The spherical bombs were dropped by the Zeppelin fleet operated by the German Army. Having no fins, a rather elaborate All-ways Fuze was used, which appears to have had a time delay for arming. This seems to have used grease or other viscous material to retard the rotation of a disc. It has been suggested that the fuze may have been a modified Mortar Bomb fuze. A bomb like this was found just off the coast of Belgium not so long ago.
The only Zeppelin manuals I have seen all refer to the Naval versions, which used conventional cylindrical bombs. I often wonder how the spherical bombs were stored-perhaps in inclined troughs- A safety pin had to be extracted from the fuze to release the timer, so perhaps manual intervention was used. Use of a spherical bomb would seem to have assisted in accuracy, as wind would not have had much effect, I presume, and there was no variation in flight time as occurs with a tailed bomb while oscillating before finally orientating itself vertically. I suppose the reason that they were not used generally is that they wasted rather a lot of storage space, but the Zeppelin had plenty to spare! Also, because of their drag, internal carriage was a prerequisite. Additionally, for situations demanding penetration, they would be at a disadvantage, as the terminal velocity, though possessing such a bluff body, might be rather low. Also, if used against an armoured structure, using an allways fuze, with its intrinsic delay, would probably lead to the bomb breaking open on impact. It is noteworthy that casualties in attacks often seemed to stem from shrapnel from the case. Again, much of this would be ejected skywards, as would be the blast, another disadvantage of the spherical form. A further possible disadvantage is that increased drag when dropped from a plane having a high forward velocity, might destroy the forward horizontal velocity more rapidly, so varying speed could affect the aim? Any comment?
Has anyone heard of spherical bombs being used elsewhere? This doesn't include the rubber coated spheres used by the Rhodesian Air force as sub-munitions, and since taken up by South Africa(Alpha Bomb)