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Robustness of german 1 kilo incendiaries

B

brand

Member
Hello,

first post here.

Have seen many amazing pictures of sectioned German 1Kg incendiary on here. Apart from being surgically sliced open, they all look to have been in good condition. Were these bombs that were dropped in action, or found elsewhere ?

Basically, I am wondering how the magnesium cases of these stood up to the impacts of being dropped from aircraft. Did any just break open from hitting the ground, or were they just robust enough to stand up to just about everything ?

I remember tearing up strips of magnesium ribbon at school, and am finding it hard to equate this as a sturdy bomb casing, if you know what I mean ?
 
Both mine were dropped on Coventry during the war, with relativley little damage to them. I would think that the fact that they didnt function on impact must mean they had a soft landing. At the other end of the scale I have ones that were dropped on York and all thats left are the fins, some still nicely painted, some burnt. I also have one , presumably from the explosive version that is fairly well mashed up but still has nice paint.
Hangarman
 
Welcome to the BOCN site ! The bodies were , in fact , made of magnesium alloy & are incredibly tough , a similar alloy is used to manufacture the wheels on racing cars for lightness & strength .It was the filling that was the more flammable component . Also , due to their light weight & tail fins they would n't have dropped at a particularly fast rate so invariably survived almost intact if they did n't catch fire on landing . Hope this helps . Siegfreid.
 
I have seen photos of firemen using an axe to remove them from road/pavements, so they must have fallen at quite a speed despite thier apparant lightness. Certainly the Steel nose was added so that the incendiaries would pentrate deeper into houses - hence this type becoming known as 'The Tilebreaker'
Looking at the one in Daves collection its apparant it has fallen at a good speed and hit something relatively hard, why it didnt go off - well I imagine as in all areas of munitions there was a % failure rate even if dropped under perfect conditions. If dropped in a field on soft ground they were less likely to go off.

I once went to a farm to see a chap I had been told had a container for incendiary bombs from the war - he had but it was twisted steel and mangled. It would have been a large container, but the reason it was so twisted and almost unrecognisable wasnt from the fall, but from the fact it hadnt opened when dropped, it fell intact, however on impact some of the incendiaries must have operated - he told me that it was four days before they could get near it!! I managed to salvage the main steel support from that one, which I still have - the rest I parted with a long time ago.

There is also a golf course not far from where I live onto which a large ammount of incendiaries were unleashed / jettisoned during the war. To this day they occasionally turn up.

regards Kev
 
Dave, the red fin in the picture is one i sandblasted and fund traces of red paint so i repainted in that color, around the same time i got the one on the right with red fin and another with burned red and black paint, all explosive capped under the tail, hopefully some others might come to light with this post,,,,,,, Dave


HPIM7203.jpg
 
millsbomber said:
Dave, the red fin in the picture is one i sandblasted and fund traces of red paint so i repainted in that color, around the same time i got the one on the right with red fin and another with burned red and black paint, all explosive capped under the tail, hopefully some others might come to light with this post,,,,,,, Dave


View attachment 63971
Click to expand...

Nice bombs Dave thanks for showing them.

Dave.
 
Found a live one of these a couple of years ago in the factory I used to work in in Portsmouth. It was revealed when the roofers came to replace the old asbestos panels and it fell out onto their staging. These are set off by the nose impacting a hard surface which shears a safety wire and then a firing pin is forced into a percussion ignitor. If they don't go off it is usually the angle of impact or the hardness of the target. Funny that the EOD team that arrived from Bicester 6 hours later didn't know how it functioned. By the time they arrived, I had found the German training publication and the exact date the thing was dropped as part of a massive raid over the South East in Aug 1942 (as far as I can remember). I then spent the rest of that weekend (Easter!) helping the roofers clear the remaining 1/4 acre of old panels. I also found out from the Site Manager that he had found numerous Tails all over the 7 acre site over the previous 20 years but had just thrown them in the scrap or stamped them into the earth!! An HE version might have woken him up to the danger maybe....
 
I once had a mad idea that i would get a container and i could fill it with incendiary's as thy were cheap and plentiful in the good old days here's a picture of the container i was after

HPIM7206.jpg

This is as far as i got

HPIM7207.jpg

and thy still keep being delivered to my house from local farm workers

HPIM7209.jpg

This one was found in a back garden under a old shed by a builder friend, its in very good condition.

