Bombs and Bomb Storage WWII

Dis: Thanks mate I knew it was 6 bombs, just got the size wrong, he he.

JDK: I asked and you supplied, thanks mate, very interesting, as is that stuff about the Torpedo bomber.

There are questions not destined to be answered …

But perhaps the reason was, that you don’t need to weld retainers onto the bomb and can use a simple nose ring to carry it?

PS: That thing for Sweden was a ce/1m with floats. Later the Junkers company was involved in another Swedish programme and offered a Ju86K with floats as a torpedo bomber.

PPS: About the Ju52 as bomber: Before the “Enttarnung” (= revealment) of the Luftwaffe in 1935 about two thirds of the German bomber wings were equipped with Ju52/3m. Max bomb load was six 250kg bombs in two vertical stores fore and aft of the CG.

Hi Ja,
My books are in a big steel box at the moment, but a quick trawl of the web reveals a bit of interest. Guess it depends on what you call a ‘proper’ bomber. From the Junkers website (http://www.junkers.de.vu/):

“The Junkers Ju52/3m was a pure civil aircraft until 1935, when the Nazis announced the foundation of an official Luftwaffe in Germany. At this time the RLM was looking for an adequate bomber aircraft in Germany, which would become available shortly. But most German aircraft did not fit with the RLM demand. Therefore the RLM decided to use the Ju52/3m as a temporary bomber solution until dedicated bomber aircraft would become available in Germany. In 1934 the Junkers Flugzeugwerke received an order for a total of 1200 Ju52/3m bomber aircraft. Zindel redesigned the Ju52/3m and added two machine gun turrets in the rear cabin, one in the roof and one in the bottom of the aircraft. The passenger cabin was redesigned as the bomb compartement, where up to 32 50kg-bombs could be put in. It might be, that the developement of the Ju52 bomber version was done under the designator K45/3m, but this designator was already dropped before the Ju52 bomber developement was finished. There are currently no official documents known, which use this designator. As the Ju52 bomber was developed from the Ju52/3mge officially these bombers were designated Ju52/3mg3e”

And from Warbird Alley (http://www.warbirdalley.com/ju52.htm): “During the Spanish Civil War, the Ju 52 ferried more than 10,000 Moorish troops from Morocco to Spain, as well as dropping 6000 tons of bombs.”

Now, ‘6,000 tons of bombs’ and “The passenger cabin was redesigned as the bomb compartement, where up to 32 50kg-bombs could be put in” sounds like making a bomber to me, and a long way from temporary external bomb racks or rolling them out of the door! However, you are near enough bang on at the weight of the bombs though 32 is a fair load.

What i didn’t realise was: “Like most Junkers aircraft designs of the 20s and early 30s, Junkers and Zindel also developed a militarized version of the Junkers Ju52. One of the seven prototypes (c/n 4004) was flown to A.B. Flygindustri at Limhamn in Sweden. In Sweden mountings for torpedos were added to the aircraft and it was registered in Sweden as SE-ADM. This torpedo bomber was designated as K45c. The K45c was flown back to Germany and was used by Junkers and Luftwaffe for experimental torpedo bombings. Like the other Ju52/1m’s the K45c was later used as a target aircraft by Luftdienst GmbH. No further military conversions were made for the Ju52/1m.”

A torpedo bomber? Interesting.

Looks like the original question is still open though. 😉
Cheers!

JDK: Well this is a discussion board mate and you can’t have a discussion if everyone agrees with you! Not so sure about the Ju-52 in Spain, I always thought that the only bombers in SPain were either Ju-87’s, Ju-86’s or He-111’sNever heard of the Ju-52 as a proper bomber. I’ve only seen reference to them as either transports or Hack bombers as mentioned, could you supply any documentation as to them being a proper bomber in Spain?

Hi Ja,
Not sure I’d agree with all that – but minor quibbles… the Ju52 was a ‘proper’ bomber in the Spanish Civil War – but I dunno about the bomb load.

As regards torps, the Italians were rather hot stuff, and despite the slurs on their courage, very, very brave users of the Sluranti and the dive bomber…

Thanks for the deep thoughts guys, it is a good and intrequing question isn’t it???

I wish that Keithmac and Moggy or ever my old mate Arthur would get involved, they’d probably have an answer!

JDK: yeah mate the Junkers transport did have a small bomb bay only for a small number of light bombs (IIRC something in the 60kg range), just as an ad-hoc field bomber.

Torpedo bombing was under a huge trial during the early 20’s by the pom’s and as such basically taught the rest of the world how to do it, no one can deny that the masters of it were the Japanese in both numbers and employment (aside from the horrible event, Pearl Harbour was a tactical masterpiece- sorry not meaning any disrespect here-but the way that the forces were used to neutralise the opposition was incredible).

