would happen is they'd wreck and jam up the runway making it impossible to get the rest of them into the sky, once they reached those flags no matter what they were to keep their throttles wide open and keep going, the end of the runway was a 30 or 40 foot cliff that dropped straight down to the sea, he said as soon as they'd get off the ground and about the time you felt like cheering they were passing over 3 or 4 of them that didn't make it and were at the bottom of the sea right there just beyond the end of the runway where it's shallow enough to see them, then you didn't feel like cheering you felt bad for thinking about yourself because those B29's contained friends of their's, since there was a war on and they had better things to do the Navy diver's didn't have time to come and remove their bodies. A little known fact is that the steel casings of all those Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs were made in the US at a steel mill in I believe Noth Carolina, they were made from a special steel that I'm sure the British were capable of making but were probably at their limit making special steel already at their facility's that could do it.
Tarzon was a 12,000lb weapon based on the Tallboy the name came from TAllboy, Range and Azimuth ONly. The weapon was used operationally in Korea with 30 sorties being flown, 28 bombs were released of which only 6 hit the target due to technical failures in the guidance system.
@@richardvernon317 You are correct. The Tallboy was used in the Tarzon instead of the Grand Slam. Makes more sense that the B-29 could carry two Tallboy bombs. The ASM-A-1 Tarzon, also known as VB-13, was a guided bomb developed by the United States Army Air Forces during the late 1940s. Mating the guidance system of the earlier Razon radio-controlled weapon with a British Tallboy 12,000-pound (5,400 kg) bomb, the ASM-A-1 saw brief operational service in the Korean War before being withdrawn from service in 1951.
Great video thanks - The names 'Tall Boy' and 'Grand Slam' were fairly well known to me, as 'big bombs from WWII', but the precise details were not, and it is very interesting to finally understand exactly what they meant. Cheers! :)
I live I Derbyshire UK near where training for the dams raid and sir sir barnes wallis was born I have had a keen interest in upkeep tall boy and grand slam bomb I find it amazing how there is very little information from UK on RUclips about the grand slam and tall boy I must thank you for making a very informative film I have lernt more today Thanks from UK,
Super awesome work! Love this channel. We (USAF) still use tritonal in some older GP weapons like M117, Mk82 and Mk84 bomb bodies. It is pronounced “trite-toe-null”, not “tri-tonal”. 😊
With Google maps you can see craters from near misses with grand slam bombs on Tirpitz. One on land and another in shallow waters. Look for Tirpitz-platen.
@@RamonInNZ It took two goes to sink the Tirpitz with tallboys. But the ship was effectively a write off after the first raid, cumulative damage from that and earlier fleet air arm raids was too much. It was all the Kriegsmarine could do to limp it from Altafjord to Hakoya island near Tromso where it was finally sunk.
Its on U Tube , the British sent a Lancaster with the attack force to film the attack , you can see all the bombs that exploded , the first one dropped was a direct hit !
you wouldnt live long enough to forget it. they hit Tirpitz with 3 of them and she rolled over. Bismark by comparison took FOUR HUNDRED shell hits ranging from 8 inch to 16 inch. at one point Rodney had closed the range and was pumping 16 inch 2000 lb shells on a flat trajectory into Bismark, then fired a 24 inch diameter torpedo into them and still the Bismark wouldn't go down.
@@MrSGL21 The problem with Bismarck was that 16" and 14" shells only leave a small hole in the outer hull and explode deep within the ship. You really need torpedoes to make big holes and sink a battleship quickly, but it was blowing a full gale with huge waves and torpedoes don't always go straight in those conditions, also Bismarck was yawing about randomly. Most of the torpedoes the British ships fired at her missed. But she was listing badly and down at the stern even before the German crew attempted to scuttle her and the Dorsetshire put the final 3 fish into her. She was probably going to sink eventually even before that.
The HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) antitank rounds the UK used for awhile had a similar idea-blow off chunks of the tanks' interior armor to kill the crew.
I think Barnes Wallis designed (and hoped!) that Tallboy bombs were concrete penetrating bombs, as evinced by penetration through the 30ft thick roofs of the U boats pens at Lorient in 1945? Grand Slam was a near miss action earthquake bomb, for example the effects on the Bielefeld viaduct and V bomb V3 gun control centre at Mimoyeques in northern France.
Nope, the weapon concept was thought up in 1940/41 to attack Dams and Coal Mines. Neither weapon was designed to hit a hardened target directly, but to be dropped in very close proximity and damage the target by earth shock. Tallboy was used to attack ships and Dykes / Canal banks / Barrages on rivers / Bridges and Tunnels with great success. Hardened Structures it wasn't so effective in taking out and the attacks on dams using it were not effective.
Expect for those that went right through and those that burst inside the ship. Maybe these also contributed to the flooding and capsizing, just an idea.
philiphumphrey Of the 71 tall boys dropped on the Tirpitz only 2 scored a direct hit and one was close enough to cause damage, BUT 5 Lancaster bombers were lost and many bombs missed their target by 5 miles !!!! The woods near where the Tirpitz was moored is today full of large ponds cause by the craters made by Tallboys missing the targets and filling with water !!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Indeed, the second dambusters raid on Tirpitz was probably unnecessary. The cumulative damage done by the first raid and the earlier fleet air arm attack by Fairy Barracudas was enough to render Tirpitz no longer an effective fighting unit and well beyond the resources of the Kriegsmarine in 1944/45 to repair. It was all they could do to move it at reduced speed from Kaafjord back to Tromso. But Churchill was obsessed with sinking it.
Being able to say the bomb could achieve supersonic speed sounds good in a video but climbing to the bomb release altitude where this is true makes the bomb less accurate. What was the normal release altitude? Did the developers feel supersonic speed provided any advantage?
14,000 to 16,000 feet for the Tallboys dropped on the Jan. 12, 1945, mission to Bergen. 13,000 to 14,000 feet for the Tallboys dropped on the Feb. 3, 1945, mission to Poortershaven.
@@primmakinsofis614 True as the singe stage supercharger on the Merlin 20 series struggled to get much higher, and bomb accuracy went down the higher they went, those pesky winds at altitude blowing in different directions !!!
No mention of near miss damage - the idea was to near miss and undermine the foundations of the concrete structures "camouflet ". One near miss on a submarine pen lifted the moored subs out of the water and slammed them across the concrete docks. I have the book detailing that raid, and the after-action photos somewhere in my garage.
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Nearly all bomb aiming during WWII sucked, the Brits DID have one squadron that could drop accurately though; and they were the guys dropping these things. These bombs werent meant to make up for poor aiming, they needed some of the most precise aiming to work as intended; I suggest you do a little more reading on the subject.
@@ianemery2925 Wilbur is a troll, he is not interested in learning more about the subject and is completely impossible to convince he is wrong. I've run into him before.
Thank you for this fascinating research. Were there many Japanese facilities strongly fortified enough to require these monsters, as opposed to conventional raids?
Apparently not. There is no mention of any such constructions in the multi-volume civilian bomber effectiveness report commissioned by the US President and compiled immediately upon the end of the war. This is consistent with Japan's approach to the war generally. Unlike the USA, Britain, and Germany, Japan largely did not expect retaliation (Japanese leaders were amazingly dumb, and expected the Pearl Harbour attack to cause the USA to sue for peace) and did not react to enemy technical and policy developments. At war's end they were still trying to fight with the methods and technologies they had at the start. The Japanese reactions that did occur were ineffective acts of desperation, such as navy ships setting out without enough fuel, and kamikaze aircraft attacks. Occupation troops (US and Australian troops) in Japan after surrender were required to destroy munitions, navy ships, and military equipment and facilities of all kinds. I've seen no record of hardened facilities like the German U-boat pens or underground German factories.
