Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 314 The Tallhouse Aerial Bomb

But there was nothing that could be done about it. Even though Smith was quick-witted and came up with the idea of ​​using unmanned tanks to scout ahead, he still managed to do it!
While remotely controlling the tank's steering via rope is not as agile as having the driver personally operate the tank, it still allows for precise control.

However, there are still advantages. That is, after encountering artillery shells and mines, you don't have to worry about losing a tank driver after the tank itself is destroyed.

Moreover, this also relieves US soldiers from the worry that they are cannon fodder destined to die.

Just as Wang Gensheng was figuring out how to stop the advancing US troops, Li Xiu heard Wang Gensheng say that the bombers' bombs were more powerful than the warships' guns, and immediately said:
"Si Ling, we've seen bombers before, we've seen the Japanese and the Americans, but we've never seen a bomber that can produce bombs with more power than the battleship's giant cannons!"

In response, Wang Gensheng said:

"Of course there are. For example, the tall cabinet bomb from England is an ultra-extreme bomb that weighs 5.4 tons!"

The tallboard bomb was a massive, oversized bomb invented by the British during World War II.

At first glance, this bomb appears to be a brute-force bomb, but upon closer inspection, its design concept is ingenious.

This ultimately led to the legend of high-yield bombs and pioneered a new type of bomb.

First, the basic characteristics of a tallboard bomb: large size, extremely large; and a large amount of explosives.

The tall cabinet bomb weighed 5.4 tons and contained 2.4 tons of explosives.

It is 6.4 meters long and 97 centimeters in diameter, and contains 2.3 tons of aluminum powder mixed explosive. This explosive is composed of 40% TNT, 18% aluminum powder and 42% cyclone explosive, and its explosive power is 1.5 times that of ordinary TNT.

It's important to know that during World War II, a typical bomb weighed 250 kilograms, with the largest being around half a ton to 1,000 kilograms. Bombs exceeding 1,000 meters in weight were relatively rare.

As explosives, if the purpose is to destroy non-impregnable targets, four 250-kilogram bombs are far more effective than one 1,000-kilogram bomb, so bigger bombs are not necessarily better.

For example, carpet bombing is a method where multiple small-powered bombs are dropped to cover an area rather than a single large-powered bomb.

The reason for this is that the shock wave of a bomb is three-dimensional. Therefore, the shock wave of a high-yield bomb will go into the sky, with only a small part affecting the ground.

Furthermore, considering the carrying capacity of aircraft, there are not many aircraft that can carry large bombs.

Therefore, the 5.4-ton bomb, the tall cabinet, is an unprecedentedly large size.

To accommodate such a large aircraft, only the Lancaster, the largest bomber in England at the time, could be used. And because of its excessive length, the Lancaster bomber had to be modified to accommodate one bomb at a time.

The Lancaster bombers also had to have their armor plates removed in order to fly higher and drop bombs.

The reason why the tall cabinet bomb is so long is essentially because it was designed for its intended use.

It is important to know that during World War II, bomber bombing accuracy was limited, there was no laser guidance, and unguided bombs were difficult to accurately hit small targets, so many bombings used carpet bombing.

Therefore, it becomes difficult to precisely destroy certain targets. To address this, Barnes Wallis, the designer of the Tallboy bomb, proposed the concept of an earthquake bomb.

When bombs explode on the ground, a large amount of energy is wasted in the air. Since air is not very effective at transferring energy, those fortified bunkers are difficult to destroy unless they are hit directly.

However, if the explosive detonates underground, the ground will generate seismic waves due to the explosion. These waves can travel much better underground than in the air. Even if it doesn't hit the target precisely, it can still destroy nearby buildings. This is the concept of an earthquake bomb.

To achieve its objective, the bomb first needed to have sufficient speed. The tall cabinet bomb was designed to be streamlined with a long and slender overall length, which allowed it to accelerate during natural descent.

The designed launch altitude was 12,200 meters, but due to limitations in aircraft conditions, the actual launch altitude was 7,700 meters.

It should be noted that, according to the original design, if it were launched from a meter, its terminal velocity could reach supersonic speeds.

In addition, in order to prevent the tall cabinet bomb from being smashed by itself when it lands at high speed, the head was specially reinforced with a steel cone that was up to 10 centimeters thick at its thickest point.

In addition to the elongated streamlined design to enhance the hardness and penetration of the nose cone, the tail fins are also specially designed with a certain deflection angle. They spin during high-speed descent, stabilizing the trajectory and increasing accuracy.

All of this allows the Tallboy bomb to penetrate five meters of reinforced concrete, which is basically a nightmare for underground bunkers.

Of course, this kind of bomb is too expensive. The explosive charge is a special kind of explosive. As a mixed charge, it needs to be left to solidify naturally after each filling, so the manufacturing cycle is long and the cost is very high. This also means that the bomb has to be brought back even if it is not used. This also places high demands on the pilots.

The Tallboy bomb's first operational use was in an attack on a railway tunnel. It successfully penetrated the 18-meter-thick mountain and exploded inside the tunnel, easily destroying it.

During World War II, Tallboy bombs were also used against high-value targets, such as submarine bases and V3 guns. The most famous example was the attack on the battleship Tirpitz, in which Tallboy bombs successfully destroyed this strategic target in two bombings.

The Tallboy bomb was actually the prototype of the later bunker buster bomb. Modern bunker buster bombs improved upon the Tallboy bomb by using a smaller projectile but with higher accuracy, targeting and destroying targets precisely underground rather than in a wide-area attack. However, the method of penetrating underground to attack remains exactly the same.

With the end of World War II, these oversized bombs have largely disappeared from conventional weapons, with more precise methods of delivering explosive charges being adopted instead.

However, the largest conventional bomb equipped by the US military after World War II was also a bunker buster, weighing over thirteen tons and containing more than two tons of explosives. The bomb's weight ratio was even higher, and it was a standard gravity-driven, large-tonnage bunker buster, reportedly capable of penetrating sixty meters of concrete.

If Wang Gensheng possessed such a super bomb, he could have completely destroyed the Chosin Reservoir, forcing Smith to abandon all his heavy weapons and allowing Smith's Marine Corps to operate with minimal equipment.

This would be fatal for the US military, because Wang Gensheng did not believe that the US military without heavy weapons would be a match for the reinforcements from Chaozhou.

However, just as Wang Gensheng was thinking about how to stop Smith from continuing his advance, Li Xiu said:
"Only 5.4 tons! That's not much more powerful than the Gustav cannon! Is this really the most powerful and heaviest aerial bomb?"

Wang Gensheng shook his head and said:

"Of course not. In fact, the size and weight of aerial bombs depend on the maximum weight that an aerial bomber can carry. Basically, whatever the carrying limit of an aerial bomber is, that's how big the aerial bomb can be. So the Grand Slam is the largest and heaviest single bomb to date!"

(End of this chapter)