ID French bomb (ww2)

[MINENAZ16]

Hello,
Maybe a question for Dreamk.
What is this bomb ? Legend says french 500kg but 500kg model 1930 is very different.
I assume a training bomb (maybe it's a white band on the body with marking "LESTE", not sure).
The cylindrical shape is not very common for a french bomb and fins are strange.
Regards

 

[Dreamk]

Ah this is one of the most enigmatic photograph of wartime French bombs - 2 main points are to be noted here: the body looks cylindrical (and not tear-drop as regular French bombs) and the tail...has folded fins.
This is in fact the only photograph I found till now of French bombs with the folding fins system which was supposed to enter in service at the end of the 1930s - In fact this is the only proof that this system was ever implemented.
I asked Henry Belot, from Deminest, about this photograph some years ago but he had no answer.
A very exceptional document, and a huge mystery

Here what says the "Notice sur les Bombes d'Aviation" from 1936:


The bombs on this photographs are probably 50kg bombs (and not 500kg) for which the same notice had this mention:


The dimensions seem also compatible with bombs of 50 or 100kg
In any case such an alignment of bombs ready to be loaded is more compatible with bombs of 50kg or 100kg than 500kg
The Bloch 131 that appears in the background could not take 500kg bombs but only small and medium bombs - However, one 500kg bomb can be seen on the ground behind the couple of 100/200kg that lay behind this alignment of cylindrical bombs.


PS - though they might be mistaken for an air-drop container, it is not the case. The French had in fact developed their own air-dropped container, which had a quite different look:

BTW I'd be glad to get dimensions and weight of this last object so if someone knows something....:tinysmile_twink_t2:

 

[MINENAZ16]

In the "Notice sur les Bombes d'Aviation 1936" there is a small diagram of folding fins "REIBEL", but in this case fins are different.

I don't know if we can have diagrams of this patent (?) : https://patents.google.com/patent/FR41371E/fr

 

[Dreamk]

Nice! When you have found the reference of a French patent, most of the job is done - just enter it in Espacenet database search. Here's the result:
However, I sincerely doubt that this specific patent could have been used on bombs other than flares, as the fins look quite small - rather like mortar or rockets fins.
If you look on a scaled up version of the photograph in the first post, the feeling is that the fins have been folded according to their longitudinal axis and that their reinforcing stuts/band/box is also folded - very strange thing..

 

[MINENAZ16]

In the manual of 1932 (my mistake in previous post, 1932, not 1936) :