Likely targets in Japan would be bridges and viaducts using the earthquake effects to bring down the bridge piers as conventional bombs were ineffective.
My understanding is the Lancaster wasn't powerful enough to fly at the altitude Dr Wallis designed the grand slam to released at. It would be interesting to know which altitude the B29 would be using?
comikdebris. The fact is all Lancasters Mk BI & BIII Used the Merlin 20 series engines and they were single stage 2 speed supercharged and at full load struggled to get to 20,000 FT !!! NO Lancaster during WWII used the LATER 60 series 2 STAGE 2 SPEED merlins, B29's had no problem getting to 30,000 Ft with full bomb load as they were 2 stage supercharged with a turbocharger feeding the Mechanical superchargers and later versions like used in the Silverplate B29's used fuel injection rather than a carburator !!!
The ability of the RAF to modify the Lanc to handle unconventional ordinance is due to the difference in design philosophy between British and US aviation designers. A long shallow bomb bay versus a short tall bomb bay with the bombs stacked.
I have always thought that US WWII aircraft could not carry the big British bombs due to not having the long bomb bay of the Lanc. But one learns something every day. This video shows that a B-29 could be modified to do so - but it appeared not an ideal solution. Still, the Lanc was not ideal either. Unlike the B-29 it could not fly high enough to avoid ack-ack.
@@keithammleter3824 Barnes Wallis had originally proposed a high altitude heavy bomber to carry the Tallboy and Grand Slam to a release altitude of around 40,000 ft. It was not proceeded with due to the pressure on the British Aviation Industry caused by the needs of war production once it was realised that the Lancaster could be modified to carry it, all be it at a lower altitude.
@@tonym480 : Yes, the 6-engine 47 tonne gross weight Victory Bomber, which the Germans would have had a lot of trouble shooting down. For comparison the Lanc was 24 tonne and the B-29 about 50 tonne. He had Buckley's chance of getting the stick in the mud Air Ministry and RAF to buy that. although it appears to have been doable. He proposed the Grand Slam and the Victory Bomber in 1941, but neither were wanted by the stick-in-muds until Bomber Harris wanted something to wreck German submarine pens, and by then the Lanc with improved engines and other changes could deliver it - just, at considerable risk to aircrew.
@@paulmcneil9971 And the source of your information is? 1. B-29's had 2 short bomb bays, because when the final requirements were set out in 1939, nobody in the USA had thought individual bombs would go over 500 Lb, and nuclear bombs had not been thought of. The USAAF just wanted a bomber with about 3000 miles range and fly high enough to avoid flak 2. The B-29 was modified Silverplate standard in a quite simple change to the bomb bays, plus improved engines, plus removal of defensive guns and armour - no way could you expect that to cost similar to Manhattan. 3. The first generation of nuclear bombs eg Fatman & Little Boy dropped on Japan were quite short bombs about 3.0 - 3.3 metres long 4. The entire cost of each Project Silverplate B-29 (the version designed to carry nuclear bombs) was $814,000 - far far below the cost of the Manhattan Project, and only about $32,000 above the cost of a standard B-29. 5. The cost to the US taxpayers for the design, testing and manufacturer of the ENTIRE fleet of B-29's (nearly 4,000 aircraft) of all variations was of similar order to the Manhattan Project.
AIUI, the enormous mass, shape and spin from the tail fins meant that both these bombs could be dropped with for the time remarkable accuracy, there were, along with Barnes Wallis' Upkeep (Dambuster) and Highball (anti-ship mine) the prototype precision weapons in a 'dumb' age. The RAF didn't have proper smart bombs until trialling some in the Falklands War in 1982.
In all the time I've watched your excellent channel I've never had cause to make a comment about your delivery, but today you said RPM's instead of RPM. This is a bit like saying nucular instead of nuclear... otherwise it was, as usual, a really good video on a very interesting topic. Thanks!
Not similar at all; one is usage, the other pronunciation. It's more like attorneys general but that's not a good analogy either since AG is the abbreviation and AGs the plural.
wesguemmer Post WW II the USA GAVE the Brits 100 B29's so they would have an ATOMIC capable long range High altitude bomber, as they had nothing even close and they used them until their jet V Bombers were developed !!!
Barnes Wallace book is fascinating. He came up with the idea of Grandslam before WW2 started, he could see a bomb would be needed that could destroy infrastructure.
At 13:07 in the paragraph "c" it says that the circular error from 30,000 feet altitude was 8.1 mils. How was that value calculated? As a function of altitude, distance to the target or the bomb's trajectory lengths?
I’m guessing these bombs would have been useful against underground defence tunnel systems as met in the pacific islands, and for that matter Vietnam. I’m thinking just a few of these scattered across where you suspect the enemy tunnel complexes were would collapse the lot.
I recall seeing some photos of U-boat pens where the roof was flat, but under it were heavily sloped barriers. They were judged totally impenetrable by any weapons of the time.
11:03 ''...to make sure the bomb does not ricochet...'' I cannot imagine an almost supersonic, 22000 lb, 26 ft long tallboy ricochet! If that had happened on a U-Boat pen, half of Brest would have been demolished!
Very interesting as usual. Interesting to see that USA was expecting deliveries of these bombs from the British. I heard on another channel that many of those used in Europe were actuly manufactured in USA, so it seems strange that the Americans wouldn't use home built ones. Any views on this?
Crabby Yes !!!! The US did build and supply both the Grand slam and the Tall boy to the Brits, like most war material built under lend lease for the Brits, Yes it seems foolish to ship those huge bombs to UK then ship them back !!!! May have been a timing thing !!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 even the timing sounds a bit off. Although they were designed and originally sourced from UK, I've heard most were actually manufactured in the US. By the time they needed them for the invasion of japan, it wouldn't make sense to ship them across the Atlantic and back when Japan is in the opposite direction and U boats were still a threat, albeit diminished by that time. I suppose one scenario that would make sense would be that the US was tooling up for the perceived endgame in japan, and ironically didn't have the capacity to turn out more of the larger bombs as well as all of the smaller stuff they needed most of. Maybe just the range shortening made it too difficult, or maybe plans for the A bomb were advanced enough to rule out more big bomb production. Or something else entirely. Would be interesting to know what were the reason(s) though.
So flying high can get the free fall dump bombs supersonic and a greater chance of burrowing deeper holes outside of the target area. Well, I fail to see the point behind this.
wallaces idea was that the bomb would shatter the intended targets foundations< and cause its collapse. hence the nickname " earthquake bomb " .ps it was extremely effective
@@jimsmith7212 True. The Lancaster could only go to 18 to 20K feet with those bombs, however the B29 should be able to carry them to a much higher altitude if needed, and I was wondering if there was data on those altitudes.
@@beverlychmelik5504 I don't know, but I do know that apparently because of the erratic wind over Japan the original high altitude bombing with B-29s was deemed less than ideal, so B-29s were ordered to fly at much lower altitudes, to the horror of the air crews. I think I remember that on some Lancaster Tall boy or Grand Slam missions in Europe the altitude was not needed for full effect so they flew lower for better accuracy.
@@jimsmith7212 WWII taught the USAAF a lot about jet stream winds at altitude, something new as they had not been that high before, and they blew at different directions at different altitudes making accuracy of dumb bombs impossible!!!
FWIW a 22k pound Grand Slam is going to handle high-latitude wind a lot better than 500-pound GP bombs are, and have a much higher kill radius just because of how much explosive is in it.@@jimsmith7212
Milliradians. it's an angular measurement that works out to 1m at 1000m. So at lower altitudes the spread will be smaller, at higher altitudes the spread is larger. It's similar to using "minute of angle" for measuring gun accuracy.
