Earth quake bomb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The earth quake bomb concept was invented by Barnes Wallis before the Second World War.
Wallis realized that the force of an explosion is quickly diminished in a compressible medium. In the compressible medium of air, the explosive power diminishes rapidly with distance.
In water it diminishes less quickly, but the explosive force carries much further through solid materials, such as soil and other materials on the earth's surface.
Wallis' idea was to drop a large heavy bomb with a hard armoured tip at supersonic speed so that it penetrated the ground. This effect would be rather like a ten ton bullet being fired straight down. It was then set to explode underground, and the resulting shock wave would produce the equivalent of a miniature earthquake, destroying any nearby structures such as dams, railways, viaducts, etc.
Wallis forsaw that German industry would have to be disrupted, and also understood that precision bombing was virtually impossible in the late 1930s.
The earthquake bomb would have the ability to disrupt German industry and cause minimum civilian casualties.
Wallis wanted a ten ton bomb that would explode some 130 ft underground. To achieve this the bomb would have had to have been dropped from 40,000 feet. At this time the RAF had no aircraft capable of holding a single ten ton bomb let alone taking it that high. Wallis designed a six engine plane for the task, called Victory, but was not taken seriously by the military top brass of the day. Later in the war bombs were made based on the 'earth quake bomb concept' such as the Tallboy and Grand Slam, although these were never dropped from more than about 25,000 feet.