HPIM7211.jpg

Dave
 
Now that was a big project!!! It would be very impressive to have one of those filled - but very expensive today!!!

Great selection of incendiaries you have there Dave, thanks for showing them - I think you must have all the different types they did.

kind regards Kev
 
Interesting thread. For Maverikk - modern day EOD teams are probably only taught about the ammo currently in service, as I was when I was an ammo tech. We were told to apply what we knew and to apply general principles / play safe about what we did not know. If we were lucky our detachment location might have an unofficial museum of some of the items found and that were safe to show. Hence for example one day I was called to deal with three suspected 2 inch mortar bombs. The first turned out to be the empty body of a 1 Kg German incendiary bomb, the second was an expended 2 inch smoke mortar bomb and the third was a blind 2 inch HE mortar bomb. The 2 inch mortar was still in service at that time and I had actually fired some smoke and illuminating bombs during my training, and the WW2 smoke version (item 2) wasn't much different from the then current smoke bomb. The HE could have been a bit more tricky but still had the embossed X on the nose, so I knew what that was and luckily there was a conveneint sheepfold for me to hide behind when I blew it. I only knew what the 1 Kg incendiary was because we had examples of the incendiary and anti handling versions in our unofficial museum and I could see that it was safe. A few years ago a `pineapple' grenade was found in a shed in a village in my local district and I went along to help identify it in support of the police officer who was tasked to verify that it might be a munition. It turned out to be a No 5 Grenade, as marked on the base plug. The RAF EOD team that turned up did not know exactly what it was or how it was designed to work. The poor guy may never have seen a grenade like it before that day. But with a computerised database with pictures and dimensions they were able to confirm what I could tell them. Occasionally when I go to my favourite beach and find a 25 Pr Smoke BE shell, the shell turns out to be badly dented. This is because the modern EOD operator tasked with clearing it has not been able to confirm exactly what is. Because it has a fuze fitted to it and because it is so rusted that he or she was unable to see that the payload has been ejected they have applied general principles, played safe and attempted to destroy it with explosive. Because it is already expended, the attempt has failed. I hope that makes sense.
 
when I went through EOD school (US) they still taught a few German fuzes, basically for ID and how they functioned. These days it's basically recent ord items. There are still manuals on hand they can get info from, but how I was taught ID and what I was required to know my memory is no longer. Today they ahve picture books and computers that they enter measurements and other info intio and it gives them a few items that they ahve to compare for final ID. I can tell you for sure if it is a Korea war or earlier, todays US EOD guys will have a very ahrd time IDing the item. I remember when I was stationed in Germany (and Korea) there were times I went on a job and as soon as I saw the item - the old time EOD school teaching kicked in and I could ID the item. But I have to admit now days I don't remember much about WW II ord items, excspt for some german bomb fuzes (which always fascinated me)
 
Thanks Butterfly,

butterfly said:
I have seen photos of firemen using an axe to remove them from road/pavements, so they must have fallen at quite a speed despite thier apparant lightness. Certainly the Steel nose was added so that the incendiaries would pentrate deeper into houses - hence this type becoming known as 'The Tilebreaker'
Click to expand...

I was trying to do the maths, and was figuring that they could almost approach the speed of sound if dropped from 15,000 ft. ( Probably no where near that really ? ). Was the steel nose to add weight and therefore add kinetic energy to punch through tiles, or was the steel cap to stop the bombs breaking up from a heavy impact ?
 
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Thanks Ammotechxt,

AMMOTECHXT said:
The first turned out to be the empty body of a 1 Kg German incendiary bomb, the second was an expended 2 inch smoke mortar bomb and the third was a blind 2 inch HE mortar bomb.
Click to expand...

This caught my eye. Can you say why the body would have been empty ? Accidently never filled, or something else ?
 
brand said:
Was the steel nose to add weight and therefore add kinetic energy to punch through tiles, or was the steel cap to stop the bombs breaking up from a heavy impact ?
Click to expand...

-Primary: adding weight to one side of the bomb to control the falling direction (the fuzes would'nt have worked on side impact)
-Secondary: more penetrating power and stability
 
Sorry I have no idea why it was empty. This was about 1989 on the North Yorks Moors, so over 45 years since it may have been dropped.

brand said:
Thanks Ammotechxt,



This caught my eye. Can you say why the body would have been empty ? Accidently never filled, or something else ?
Click to expand...
 
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