If they had used the Grand Slam or Tallboy over Japan, there would have been one primary target: Japan's rail infrastructure, especially the tunnels. And possibly the hidden underground military factories near Yokosuka Naval Base.
They were used a bit in Korea, no? Against bridges iirc. I've wondered how useful the earthquake effect they might have been against Japanese mountain tunnel defensive positions.
Casing construction methods differed between the British and US designs if I am remembering correctly the US designs had fewer seams which could rupture either on impact or too early in the explosion cycle. Fusing setups may also have differed a bit. The British used 3 fuzes in the rear of the casing US may have varied a bit depending on when and where it would be dropped.
The proposed use of these bombs against Japan begs the question, what targets in Japan were intended? Certainly not the sort 20th AF was attacking. Maybe in the next video?
The operational range carrying the Tallboy would not have allowed many targets to be hit in Japan from Tinian. One wonders if there was additional work done to increase the range of the B29 to give more coverage to targets.
briancavanagh The B29 had a 3,000 mile Range @ 20,000# enough to hit anywhere in the lower half of Japan from Tinion and the other base, and they had another island closer that was used as an alternate for returning from a raid with damage or low fuel !!!
I heard that this small bomb bay was the reason for the delay for the atomic bomb over Japan, didn’t we offer the Lancaster as the carrier for the nuclear bomb. It wasn’t accepted because of the cruise night of the Lancaster being too low.
The proposed "thin man" atomic bomb needed a longer bomb bay and the silverplate B-29s were modified to carry it. In the end that weapon wasn't used and the little boy and fat man bombs fit into standard B-29 bomb bays. The long bomb bays were useful for the tallboy and grand slam testing though.
I wonder why the Americans did not use one of these bombs in the PTO once we realized that the Japanese had built so many tunnels under ground like in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Seems like it would have made short work of the enemy and would have save thousands of American Marines lives. Even if they had to wait a few weeks to ship it from theETO to the B-29's in the PTO.
Bielefeld Viaduct Bielefeld, Germany - Atlas Obscura "The damage to Germany’s war effort of this raid was actually minimal as a bypass route on earth embankments had already been constructed."
@@annoyingbstard9407 I do not think anyone would have needed a crystal ball, except for a few shite heels, to know the war would be over very soon. Italy was out in 43 and by the end of 44 all of the minor Axis powers and Finland were out. Germany had lost its sources of natural oil and after the USAAF had cleared the sky of German aircraft, USAAF and RAF heavies laid waste to synth oil production. Late 1944 German child soldiers were captured by the Western Allies. Nazi Germany : Every Month ruclips.net/video/dKjVG4nMQ9A/видео.html
I apologize. The B29 was carrying two GRAND SLAMS! i.redd.it/now-that-gaijin-has-given-the-b-29-its-4-000lb-bombs-should-v0-vgzc51zp5tma1.jpg?s=c77c089501d9adb750fe05fa12ec01cabfd787c2
@@RamonInNZ These were pics of the testing of dropping hardware. Carrying that load and the aerodynamic issues would lower the B29 range. Bombs that size would be moved by ship.
Do you have a source that says this works be creating an earthquake? Pretty sure that it works from sub terrain pressure wave [cavitation], not by shifting the earth under the building.
G'day, Yay Team ! Ah, mate, I'm about a minute in, and have paused to comment ; referring to a bit of a "Clanger" (British word for "blooper"...), apparently arising from a slight but significant diversion between Imperial/Colonial English & AmeriKan English...(?). Y'see, While both the Tallboy & Grand Slam were Indeed the BIG & BIGGEST of Bombs Used by the RAF, during the Second Phase of the Great Patriotic World War (!). And, whereas, in Norte ArmedmeriKano the common or vernacular meaning of "Blockbuster" Is simply "Really BIG !" ("Bigly"..., to the retarded !)...; In Imperial parlance, After the British moved on, from The "General Purpose" Bomb Of 100 or 250 or 500 Pounds ; when they began "Area Bombing" of Cities, specifically Aiming to "De-House The German Industrial Workers" by Targeting the Dormitory Suburbs, when Arthur Harris took the Reins, Special Purpose Bombs were designed. Blast Bombs, with thin Steel Skins, Cylindrical, with no Fins, Weighing 4,000 Pounds was called a "Cookie", used to break up Buildings with Shockwaves from High Explosive BLAST Overpressure. The first Waves of 4-engined Bombers in the Stream would have a Cookie each, with GP & Incendiary Cluster Bomblet Dispensers making up the available lift capacity for the Fuel-Load... Later Waves might have had less Cookies & more GPs & Incendiaries, and the final waves, often arriving after a bit of a Lull, had about 30% Anti-Personel Mines, to kill the Firefighters and Rescue Crews. After maybe a year (?), they began bolting 2 Cookies together, for 8,000 pounds of HE all in the one impact - intended Down to knock, An entire City BLOCK...; All in the one wave of Shock... And THAT, My learned Instructor..., was what they called, a "Block Buster" (of a) Bomb. The Tallboy (12,000 Pounds), And the Grand Slam (22,000 Pounds), were NOT "Blockbusters" Nor Block Busters...; They were Indeed Penetrators (Initially to go through Steel-Reinforced Concrete Roofs over Submarine Pens...) And, then, Earthquake Bombs...; Intended to be dropped Beside small high-value Hard to hit Targets, and then Shaking them to bits with Seismic Shockloading, from Below....! But, bottom line, Tallboy and Grand Slam were Not Block Buster Bombs. Such is life, Have a good one, Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
I am guessing that it would be down to it's aerodynamic shape and streamlining. For instance, a skydiver in a stable spread position will reach a certain velocity and will cease to accelerate. However, if that same skydiver alters their body shape (arms by the side of the body and legs straight and together) they will indeed begin to accelerate again. Therefore, one would imagine the bombs in question would be able to reach supersonic speeds (faster than the speed of sound) due to their shape and given sufficient altitude.
In theory the acceleration of gravity averages 9.8 meters per second/per second, in vacuum near the Earth's surface. After one second they had a velocity of 9.8m/s. After 2 seconds their velocity was 19.6m/s. After 3 seconds their velocity was 29.4m/s. 4 sec. >39.2m/s 5 sec. >49m/s Etc. In practice aerodynamic drag plays a big part, so they were dart shaped to mitigate the drag which determines terminal velocity, but the acceleration slowed down the longer they were in the air.
Simple. At the instant of release from the aircraft, the bomb's vertical speed is zero. It then accelerates at 9.8 additonal metres per second speed in each successive second after release, until air drag becomes significant. Ultimately, if dropped from sufficient height, it accelerates to a speed where air drag equals the downward force that results from gravity acting on its mass. Velocity is NOT uniform, it at first increases, then reaches a terminal velocity.
The Lanc should have been adopted as the heavy load 4 engine bomber and the Mosquito for everything else. Tens of thousands of lives lost because of the crews needed in B52s and Lancs.
I had the honour as an engineering apprentice to meet Barnes Wallace. He also designed the Wellington bomber, the Bouncing Bomb that destroyed several German dams and many other innovative items. He was a quiet, warm-hearted man and so very easy to talk to. One of England's greatest engineers and an absolute gentleman.
Met him when he did a slide show at Brooklands college, check out the Swallow plane
When I was at school in England in the 60s Barnes Wallis visited and following the showing of The Dambusters film he gave a talk on his work followed by a Q and A session. A very amiable and interesting speaker and a privilege for us pupils to be in the audience of this brilliant engineer and inventor.
