2-Pr Representing 500kg

[Bonnex]

Armament Design Committee 1941

Chair: "Gentlemen, the enemy has introduced a very large bomb and the PM wants us to make big ones too"
Boffin: "We'll get right onto it Group Captain"
Beancounter: "We can't afford to make big ones but my wife says that we should make small ones and drop them really close so they look big"
Boffin: "That's an idea, I'll get Barnes onto it"

So (failing a more sensible explanation) began the development of the munition shown in the drawing below:

 

[TimG]

Perhaps this 500Kg

TimG

 

[RichardB]

Urm, I think my brain is on the go slow, but I assume the purpose of the 2PR/500Kg was to use in a model mockup to scale up and asses likely damage? (..would it even be proportional?)
I get the feeling I'm missing the point.

Rich

 

[millsbomber]

From the confusion in my head the only thing i could work out is its a small bomb but it is supposed to make the noise of the 500 Kg bomb,,,, i dont think so,,,,,, Dave

 

[butterfly]

Very interesting document - though I too am non the wiser to its possible use. I'm sure there must be some plausible explination or it wouldnt have made it to the drawing board.
Size difference apart, it seems odd to use a projectile to represent a bomb.....I did notice it refers to filling, but I dont know enough about the 2pdr projectiles to see just how different this is from other fillings/composition. Also is there difference in the type of base fuze and exploder used in this - maybe someone with that knowledge may explain any obvious differences - may help??

Thanks for posting this one
regards Kev

 

[hangarman]

Thank goodness for that, i was beginning to think I was the only one not to understand the link between 2pr and 500kg
Hangarman

 

[grumpydave]

Very interesting thread - used to work in the drawing office that produced that drawing (some 30 years later) but those drawings were still about. As said above the give away is the 500kg, we were still working in pounds in the 70's. It was almost certainly a model representing a captured German bomb. The reduced scale model could be fired from the 2pdr at a charge representing the impact velocity of the bomb and the effects studied (blast, fragmentation and penetration). Although modelling as we know it today did not exist, there were plenty of imperical models in existance that would provide some data to compare with known systems. Hope this may help.

 

[butterfly]

Very interesting thread - used to work in the drawing office that produced that drawing (some 30 years later) but those drawings were still about. As said above the give away is the 500kg, we were still working in pounds in the 70's. It was almost certainly a model representing a captured German bomb. The reduced scale model could be fired from the 2pdr at a charge representing the impact velocity of the bomb and the effects studied (blast, fragmentation and penetration). Although modelling as we know it today did not exist, there were plenty of imperical models in existance that would provide some data to compare with known systems. Hope this may help.

Thankyou for your excellent explination,
I suppose the use of a projectile would be a much more accurate way of hitting the required target for assesment purposes. Dropping any form of scale model from the air would have too many variables to hit the target with any degree of accuracy.

all the best Kev