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1915 French Aircrarft Bomb unknown type

Dreamk

Well-Known Member
Square-section bombs being prepared in a French Aviation Hangar in 1915 in Argonne. Could someone throw more light on this type of bomb?
(this is a high resolution picture found on Gallica - Title: En Argonne dans les hangars on prépare les bombes , avant le départ des avions [photographie de presse] Agence Meurisse 1915)

En Argonne  dans les hangars on prépare les bombes , avant le départ des avions  Agence Meuri.JPEG
 
No idea, but could it be improvised drill bombs? It looks like they have carrying handles on the side...
 
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Could it be something adapted from the french petard of melinite 20kg, which is 170x170x475mm ?
 
Another pic of this bomb on this photo from the excellent site of Albin Denis on ww1 French Aviation
Title: "Armement des projectiles qui vont être chargés à bord de ce MF 11 de l'escadrille MF 59 sur le terrain de Corcieux en mai 1916"

Bombe section carree 1916 059_Charg_Bombes.jpg

Interestingly this photograph enables to see that the fins are devised so as to impulse a rotation to the bomb when falling, something unexpected on such a square-section bomb.
This is the olny other picture of this bomb I have been able to find.
For a long time I thought that this could be the enigmatic "Bombe Claude" using liquid oxygen as explosive, but recently 2 photographs of the real Claude bomb have appeared and this is definitively a different bomb.

Here are the photos of the Claude bomb with its semi-rigid envelop (a strange thing isn't it) and what is stranger yet is that details have emerged tending to prove that the liquid oxygen may have been not adsorbed on pulverized coal but on soot.
The first photograph title is "Bombe Claude sur un avion VoisinIII de l'escadrille Caudron C28 1915" and was fond in the archives of the French Somme Department.
The second one, of bad quality, comes from the Albin Denis aforementioned site - knowing what to look for one can discern a pair of Claude bombs at the bottom of the picture which title is "Ce Voisin LA de l'escadrille V 14 va être chargé de bombes Claude a oxygène liquide en octobre 1914"

Bombe Claude Voisin3 escadrille Caudron C28 1915 (archives de la Somme).jpg Ce Voisin LA de l'escadrille V 14 va être chargé de bombes Claude a oxygène liquide en octobr.jpg
 
The French mother of BLU45/B :wink:
BLU45.jpg

To be more serious, I've never seen 120mm bomb DELACHAUX (not sure about the name, DE LACHAUX, DE LA CHAUX), could it be this one ?
 
The mysterious De La Chaux bomb could indeed be a candidate for identification. Its data were: Diameter 120 mm - Overall length 717 mm, content: liquid explosive (no details) fuse: Aasen fuse. I never seen any photo or drawing of this bomb.

There is also mention in a report from 1916 of another mysterious liquid explosive bomb (Not a GA bomb): Weight 5.5kg, Diameter 122mm Length 754mm (the mention of 122mm diameter lead to think that the body was a reused artillery shell).

Another candidate may be the Felix Marie bomb, though I suspect that its finalization was posterior to 1918 while here we are looking for identification of a serial produced bomb, in use in different escadrilles, already from end-1914/early 1915.
 
I reworked the image a bit so maybe this will help.
 

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Another strange photographic document, taken on a French airbase on the Salonique front, 1915-1916:

Once again, on the left, we have a side view this mysterious "square bomb" , and on the center-right, a 3/4 rear view of another one, behind the pair of bombs in the .foreground.

...And as if it was not enough....this pair of bombs in the foreground right in are another mystery requiring further data: The Italians, who used it quite a lot, described it as a 130mm (or sometimes 135mm) incendiary bomb, but no details on it appear in their records, as it was apparently of of French origin....but unknown till now among the French bombs.

Ideas someone?

bombes1.jpg

Another view of three of these 130mm incendiary at the rear of an Italian airship (the other bombs in 1 row of 5 behind one row of 4, are regular Italian 162 mm bombs)

Screenshot 2021-06-23 144654.jpg

and another closeup of this bomb in Italian hands:
Image51.jpg
 
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Some new findings in French archives:
1) from the "Fonds Valois" image BDIC_VAL_511_093 from 1916
"Front occidental. Grenades et bombes d'avions sur le front occidental":

BDIC_VAL_511_093.jpg
enlargement of the bomb suspended on the wall:
Screenshot 2021-06-28 215522.jpg

and
2) from the Jean Eugene Amigues Collection - Archives departementales de l'Aude through Aeroscopia site (that added a watermark)
image Phnum_Amigues6_ (175) "Le chargement d’un appareil de bombardement" (probably taken between July and September 1916 in the esc. F 14)
Screenshot 2021-06-28 231917.jpg

enlargements:
Screenshot 2021-06-28 213040.jpg Screenshot 2021-06-28 212939.jpg

Ideas someone?
 