As usual, a meticulous use of primary sources opens a fascinating window into this incredible period in world history. Congrats on the great work. 🤩
Yes, primary sources. That makes this channel pretty unique. 👍
Work of the amazing Barnes Wallis.
Nice.
It's also worth noting that the Tallboy and Grand Slam were the brainchild of Barnes Wallace, who also designed the Upkeep mine used in the dam-busting raid in May 1943.
The manufacture of the Tallboy and Grand Slam involved pouring tons of molten explosive into the bomb casing. I think this was done very carefully.
Each Grand Slam had to be left for an entire week to cool down and allow the explosive to thoroughly solidify.
B-29s and Grand Slams? I had no idea. Another wonderful video shining a forever light on almost-forgotten history and bravery.
allegrofanasy Did you know also the US was manufacturing Tall Boys and Grand Slams for the Brits ??? and Post WWII UK received 100 B29 bombers so the Brits would have an atomic capable LONG rang bomber that could get above 20,000 Ft ??? Post WWII the US developed a T12 44,500 pound SUPER blockbuster bomb and dropped it from 25,000Ft from a B29 !!!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142Some models of the Lincoln were capable of flying above 30,000ft with a nuclear weapon but being unpressurised this was “uncomfortable”.
They were used for test drops in Australia to develop ballistic data for the V-Bomber sights in the early 1950’s.
@@allangibson8494 Lincolns are a different plane, upgraded with larger 2 stage supercharged engines, and they were not around in 1945 !!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Lincolns were in squadron service in 1945. They were initially known as Lancaster IV and V.
The first squadrons were on route to Asia in August 1945.
The most extreme examples were the six turboprop Lincolns used in Australia for nuclear weapons ballistic tests.
@@allangibson8494 Lincolns were NOT Lancasters !!! DUUUUH!!!!!!!
A small correction; The Tallboy and the Grand Slam was not blockbusters. Blockbusters was thinwalled high capassity (4.000-8.000 pounds) high explosives, made to go of at ground level, thus blow out the walls of a whole block at once. Allso called the cookie, and went in a standard mix with 250 and 500 pound GP bombs, and incendiaries by RAF.
The Bloxkbuster range of High Capacity Blast Bombs ranged from 2000lb to 12,000lb weapons. The Halifax III normally carried 2 x 2000lb HC Bombs plus other stores. The Lancaster's normally carried either the 4000lb or 8000lb weapon, while a modified Lancaster was required for the 12,000lb weapon as it needed enlarged Bomb bay doors to get the weapon into the bomb bay. 617 Squadron were the first Squadron to use the 12,000lb HC bomb in September 1943 and were the major user of the weapon in the RAF until the Tallboy came into service in mid 1944.
@@richardvernon317 _The Halifax III normally carried 2 x 2000lb HC Bombs plus other stores._
Having looked at multiple ORBs for Halifax-equipped squadrons, 1 x 2,000-lb HC was the standard, with a mix of 30-lb and 4-lb incendiaries making up the rest of the load (on fire-raising missions).
_The Lancaster's normally carried either the 4000lb or 8000lb weapon_
The 8,000-lb HC was infrequently used, and required Lancasters equipped with bulged bomb bay doors. While some 68,000 of the 4,000-lb HC bomb were dropped during the war, only 1,088 of the 8,000-lb were dropped, and just 193 of the 12,000-lb HC.
@@richardvernon317
Some Mosquitos could carry the 4000 lb "Cookie" blockbuster bomb, but they required more bulged bomb bay doors than the standard bomber Mosquitos.
@@primmakinsofis614 Only read one Halifax III Squadron's records and 2X2000lb HC seemed to be standard for that unit who were doing G-H attacks on oil targets.
@@jerry2357 And they dropped less than a thousand off them between February 1944 and the end of the war.
Excellent insight and research. You're doing a great job keeping history alive and the memories of all concerned in its creation. Thanks a lot. Colin UK 🇬🇧
Again supreme work with primary sources. One of the best WW2 channels dealing with primary sources from the US there is
The shackle system for the Tallboys/Grand-Slams was also used on Fatman atomic bombs.
Interesting video; thank you!
Another excellent factual and trustworthy presentation by WWII US Bombers. 33.4 K subscribers. This is well below what other RUclips commentators who are fast and loose with the facts achieve on WWII technologies. Even that ""Professor" Simon Holland, who makes stuff up as he goes along, has three times as many subscribers - a very sad commentary on the RUclips community. People want to be titillated, not informed.
That's not a bad subscriber count compared to when I first subscribed. It's been growing, and that's good.
People want to be titillated, not informed.
very true especially these days.
In one RAF base in Lincolnshire, post-WW2 as a 'gate guardian' they placed a Tallboy casing visible to all who drove by on the main road. Many years later, the road outside the base was being widened, so the Tallboy had to be moved. It could not be budged by the crane. It turned out to still be 'full' of Torpex and in theory 'live', whereupon it was eventually taken away for safe detonation.
That sounds unbelievable... but being an American service member I can say if you guys are like us you'll put live shit anywhere and everywhere from land nav courses to active office buildings .
They still had one inside conningsby. I went there for a look round the BBMF a few years ago, and there was one near their hanger.
This is completely true. It was Scampton. I saw it a few times. Had it detonated, then depending on the weather at the time, an awful lot of Lincolnshire would have been damaged!
@@achitophel5852Encased munitions are very stable. Without a fuse they can be stored indefinitely. However, I agree, this was a "royal screw up."
It was the Grand slam on the gate that had the filling in it. They found it was live when trying to move it in 1958 when the A15 Road was being widened. The Lancaster on the gate at the time is now in the RAF Museum at Hendon.
I absolutely admire this work as a whole. If only it could be just a bit slower in presentation, since I find myself quite often in replay mode to read stuff. Really my one & only observation as to possible improvement !
Yes...I paused the video quite often to thoroughly read the pages and consider the photos.
Thank you for posting this video. I had never heard that any B-29s were considered for carrying either the Tallboy or Grandslam. So this is an interesting topic and discussion.
The USA were contracted to build both weapons for the British.
could you imagine what it must have been like to witness the Sub Pens taking those hits?
Especially from the inside. Though that would be a very brief experience.
Pretty unimpressive, probably, since these were deep penetration earthquake bombs
@@PORRRIDGE_GUN clearly you didn't look at the pictures of the impacts.
@ClimateScepticSceptic-ub2rg In The Dambusters book by Paul Brickhill, he mentions a German who survived inside the pens because he was inside a steel overhead crane cabin during the bombing.
Please note the American T-12 cloudmaker, 43,000 lb bomb, to be carried by the B-36 in 1957.
albersidney... The T12 was tested in a B29 and dropped from 25,000 ft, it made a huge BOOOOOOOOOMMM !!!!
Very nice video regarding the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs of World War II. Both of these bombs were the brainchild of English engineer Barnes Neville Wallis, who is more famous for his bouncing bombs used during the dam busting raids by 617 Squadruon flying modified Lancaster bombers. The U.S. adopted the Tallboy and the Grand Slam into its arsenals where these were carried by modified B-29 Superfortresses. A further American development that was applied to the 12,000 lb Tallboy bomb was when a radio guidance system was implemented. These became known as the 12,000 lb Tarzan bombs. These were intended to be used against Japan, but the war ended before they were ready to be deployed. They were used briefly in the Korean War but were withdrawn from service in 1951.
There's a picture of a B29 carrying 2 of those large bombs on a special rack on it's belly, one on each side of the fuselage just off center, I think I remember the caption saying they were Grand Slams but I don't think, I can't see one lifting 44,000 lbs or whatever their combined weight would be, I'd say 2 Tall Boys would be about the limit for that although I could be wrong, it might be 2 Grand Slams, but I couldn't imagine a runway on any of those south Pacific islands long enough to get one off the ground, in an interview Paul Tibbets said that when they started dropping dummy atomic bombs to practice for the missions the runway where they were testing in the states was made to the same length as the one on Tinian and had a gravel trap at the end of it, the engineers at Boeing told him it would take every inch to get one off the ground, when he took off the first time he got the B29 he was flying off the ground just as the end of the runway disappeared under the glass nose of the cockpit, after he flew that practice mission he went and looked at the end of the runway and about the first 6 inches of the gravel trap had tire marks in it, man, talk about close, so to get those B29's off the ground with even just one Grand Slam bomb I think the combat engineers would have had to lengthen a couple of those islands by at least few feet, unless since the missions were scheduled for September or later after the bombs had been obtained they planned on having an operational runway on Okinawa where length wasn't an issue, because the islands like Guam and Iwo Jima had runways that were limited to the size of the islands, I knew a guy who was a B29 crewman on Guam and he said they had their fingers crossed on every take off and that they were the scariest part of every mission, at a certain point down the runway there was a flag on each side, they marked the "point of no return" and once they reached them they were forbidden to attempt an abort because they'd never get one stopped before the end of the runway, all that would happen is they'd wreck and jam up the runway making it impossible to get the rest of them into the sky, once they reached those flags no matter what they were to keep their throttles wide open and keep going, the end of the runway was a 30 or 40 foot cliff that dropped straight down to the sea, he said as soon as they'd get off the ground and about the time you felt like cheering they were passing over 3 or 4 of them that didn't make it and were at the bottom of the sea right there just beyond the end of the runway where it's shallow enough to see them, then you didn't feel like cheering you felt bad for thinking about yourself because those B29's contained friends of their's, since there was a war on and they had better things to do the Navy diver's didn't have time to come and remove their bodies.
A little known fact is that the steel casings of all those Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs were made in the US at a steel mill in I believe Noth Carolina, they were made from a special steel that I'm sure the British were capable of making but were probably at their limit making special steel already at their facility's that could do it.
Tarzon was a 12,000lb weapon based on the Tallboy the name came from TAllboy, Range and Azimuth ONly. The weapon was used operationally in Korea with 30 sorties being flown, 28 bombs were released of which only 6 hit the target due to technical failures in the guidance system.
@@richardvernon317 You are correct. The Tallboy was used in the Tarzon instead of the Grand Slam. Makes more sense that the B-29 could carry two Tallboy bombs. The ASM-A-1 Tarzon, also known as VB-13, was a guided bomb developed by the United States Army Air Forces during the late 1940s. Mating the guidance system of the earlier Razon radio-controlled weapon with a British Tallboy 12,000-pound (5,400 kg) bomb, the ASM-A-1 saw brief operational service in the Korean War before being withdrawn from service in 1951.
Great video thanks - The names 'Tall Boy' and 'Grand Slam' were fairly well known to me, as 'big bombs from WWII', but the precise details were not, and it is very interesting to finally understand exactly what they meant. Cheers! :)
I live I Derbyshire UK near where training for the dams raid and sir sir barnes wallis was born I have had a keen interest in upkeep tall boy and grand slam bomb I find it amazing how there is very little information from UK on RUclips about the grand slam and tall boy I must thank you for making a very informative film I have lernt more today
Thanks from UK,
Super awesome work! Love this channel. We (USAF) still use tritonal in some older GP weapons like M117, Mk82 and Mk84 bomb bodies. It is pronounced “trite-toe-null”, not “tri-tonal”. 😊
Excellent video as aways!
The short answer: You really never do hear the one that kills you.
With Google maps you can see craters from near misses with grand slam bombs on Tirpitz. One on land and another in shallow waters. Look for Tirpitz-platen.
They have these out on display at both the Yorkshire Air Museum and RAF Conningsby’s BBMF Museum, with a Halifax and Lancaster respectively.
Just imagine that thing (Tallboy) hitting your ship at 'Warp-Speed' and after that shock it happened again! That's a sight you'd never forget.
The Tallboys went through Tirpitz detonated on the harbour floor and the shockwaves broke her keel and bent a large area of her hull!
@@RamonInNZ It took two goes to sink the Tirpitz with tallboys. But the ship was effectively a write off after the first raid, cumulative damage from that and earlier fleet air arm raids was too much. It was all the Kriegsmarine could do to limp it from Altafjord to Hakoya island near Tromso where it was finally sunk.
Its on U Tube , the British sent a Lancaster with the attack force to film the attack , you can see all the bombs that exploded , the first one dropped was a direct hit !
you wouldnt live long enough to forget it. they hit Tirpitz with 3 of them and she rolled over. Bismark by comparison took FOUR HUNDRED shell hits ranging from 8 inch to 16 inch. at one point Rodney had closed the range and was pumping 16 inch 2000 lb shells on a flat trajectory into Bismark, then fired a 24 inch diameter torpedo into them and still the Bismark wouldn't go down.
@@MrSGL21 The problem with Bismarck was that 16" and 14" shells only leave a small hole in the outer hull and explode deep within the ship. You really need torpedoes to make big holes and sink a battleship quickly, but it was blowing a full gale with huge waves and torpedoes don't always go straight in those conditions, also Bismarck was yawing about randomly. Most of the torpedoes the British ships fired at her missed. But she was listing badly and down at the stern even before the German crew attempted to scuttle her and the Dorsetshire put the final 3 fish into her. She was probably going to sink eventually even before that.
Instead of many tallboys in Japan only one Little Boy was needed.
And a Fat Man.
I saw what you did there..
@@vcv6560 ... what he did there? I saw it.
And a Fat Man
And a fat man
Nice job as usual.
Interesting that what they called "scabbing" in W.W. II sounds like the effect we call "spalling" when armored vehicles take a hit.
The HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) antitank rounds the UK used for awhile had a similar idea-blow off chunks of the tanks' interior armor to kill the crew.
I think Barnes Wallis designed (and hoped!) that Tallboy bombs were concrete penetrating bombs, as evinced by penetration through the 30ft thick roofs of the U boats pens at Lorient in 1945? Grand Slam was a near miss action earthquake bomb, for example the effects on the Bielefeld viaduct and V bomb V3 gun control centre at Mimoyeques in northern France.
Nope, the weapon concept was thought up in 1940/41 to attack Dams and Coal Mines. Neither weapon was designed to hit a hardened target directly, but to be dropped in very close proximity and damage the target by earth shock. Tallboy was used to attack ships and Dykes / Canal banks / Barrages on rivers / Bridges and Tunnels with great success. Hardened Structures it wasn't so effective in taking out and the attacks on dams using it were not effective.
What about the T-12? It was meant to be used in the b-36. Supposedly, a b-29 was modified to carry one for testing.
A weapon that worked best when it missed the target. Even with the Tirpitz, it was the near misses caused the capsize and sinking.
Expect for those that went right through and those that burst inside the ship. Maybe these also contributed to the flooding and capsizing, just an idea.
A near miss moved the shingle underneath the ship so it could capsize. Without this it would have just sat level on the fjord bottom.
@@ericadams3428 Yes but without the penetrations caused by the direct hits it would not have capsized.
philiphumphrey Of the 71 tall boys dropped on the Tirpitz only 2 scored a direct hit and one was close enough to cause damage, BUT 5 Lancaster bombers were lost and many bombs missed their target by 5 miles !!!! The woods near where the Tirpitz was moored is today full of large ponds cause by the craters made by Tallboys missing the targets and filling with water !!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Indeed, the second dambusters raid on Tirpitz was probably unnecessary. The cumulative damage done by the first raid and the earlier fleet air arm attack by Fairy Barracudas was enough to render Tirpitz no longer an effective fighting unit and well beyond the resources of the Kriegsmarine in 1944/45 to repair. It was all they could do to move it at reduced speed from Kaafjord back to Tromso. But Churchill was obsessed with sinking it.