John C: Mate Bomb length would most certainly be an issue and I think that this is where we might come up with the answer! Most German WWII Bombers were based on airframes that were already in mass production for other purposes (bearing in mind that Germany under the treaty of Versiles, was not allowed to produce weapons- this was later changed to weapons for local protection only and then Hitler took the next step anyway). Material availability might also have been another contributing factor, you don’t have enough metal to make a full length airframe, so you make a shorter one and stand the bombs on end to fit in the same amount.

A wild guess this, but would the length of the bomb be an issue? IIRC the He111 didn’t have long bomb bay doors so it may have been better to stack ’em vertically if they were bigger. Which leads to the idea that maybe construction techniques and technology couldn’t cope with long bombays in the 20’s and 30’s, without comprimising the structure of the aeroplane, hence the comprimise of vertical bombs.

Please bear in mind that this is a theory totally unemcumbered by knowledge 🙂

JC

No worries Ja,
Just a bit of pointless bickering, in good fun! After all, it’s the system recommended in most democracies! (“My colleague, the Rt Hn Gentleman is talking complete rubbish…”)

Back on topic:
Apart from the He111, the Ju52-3m had vertical bomb stowage, didn’t it?

From what I can remember, most ‘iron’ or ‘dumb’ bombs would be best launched in a slightly nose down 45 deg angle, as that’s the position they adopt when falling…

The torpedo (air launched) is where this kind of ordinance had the most experimentation to get the drop ‘right’.

But a reason for a vertical hoist seems to still elude us…

Cheers!

ok ok ok I seems to have started to open a can of worms here, sorry guys.

I do know a bit about ballistics, so I can understand the points being made. My main thought is about the shape of the plane as opposed to the shape of the bomb. Oh and as for bombs in the slip-stream, that is negated by the fact that some transports have been turned into rudimentry bombers dropping bombs out the back cargo door (c-130, an-74 and a couple of others)

What a soup of technical accuracy and lack of useful data! 😀 I’m not a ballistic(s) expert, but clearly you have a few gaps too!

First point. ‘Wobble’ is a function of mass and speed. Airstream is related to shape. (In your points one and two) So you’ve contridicted yourself in two short statements.

Oh. And: “Quick definitions (Ballistics)
* noun:** the science of flight dynamics
* noun:** the trajectory of an object in free flight”

Supersonic bombers are vastly outnumbered by subsonic. I’d be interested in an expert analysis of the ballistics of the Grand Slam and Tallboy bombs dropped by Lancasters. (But that expert’s not you, Distiller.)

Hmmm. Heard of Galileo? Ballistics are a function of shape, speed and weight. Low speed + low weight = high speed + high weight trajectories when shape is the same. Otherwise you’ve been talking sense old boy.

Warry funnie olt boy.

The problem is the moment the bomb leaves the bomb bay and wobbles in the airstream while trying to get it’s nose down. The faster you go, the more wobbling, the less precision. (Go supersonic and you’ll have a very hard time getting bombs out of the bomb bay at all!).

PS: Ballistic has nothing to do with shapes, only with (two) masses. 😀

That all comes from the late ’20s, early ’30s when the speed was low and bombs were light. Accuracy gets worse real fast when you drop bombs that way from a faster aircraft.

Hmmm. Heard of Galileo? Ballistics are a function of shape, speed and weight. Low speed + low weight = high speed + high weight trajectories when shape is the same. Otherwise you’ve been talking sense old boy.

That all comes from the late ’20s, early ’30s when the speed was low and bombs were light. Accuracy gets worse real fast when you drop bombs that way from a faster aircraft.

Ja W.: “This is all interesting, but nothing has really answered my question.”

Are you talking about the He111? No other German bomber in WW2 used that storage, and it too was optional on the He111. Fuselage height was no problem, since the He111 was born out of a civilian project, remember?

Just a guess, but if the fuse (or safety) is in / on the nose, then a pin can be extracted as the bomb’s dropped from its nose. It is possible to do it from the nose when stored horizontally, but maybe harder? (I’m just trying to work it out – no inside knoweledge! :rolleyes: )

As a tangent, doesn’t the tumble nose-hung bombs take lessen the accuracy? Or is it all minor differences in the end?

This is all interesting, but nothing has really answered my question.

The fuse thing is understandable, fuses are easier to arm when they are facing up rather than laying sideways.

Excellent Distiller, Glad to see you’re using all that talent that’s on loan 😀

yeah I kinda thought it was something like that mate 😀
there was even the AB, that is the submunition bomb, the germans had so much fantasy for weapons.. Think about the Fritz-X!

Alex

Naaa. For example the SC250:
The S stands for “stabilisiert”, meaning stabilized by fins, in contrast to older bombs which were spin-stabilized.
The C marks it as a bomb with a quota of 50% explosives of the total bomb weight. (SD bombs for example had a 30% quota).
And 250 is the total weight of the bomb in kilograms.

Stay Clear? 😉

Alex

German Bomb names

Triggers a question I have been wondering about a bit lately.
What does the acronym SC stand for in German bomb coding? :confused: