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US WW2 Practice concrete bombs
- Thread starter MINENAZ16
- Start date
This is highly interesting!
The bomb is a concrete training version of the French "bombe D" (used against submarines in 1916-17).
The "Bombe D" weighted 22kg, including 11kg of melinite, this bomb was produced in Levallois-Perret by the Petit-Vicart-Cousin Company.
It had a "double function" fuse (instant in case of impact of hard surface, and 0.25s in case of impact on water enabling the bomb to reach a depth of 8 m before exploding).
It succeeded the "bombe Chapuis" produced since 1915 by the Arsenal de Cherbourg (18kg including 7kg TNT).
(Note that some documents of the Aeronautique militaire also designate the "bombe D" as "Bombe Chapuis (D 22/11)", so the bombe D may be another bomb designed by the same inventor, the Ingénieur principal du Génie maritime Xavier Chapuis - who died in October 1918 from a "long and painful disease contacted in service, during the war").
A directive of the Aeronautique maritime dated January 8, 1917 mentions the introduction of a concrete bombs for training, while a report from April 10, 1917 mentions the successive termination of the trials checking the conformity of the ballistic performances of these concrete bombs with the "Bombe D"
The "Bombe D" was not really more successful than the "bombe Chapuis" and in 1917 the French admiralty asked the British for 100lbs bombs (47kg including 27kg amatol) similar to the one used successfully by the RNAS.
With the delivery of 500 of these British bombs, the fabrication of the "bombe D" was stopped and the existing stocks were used for training.
Here a couple of pictures of the original "bombe D" under a French Letord aircraft from an Anti-submarine squadron :
For the record, the operational beginning of the US Naval aviation in to be found in the center established at Dunkerke in 1917 in conjunction with the French Aeronautique Maritime - by the end of 1918 the USN had 16 stations in France as well as stations in Great-Britain and in Italy..
The bomb is a concrete training version of the French "bombe D" (used against submarines in 1916-17).
The "Bombe D" weighted 22kg, including 11kg of melinite, this bomb was produced in Levallois-Perret by the Petit-Vicart-Cousin Company.
It had a "double function" fuse (instant in case of impact of hard surface, and 0.25s in case of impact on water enabling the bomb to reach a depth of 8 m before exploding).
It succeeded the "bombe Chapuis" produced since 1915 by the Arsenal de Cherbourg (18kg including 7kg TNT).
(Note that some documents of the Aeronautique militaire also designate the "bombe D" as "Bombe Chapuis (D 22/11)", so the bombe D may be another bomb designed by the same inventor, the Ingénieur principal du Génie maritime Xavier Chapuis - who died in October 1918 from a "long and painful disease contacted in service, during the war").
A directive of the Aeronautique maritime dated January 8, 1917 mentions the introduction of a concrete bombs for training, while a report from April 10, 1917 mentions the successive termination of the trials checking the conformity of the ballistic performances of these concrete bombs with the "Bombe D"
The "Bombe D" was not really more successful than the "bombe Chapuis" and in 1917 the French admiralty asked the British for 100lbs bombs (47kg including 27kg amatol) similar to the one used successfully by the RNAS.
With the delivery of 500 of these British bombs, the fabrication of the "bombe D" was stopped and the existing stocks were used for training.
Here a couple of pictures of the original "bombe D" under a French Letord aircraft from an Anti-submarine squadron :
For the record, the operational beginning of the US Naval aviation in to be found in the center established at Dunkerke in 1917 in conjunction with the French Aeronautique Maritime - by the end of 1918 the USN had 16 stations in France as well as stations in Great-Britain and in Italy..
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