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Albin Denis has suggested that this could be a "flechette bomb" - a box of flechettes with a time fuse and frontal exploding charge - the first submunition aerial bomb - but the fuze seems to be a short Canton-Unne, (or possibly a IA or IT artillery percussion fuze - the photo could be better...) therefore an impact fuze.
So..till we succeed to find more info on this bomb, let's complicate the issue ....with another unknown French ww1 square bomb
Picture found in the "fonds Valois", under the title: Vaux-Eclusier (près et à l'ouest). Camp d'aviation. Dépôt de bombes de l'escadrille M.F.8 VAL 444-080 Screenshot 2021-06-28 220402

Vaux-Eclusier (près et à l'ouest). Camp d'aviation. Dépôt de bombes de l'escadrille M.F.8 VA.jpg

Once again, this also mysterious "130mm incendiary bomb" , but on the right lower side, "box-shaped" bombs, with a tail reminiscent of the 90mm Italian incendiary and frag bombs (a recent thread on thsi forum).....
BTWm at the bottom of the photo, a good view of Long Canton-Unne fuzes, waiting to be installed on the 130mm bombs.

All input on all these bombs will be more than welcome.
 
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Another one....
Once again both these mysterious "squared section' bomb and the "incendiaria da 130" appear in the same photograph.
Malzeville bombe carree et bombe de 130 caudron-g3-des-groupes-bombardement-en-1917-1431782948.jpg

agrandissement Malzeville Screenshot 2021-07-18 111658.jpg Agrandissement Malzeville Screenshot 2021-07-18 111738.jpg

Ideas someone?
 
You showed several photos of French soldiers with this unknown 130 bomb. So it's difficult to know if it's a french or italian invention ?
 
The weight of evidence is for this bomb to be a French developed device.
Most of the photos originate in France around 1915 - a period of acute shortage of aerial bombs in Italy, that led them to ask France for supply of 90mm "obus empennes" - the lines of these bombs are also totally different from the Italian developments of the period. Moreover , beyond the appellation given to the bomb in the units (mostly 130mm incendiary but sometimes 135mm incendiary ) the Italian archives are silent on this air-dropped device.
 
Yes, with from right to left a rarely seen 75mm bomb with a tail cone of uncommon shape (not the 75mm Michelin, may be a local built), a 90mm Frag "obus empenne" (often called in the operational reports "bombe de 10kg" to differentiate it from the regular explosive "90mm obus enpenne"), a Gros-Andreau 120mm Anilite bomb, a 90mm shell with an added tai (not the regular "obus empenne de 90" - here too, may be a local build? ) , and this 130mm incendiary bomb.
The presence of these uncommon projectiles leads me to think that this was taken in Saloniki - On the Gallipoli peninsula you had, by a strange coincidence, both the British and the French CO of the local small squadrons (that soon became for all practical means a single mixed squadron) being the leading experts in their respective countries, of the development of air-dropped ordnance: Perrin (Pierre Perrin de Brichambaut ) and Samson (Charles Rumney Samson).
BTW Perrin, while at the MF8 Squadron, had already built and dropped on July 14th, 1915 an incendiary device made of 4 aircraft fuel cans around a 10kg shell....something that will reappear in his squadron in Saloniki in an upgraded form (see a recent thread here).
Here is a pic of Samson and members of the 3rd RNAS squadron on Gallipoli peninsula in Dec 1915, displaying in the center the 500lb bomb they tested there (and that would become after that a regular piece of RNAS ordnance, the 550lb HE RL MKI, being produced and used till the late 1930s)
Imbros, 500lb. (520lb) bomb Kephalos Dec. 1915, No.3 Wing.jpg
and here under Samson's Farman 27 before take off from Mudros
500lb (520lb) loaded aboard another Henri Farman F.27 - somewhere in the Aegean Theatre - possib.jpg
 
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A couple of better quality photographs of the Bombe Claude, in its original version of without the leather (or fabric?) envelop added in the field - probably not so much to prevent leakages as to enable to handle the projectile that must have been quite cold.
Bombe Claude 20231004_143656.jpgBombe Claude 20231004_143604.jpg
 
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