Secrets of the Grand Slam

I remember seeing what in retrospect must have been a Grand Slam and a Tallboy at the Odeon Cinema in Newcastle. I can’t remember now which film was showing but it was either “12 o’clock High” or the “Dambusters”. I think it was the former though.Presumably these belonged to the then RAF Exhibition Flight.
Jim

Just goes to show what a single laser guided bomb could have achieved where all those other bombs failed to.
That building is still relatively intact.

This one is still a hole filled with water (although smaller), there is one to the west and one to the east of this one, both filled in now.
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From google earth you can still see all 3, with the Submarine pens the clump of overgrowth
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Ashley Walk ranges

Anyone know the exact location? Is it visible on Google Earth?

Edit : There is a range of some description East of Fordingbridge – is that the area? https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

the range is north east of the Fighting Cocks Inn, Godshill. There is a car park further up the road from the pub, walk out left of the cricket pitch and follow the path out across the forest. The area they are looking at is now described as an ‘air raid shelter test site’ but it was in fact a submarine pen, built to simulate German pens on which to test bombs.

Grand slam, upkeep and highball were all tested here and the idea of ‘skip bombing’ was developed here. Sadly, it was decided to clear a lot of the remains of the remaining structures some 15-20 years ago. Several of the existing bouncing bombs were constructed from parts found out here on the ranges. There are quite a lot of bomb craters in the area and some are very large indeed. The 40mm S gun was also tested here, the aircraft flying in from Boscombe Down. Several S gun cases have been found out in the forest over the years and recently, a number of practice bombs were uncovered removed by EOD.

It will be interesting to see what if anything was pushed into the submarine pens before it was covered with earth but I suspect they have forgotten that some 8 years ago, 2 grand slams were found in a quarry near Swanage. There were no ranges in that area capable of having Grand Slams dropped on them and you couldn’t drop 2 side by side if you tried so I suspect the ones found were gathered from Ashley Walk and deposited in a large hole in the ground.

Dave

Apparently Grans Slam bombs were very expensive and crews sent to bomb targets and unable to do so were directed to bring them back and land with them – Now that’s scary:eek:

Anon

Watten, Wizernes, siracourt, etc., “only” received Tallboys; Grand slams were used on post-war trials, which probably explains why so few survive, and there were plans to use them on the connecting bridges on the Japanese mainland, which is possibly why there are some in Pakistan.

Thanks for the confirmation, Edgar – I had a feeling that might be the case. A few GSs on each site might not have left much for us to see today!!

“Barnes Wallis’ Bombs,” by Stephen Flower, is worth the investment; it contains a graphic, at times amusing, story of one pilot’s first delivery of a Grand Slam. ISBN 978-1-84868-959-6.
Watten, Wizernes, Siracourt, etc., “only” received Tallboys; Grand slams were used on post-war trials, which probably explains why so few survive, and there were plans to use them on the connecting bridges on the Japanese mainland, which is possibly why there are some in Pakistan.

Talking about preserved GS littering the countryside brought back the memory of sitting astride a certain large bomb at RAF Scampton as a child on one of the regular visits we used to pay to the then gate guardian proper, years later turns out this particular example was reported to be actually ‘Live’ though there is some doubt about this, and had mistakenly been placed there were it remained for a number of years before someone realised there might actually be a problem with it.

I wonder if that’s the one now at Kelham Island Museum. There’s five surviving grand slams in the uk, and two in Pakistan thought to have been on their way to the far east theatre when hostilities ceased[ATTACH=CONFIG]224875[/ATTACH]

There was a Grand slam minus tail section at boscombe down that I was told was used for load testing cranes/lifting equipment.

? That’s the missions they were used on, several were dropped at each location

So where are the other 50 or so?

There were 42 GS’s dropped in anger

Bielefeld, 14 March 1945
Arnsberg, 15 March 195
Arnsberg, 19 March 1945
Arbergen, 21 March 1945
Nienburg, 22 March 1945
Bremen, 23 March 1945
Farge, 27 March 1945
Hamburg, 9 April 1945
Heligoland, 19 April 1945

Well I never knew about that. Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

It’s on the Ashley Walk bombing range. Apparently they dropped a few inert Grand Slam’s first before testing the one live example so there’ll be a few damn great lumps of concrete-filled steel under there somewhere too.

I picked up a booklet on the range written by Norman Parker & Anthony Pasmore, published by the New Forest Research and Publication Trust (ISBN 0 9523888 5 5) and most interesting it is too. There were quite a series of targets for testing all sorts of air-to-ground weaponry but not a lot survives today and what there is is very overgrown. The ‘Submarine Pen’ (actually called the Ministry of Home Security Target) target was buried after the war as it was easier to do that than blow it up! – so it is still there.

I recall flying an aircraft over roughly this part of southern England some 15 years ago and seeing an open expanse of ground with bomb craters extant. There was one particularly large one with lots of radial chalk rubble lines leading away from it from the ejected material. I failed to note where it was as I’d have loved to have visited it on foot some time. Not sure if it was the Ashley Walk range and craters that I saw but I wouldn’t mind visiting that one. Apparently, though, the Grand Slam crater is no longer a crater but its site marked by a ‘large growth of reeds’.

There are several good maps in the booklet and, by all accounts, the site is entirely accessible on foot with guide books available.

Interestingly, Barnes Wallis had designed Grand Slam to be dropped from over 25,000ft for it to achieve its maximum terminal velocity on impact. However, the best a Lancaster could do was 16,000ft and obviously that was deemed to be good enough to achieve most of the bomb’s design potential. After the war the Yanks dropped a few from B-29’s and these could get to full height so that the bomb (they called it the T-14) could achieve the design TV.

Anon.

ITV Meridian carried this news report on the New Forest Range this evening.
http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2014-01-23/unearthing-the-secret-wwii-bunker-in-the-new-forest/

I’ve now answered my own question. Wasn’t aware of this place: looks like a fascinating area to visit

http://www.airshowspresent.com/ashley-walk-bombing-range.html

Anyone know the exact location? Is it visible on Google Earth?

Edit : There is a range of some description East of Fordingbridge – is that the area? https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Very interesting indeed. I thought that Grand Slams were dropped on the V2 site at La Coupole or were they Tallboys?

Interesting reading that, thanks for the heads up.