I have seen a picture of Grandslams mounted under the wings of a B-29.
Kjakk nthey were TALL BOYS !!!
I've been waiting for this one.
Being able to say the bomb could achieve supersonic speed sounds good in a video but climbing to the bomb release altitude where this is true makes the bomb less accurate. What was the normal release altitude? Did the developers feel supersonic speed provided any advantage?
14,000 to 16,000 feet for the Tallboys dropped on the Jan. 12, 1945, mission to Bergen.
13,000 to 14,000 feet for the Tallboys dropped on the Feb. 3, 1945, mission to Poortershaven.
@@primmakinsofis614 True as the singe stage supercharger on the Merlin 20 series struggled to get much higher, and bomb accuracy went down the higher they went, those pesky winds at altitude blowing in different directions !!!
No mention of near miss damage - the idea was to near miss and undermine the foundations of the concrete structures "camouflet ".
One near miss on a submarine pen lifted the moored subs out of the water and slammed them across the concrete docks.
I have the book detailing that raid, and the after-action photos somewhere in my garage.
The Brits had to use those huge bombs as their accuracy with bombs sucked, so the big bombs were "Close enough" !!!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Nearly all bomb aiming during WWII sucked, the Brits DID have one squadron that could drop accurately though; and they were the guys dropping these things.
These bombs werent meant to make up for poor aiming, they needed some of the most precise aiming to work as intended; I suggest you do a little more reading on the subject.
@@ianemery2925 Wilbur is a troll, he is not interested in learning more about the subject and is completely impossible to convince he is wrong. I've run into him before.
Thank you for this fascinating research.
Were there many Japanese facilities strongly fortified enough to require these monsters, as opposed to conventional raids?
Wondering that myself. I suppose a few train tunnels, Japan is very mountainous. Far as I know, they never moved factories underground.
Apparently not. There is no mention of any such constructions in the multi-volume civilian bomber effectiveness report commissioned by the US President and compiled immediately upon the end of the war.
This is consistent with Japan's approach to the war generally. Unlike the USA, Britain, and Germany, Japan largely did not expect retaliation (Japanese leaders were amazingly dumb, and expected the Pearl Harbour attack to cause the USA to sue for peace) and did not react to enemy technical and policy developments. At war's end they were still trying to fight with the methods and technologies they had at the start. The Japanese reactions that did occur were ineffective acts of desperation, such as navy ships setting out without enough fuel, and kamikaze aircraft attacks.
Occupation troops (US and Australian troops) in Japan after surrender were required to destroy munitions, navy ships, and military equipment and facilities of all kinds. I've seen no record of hardened facilities like the German U-boat pens or underground German factories.
@@keithammleter3824 Thank you very much for this comprehensive reply.
Likely targets in Japan would be bridges and viaducts using the earthquake effects to bring down the bridge piers as conventional bombs were ineffective.
No.
Excellent presentation, thanks.
My understanding is the Lancaster wasn't powerful enough to fly at the altitude Dr Wallis designed the grand slam to released at. It would be interesting to know which altitude the B29 would be using?
comikdebris. The fact is all Lancasters Mk BI & BIII Used the Merlin 20 series engines and they were single stage 2 speed supercharged and at full load struggled to get to 20,000 FT !!! NO Lancaster during WWII used the LATER 60 series 2 STAGE 2 SPEED merlins, B29's had no problem getting to 30,000 Ft with full bomb load as they were 2 stage supercharged with a turbocharger feeding the Mechanical superchargers and later versions like used in the Silverplate B29's used fuel injection rather than a carburator !!!
The T-12 Cloudmaker was a 44,000 pound bomb was based on the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs
You can see a “Tallboy” at the Brooklands Museum, Surrey, UK.
One of the curators there with a wicked sense of humour by placing a loud ticking alarm clock inside the casing and watching people’s reactions!!!!
The ability of the RAF to modify the Lanc to handle unconventional ordinance is due to the difference in design philosophy between British and US aviation designers. A long shallow bomb bay versus a short tall bomb bay with the bombs stacked.
I have always thought that US WWII aircraft could not carry the big British bombs due to not having the long bomb bay of the Lanc. But one learns something every day. This video shows that a B-29 could be modified to do so - but it appeared not an ideal solution. Still, the Lanc was not ideal either. Unlike the B-29 it could not fly high enough to avoid ack-ack.
@@keithammleter3824 Barnes Wallis had originally proposed a high altitude heavy bomber to carry the Tallboy and Grand Slam to a release altitude of around 40,000 ft. It was not proceeded with due to the pressure on the British Aviation Industry caused by the needs of war production once it was realised that the Lancaster could be modified to carry it, all be it at a lower altitude.
@@tonym480 : Yes, the 6-engine 47 tonne gross weight Victory Bomber, which the Germans would have had a lot of trouble shooting down. For comparison the Lanc was 24 tonne and the B-29 about 50 tonne. He had Buckley's chance of getting the stick in the mud Air Ministry and RAF to buy that. although it appears to have been doable. He proposed the Grand Slam and the Victory Bomber in 1941, but neither were wanted by the stick-in-muds until Bomber Harris wanted something to wreck German submarine pens, and by then the Lanc with improved engines and other changes could deliver it - just, at considerable risk to aircrew.
Don’t forget that the long bomb bay on the B29 was re-developed specifically for the atomic bombs at a cost matching the Manhattan project.
@@paulmcneil9971 And the source of your information is?
1. B-29's had 2 short bomb bays, because when the final requirements were set out in 1939, nobody in the USA had thought individual bombs would go over 500 Lb, and nuclear bombs had not been thought of. The USAAF just wanted a bomber with about 3000 miles range and fly high enough to avoid flak
2. The B-29 was modified Silverplate standard in a quite simple change to the bomb bays, plus improved engines, plus removal of defensive guns and armour - no way could you expect that to cost similar to Manhattan.
3. The first generation of nuclear bombs eg Fatman & Little Boy dropped on Japan were quite short bombs about 3.0 - 3.3 metres long
4. The entire cost of each Project Silverplate B-29 (the version designed to carry nuclear bombs) was $814,000 - far far below the cost of the Manhattan Project, and only about $32,000 above the cost of a standard B-29.
5. The cost to the US taxpayers for the design, testing and manufacturer of the ENTIRE fleet of B-29's (nearly 4,000 aircraft) of all variations was of similar order to the Manhattan Project.
AIUI, the enormous mass, shape and spin from the tail fins meant that both these bombs could be dropped with for the time remarkable accuracy, there were, along with Barnes Wallis' Upkeep (Dambuster) and Highball (anti-ship mine) the prototype precision weapons in a 'dumb' age. The RAF didn't have proper smart bombs until trialling some in the Falklands War in 1982.
In all the time I've watched your excellent channel I've never had cause to make a comment about your delivery, but today you said RPM's instead of RPM. This is a bit like saying nucular instead of nuclear... otherwise it was, as usual, a really good video on a very interesting topic. Thanks!
Not similar at all; one is usage, the other pronunciation. It's more like attorneys general but that's not a good analogy either since AG is the abbreviation and AGs the plural.
Could you please cover the use of the b29 by royal air force as the Washington
wesguemmer Post WW II the USA GAVE the Brits 100 B29's so they would have an ATOMIC capable long range High altitude bomber, as they had nothing even close and they used them until their jet V Bombers were developed !!!
Barnes Wallace book is fascinating.
He came up with the idea of Grandslam before WW2 started, he could see a bomb would be needed that could destroy infrastructure.
At 13:07 in the paragraph "c" it says that the circular error from 30,000 feet altitude was 8.1 mils. How was that value calculated? As a function of altitude, distance to the target or the bomb's trajectory lengths?
I would guess measuring the practical impact distances from the aim point for the 14 bombs and converting it into an angle.
*_"Say HELLO to my_* [not so] *_LITTLE FRIEND!"_* 😉
The tall boy was used in anti-armor role in the attacks on the Tirpitz
Great, thorough!
Tallboys finally got the Tirpitz.
I’m guessing these bombs would have been useful against underground defence tunnel systems as met in the pacific islands, and for that matter Vietnam. I’m thinking just a few of these scattered across where you suspect the enemy tunnel complexes were would collapse the lot.
I recall seeing some photos of U-boat pens where the roof was flat, but under it were heavily sloped barriers. They were judged totally impenetrable by any weapons of the time.
In the battle between amor and warhead the warhead always wins in the end. Even Cheyenne Mountain is not safe against a sufficiently powerful warhead.
11:03 ''...to make sure the bomb does not ricochet...''
I cannot imagine an almost supersonic, 22000 lb, 26 ft long tallboy ricochet!
If that had happened on a U-Boat pen, half of Brest would have been demolished!
Great videos. How about a discussion of the formations flown by 8th AF bombers?
...and maybe the evolution of 8th AF fighter tactics.
Very interesting as usual. Interesting to see that USA was expecting deliveries of these bombs from the British. I heard on another channel that many of those used in Europe were actuly manufactured in USA, so it seems strange that the Americans wouldn't use home built ones. Any views on this?
Crabby Yes !!!! The US did build and supply both the Grand slam and the Tall boy to the Brits, like most war material built under lend lease for the Brits, Yes it seems foolish to ship those huge bombs to UK then ship them back !!!! May have been a timing thing !!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 even the timing sounds a bit off. Although they were designed and originally sourced from UK, I've heard most were actually manufactured in the US. By the time they needed them for the invasion of japan, it wouldn't make sense to ship them across the Atlantic and back when Japan is in the opposite direction and U boats were still a threat, albeit diminished by that time. I suppose one scenario that would make sense would be that the US was tooling up for the perceived endgame in japan, and ironically didn't have the capacity to turn out more of the larger bombs as well as all of the smaller stuff they needed most of. Maybe just the range shortening made it too difficult, or maybe plans for the A bomb were advanced enough to rule out more big bomb production. Or something else entirely.
Would be interesting to know what were the reason(s) though.
I wonder if these could have been useful at collapsing some of the tunnels on places like Iwo Jima?
So flying high can get the free fall dump bombs supersonic and a greater chance of burrowing deeper holes outside of the target area. Well, I fail to see the point behind this.
wallaces idea was that the bomb would shatter the intended targets foundations< and cause its collapse. hence the nickname " earthquake bomb " .ps it was extremely effective
Any info on the proposed bombing altitude carrying these weapons?
Basically as high as a plane carrying them could fly.
@@jimsmith7212 True. The Lancaster could only go to 18 to 20K feet with those bombs, however the B29 should be able to carry them to a much higher altitude if needed, and I was wondering if there was data on those altitudes.
@@beverlychmelik5504
I don't know, but I do know that apparently because of the erratic wind over Japan the original high altitude bombing with B-29s was deemed less than ideal, so B-29s were ordered to fly at much lower altitudes, to the horror of the air crews.
I think I remember that on some Lancaster Tall boy or Grand Slam missions in Europe the altitude was not needed for full effect so they flew lower for better accuracy.
@@jimsmith7212 WWII taught the USAAF a lot about jet stream winds at altitude, something new as they had not been that high before, and they blew at different directions at different altitudes making accuracy of dumb bombs impossible!!!
FWIW a 22k pound Grand Slam is going to handle high-latitude wind a lot better than 500-pound GP bombs are, and have a much higher kill radius just because of how much explosive is in it.@@jimsmith7212
I cant remember which viaduct I went to but one of the craters is still there and is a pond in the park
Bielefeld Viaduct.
Excellent, thank you for posting!
Very interesting! I'd love to see a video on a comparison of the Tallboy/ Grand Slam with the US Disney Swish.
Disney Swish was a UK Weapon developed by the Royal Navy. By the time it was ready, the RAF had Tallboy. so the Disney was given to the USAAF.
Fascinating I never knew the americans dropped the tallboys or Grand slam bomb.
Dropped only after the war, on the U-boat pens!
At 13:05, the document refers to impact accuracy in terms of 'mils '. What are 'mils'?
Milliradians. it's an angular measurement that works out to 1m at 1000m. So at lower altitudes the spread will be smaller, at higher altitudes the spread is larger. It's similar to using "minute of angle" for measuring gun accuracy.
For converting to SI, note that an hour is 3600s.
The Tallboys worked fine on the Terpitz
nice work
If they had used the Grand Slam or Tallboy over Japan, there would have been one primary target: Japan's rail infrastructure, especially the tunnels. And possibly the hidden underground military factories near Yokosuka Naval Base.
tunnels and bridges likely would have been the primary Grand Slam/Tallboy targets.
Could you do a video on the US use of the M83 butterfly bomb. I recall it being used against Japanese airfields.
Were any trials or tests carried out with these bombs using the modified B-29s?
simonallen Of course !!! Do you think they would load a B29 with a real bomb and NOT drop it ???
They were used a bit in Korea, no? Against bridges iirc.
I've wondered how useful the earthquake effect they might have been against Japanese mountain tunnel defensive positions.
Does your research reveal the proposed target list?
Casing construction methods differed between the British and US designs if I am remembering correctly the US designs had fewer seams which could rupture either on impact or too early in the explosion cycle. Fusing setups may also have differed a bit. The British used 3 fuzes in the rear of the casing US may have varied a bit depending on when and where it would be dropped.
It said the British were making the bombs for supply to the US. I saw no mention of the US manufacturing any.
US ones were welded, British ones were Cast whole.
drafty with holes in the Bombay
also massive drag on the return leg, greatly reduced operational range.
B-29s were pressurized so the crew didn't suffer, only aerodynamics.
Even my B-29 books don't mention this. Can anyone read the planes tail number?
The proposed use of these bombs against Japan begs the question, what targets in Japan were intended? Certainly not the sort 20th AF was attacking. Maybe in the next video?
The operational range carrying the Tallboy would not have allowed many targets to be hit in Japan from Tinian. One wonders if there was additional work done to increase the range of the B29 to give more coverage to targets.
Absolutely no requirement!! The B-29s using the British Weapons would have operated out of bases a lot closer to Japan like Iwo Jima or Okinawa.
briancavanagh The B29 had a 3,000 mile Range @ 20,000# enough to hit anywhere in the lower half of Japan from Tinion and the other base, and they had another island closer that was used as an alternate for returning from a raid with damage or low fuel !!!
I heard that this small bomb bay was the reason for the delay for the atomic bomb over Japan, didn’t we offer the Lancaster as the carrier for the nuclear bomb. It wasn’t accepted because of the cruise night of the Lancaster being too low.
The Lancaster (and its successor the Lincoln) did not have anywhere near the range of the B-29.
First A bomb test July 16, 1945.
First A bomb dropped August 6, 1945.
The proposed "thin man" atomic bomb needed a longer bomb bay and the silverplate B-29s were modified to carry it. In the end that weapon wasn't used and the little boy and fat man bombs fit into standard B-29 bomb bays. The long bomb bays were useful for the tallboy and grand slam testing though.
@@Reactordrone The Thin Man test aircraft and Tallboy test aircraft were not the same.
So this explains why there's a Grand Slam in the jungle in Rambo 4😆
I wonder why the Americans did not use one of these bombs in the PTO once we realized that the Japanese had built so many tunnels under ground like in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Seems like it would have made short work of the enemy and would have save thousands of American Marines lives. Even if they had to wait a few weeks to ship it from theETO to the B-29's in the PTO.
Nothing with the range required and bomb bay big enough to carry them. They were also very expensive to make.
"TRIT-TIN-ALL"
Just ask the tiirpitz
7:51 - four degrees, not 4 percent.
go to the head of the class .haha
Big ass bombs
Bielefeld Viaduct Bielefeld, Germany - Atlas Obscura
"The damage to Germany’s war effort of this raid was actually minimal as a bypass route on earth embankments had already been constructed."
Whilst everything on the internet is obviously true this might make you wonder why a viaduct was ever built in the first place. 😂
@@annoyingbstard9407 13 March 1945, less than two months before the end of the war. Was the mission necessary or was it done as proof of concept?
@@nickdanger3802 Of course, if you were there you’d have known the war would be over in less than two months. You’re a RUclips expert.
@@annoyingbstard9407 I do not think anyone would have needed a crystal ball, except for a few shite heels, to know the war would be over very soon.
Italy was out in 43 and by the end of 44 all of the minor Axis powers and Finland were out.
Germany had lost its sources of natural oil and after the USAAF had cleared the sky of German aircraft, USAAF and RAF heavies laid waste to synth oil production.
Late 1944 German child soldiers were captured by the Western Allies.
Nazi Germany : Every Month
ruclips.net/video/dKjVG4nMQ9A/видео.html
The Tallboys were good just not as good as a fat man.
There is a photo of a B29 carrying two Tall Boys one under each wing inboard of the engines.
Wow!
I apologize. The B29 was carrying two GRAND SLAMS!
i.redd.it/now-that-gaijin-has-given-the-b-29-its-4-000lb-bombs-should-v0-vgzc51zp5tma1.jpg?s=c77c089501d9adb750fe05fa12ec01cabfd787c2
Probably figuring out how to transport them from the UK to USA
@@RamonInNZ These were pics of the testing of dropping hardware. Carrying that load and the aerodynamic issues would lower the B29 range. Bombs that size would be moved by ship.
@@1dcbly the B29 had no problem carrying up to 44,500#'s of bombs to altitude, just where to hang them, 2 Tallboys weighed 24,000 #'s
I wonder if there's any in Military Surplus depots? It would be a hell of a way to remove a tree stump!😂😂
Do you have a source that says this works be creating an earthquake? Pretty sure that it works from sub terrain pressure wave [cavitation], not by shifting the earth under the building.
@@kiereluurs1243 an earthquake doesn't generate a compressive shockwave, it moves the earth under the building.
@@appaho9tel A bomb blast creates a SHOCK WAVE and they have POWER to them !!! DUUUUUHH!!!!!!!
It is rpm,not rpms.there is no s.
G'day,
Yay Team !
Ah, mate, I'm about a minute in, and have paused to comment ; referring to a bit of a "Clanger" (British word for "blooper"...), apparently arising from a slight but significant diversion between Imperial/Colonial English & AmeriKan English...(?).
Y'see,
While both the Tallboy &
Grand Slam were
Indeed the
BIG & BIGGEST of
Bombs
Used by the
RAF, during the
Second Phase of the
Great Patriotic World War (!).
And, whereas, in Norte ArmedmeriKano the common or vernacular meaning of
"Blockbuster"
Is simply
"Really BIG !"
("Bigly"..., to the retarded !)...;
In Imperial parlance,
After the British moved on, from
The "General Purpose" Bomb
Of 100 or 250 or 500 Pounds ; when they began
"Area Bombing" of Cities, specifically
Aiming to
"De-House The German Industrial Workers" by
Targeting the
Dormitory Suburbs, when
Arthur Harris took the Reins, Special Purpose Bombs were designed.
Blast Bombs, with thin Steel Skins,
Cylindrical, with no Fins,
Weighing 4,000 Pounds was called a
"Cookie", used to break up Buildings with
Shockwaves from High Explosive BLAST Overpressure.
The first Waves of 4-engined Bombers in the Stream would have a Cookie each, with GP & Incendiary Cluster Bomblet Dispensers making up the available lift capacity for the Fuel-Load... Later Waves might have had less Cookies & more GPs & Incendiaries, and the final waves, often arriving after a bit of a Lull, had about 30% Anti-Personel Mines, to kill the Firefighters and Rescue Crews.
After maybe a year (?), they began bolting 2 Cookies together, for 8,000 pounds of HE all in the one impact - intended
Down to knock,
An entire City BLOCK...;
All in the one wave of
Shock...
And
THAT,
My learned Instructor..., was what they called, a
"Block Buster" (of a) Bomb.
The Tallboy (12,000 Pounds),
And the
Grand Slam (22,000 Pounds),
were
NOT
"Blockbusters"
Nor
Block Busters...;
They were
Indeed
Penetrators
(Initially to go through
Steel-Reinforced Concrete Roofs over
Submarine Pens...)
And, then,
Earthquake Bombs...;
Intended to be dropped
Beside small high-value
Hard to hit
Targets, and then
Shaking them to bits with
Seismic
Shockloading, from
Below....!
But, bottom line,
Tallboy and Grand Slam were
Not
Block Buster Bombs.
Such is life,
Have a good one,
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
how does something unpowered in freefall, bearing in mind uniform freefall velocity, (9.8m per sec.) accelerate?
It's 9.8 m squared per second acceleration, not 9.8 m per second velocity.
I am guessing that it would be down to it's aerodynamic shape and streamlining.
For instance, a skydiver in a stable spread position will reach a certain velocity and will cease to accelerate. However, if that same skydiver alters their body shape (arms by the side of the body and legs straight and together) they will indeed begin to accelerate again.
Therefore, one would imagine the bombs in question would be able to reach supersonic speeds (faster than the speed of sound) due to their shape and given sufficient altitude.
In theory the acceleration of gravity averages 9.8 meters per second/per second, in vacuum near the Earth's surface.
After one second they had a velocity of 9.8m/s.
After 2 seconds their velocity was 19.6m/s.
After 3 seconds their velocity was 29.4m/s.
4 sec. >39.2m/s
5 sec. >49m/s
Etc.
In practice aerodynamic drag plays a big part, so they were dart shaped to mitigate the drag which determines terminal velocity, but the acceleration slowed down the longer they were in the air.
Simple. At the instant of release from the aircraft, the bomb's vertical speed is zero. It then accelerates at 9.8 additonal metres per second speed in each successive second after release, until air drag becomes significant. Ultimately, if dropped from sufficient height, it accelerates to a speed where air drag equals the downward force that results from gravity acting on its mass. Velocity is NOT uniform, it at first increases, then reaches a terminal velocity.
@@keithammleter3824 ah, per sec per sec. thanks for clearing that up.
👍👍🇦🇺🇬🇧🇦🇺
When can the b29 in warthunfer
The Lanc should have been adopted as the heavy load 4 engine bomber and the Mosquito for everything else. Tens of thousands of lives lost because of the crews needed in B52s and Lancs.
Just a thought , the Grand Slam would be ideal for taking out the Kerch Bridge
Algorithm.
ooo tube removed the thumbs up button on this post, but "clicked around" & found its goasted spot, some woke must have been triggered at ooo tube.
@@EuroScot2023hello Mr MacSoros.😅