22,000Lb Grand Slam

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Originally Posted by Seaspriter

Darren, while I do agree with you in the larger sense, I suspect those residents of places that suffered extensive bombing like Dresden in Germany or Tokyo in Japan would not understand.

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I should clarify just a little, when that statement is standing on it's own merit, it does suggest that I may believe that the Allied powers were blameless in their actions, where civilian populations were concerned, which is not my intent or belief. I must insist that the statement be held in context with the entire paragraph where I have offered it as an introduction to observing that civilians and "war support" might be heavily influenced by first hand experience by those "at home".

Even my generalizations such as Allied and Axis powers is slippery slope, but it seemed the best way of describing the belligerents without resorting to good guys vs bad guys circa 1939-1945.

I may not have articulated my thoughts quite as accurately as I hoped in my original post and left things a bit ambiguous, I apologize for that bit.

You second point does hold very true, the scope of the war outside the London Blitz was something previously unseen in the history of warfare.

Couple of things need expanding;
Firstly the aerial mines were dropped by parachute to slow their decent in as much they would not destroy themselves and fail the intended purpose.
Jerry was too Teutonic in the design of the firing mechanism of the mines by making the block and the slide of the firing mechanism out of the same material and a secret that was never let out by the British was it galled and stopped the mines from firing in some cases had the Germans realized this very few of the mines would have failed to fire.
In the case of the George mine the only reason they got to get into one without casualties was one of the very first dropped on land destroyed itself on I think Pembroke docks and the royal engineers were getting into it and realized it was a scary piece of kit out of their league and called Vernon to send the mine disposals to dismantle it, hence all its secrets were discovered by the hand of fate otherwise it would possibly have never been defeated.
You may see the larger bomb under say a Stuka dive bomber with a flat ring about 1/4 the way down from the nose of the bomb the rings purpose was to slow the penetration of the bomb into the earth so the blast was more effective in destruction and not wasted underground
In the 4 books on the Allied Strategic bombing of Germany the whole idea of bombing cities by the Allies was to demoralize the civilian populace so they would lose interest in the continuation of the war and turn against Hit*er and in the same vien against Japan though most of the bomb load of the B-29's were incendiaries due to the buildings in Japan.
The only real reason for the switch by the Germans to the cities was by another twist of fate when a Germans bomber got lost and unloaded is bombs on the city of London so the British retaliated in kind and bombed Berlin and thus started the blitz in fact Her Goering said if any allied bomber should bomb Berlin they can call him "Sh*t" so I guess he was and full of it.............?

The conditions in the Dresden and Hamburg raids were ideal for a fire storm where the fire just propagated itself with such intensities that trees were uprooted from the ground and sucked into the fire, people had clothes stripped from their bodies whilst hanging on to poles etc before they to were sucked into the maelstrom.
The heat was so intense steel melted allot of the casualties were from suffocation in being trapped in cellars and air raid shelters as the fire consumed all the air they may never know the exact figures from the Hamburg raid but it is conservatively put at 40,000+ dead from that raid.

I am not full bottle on allot of tactics nor what is often called an arm chair General I just like reading and collecting WWI-II books for my mind I respect fully the commitment of the troops past/present and in the future to protect and preserve the hard won freedom we enjoy.

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Originally Posted by CINDERS

in fact Her Goering said if any allied bomber should bomb Berlin they can call him "Sh*t" so I guess he was and full of it.............?

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I think the Goering quote was "you can call me Meyer"

I have to say when people start applying a moral equivalence test to what the Allied forces did verses the Axis, It gets under my skin. To me it's a bunch of modern day PC drivel. To me, regardless of the politics of the time THEY started the ball rolling and the time came to pay the piper an he don't come cheap.
I think we could use a little of that Total War mentality today. You want to hijack a passenger jet liner and crash it into a building? saw the head off a soldier in the middle of the street? or kill a lad standing guard at war memorial? or shoot up a concert hall. Or aid and abed, instigate or otherwise have anything remotely to do with these actions.
Ok, but know this friend. We're going to kill everyone you ever knew in that slum village you crawled out of including your uncles dog. Then let's see how long this nonsense continues with our modern day Axis powers.

WP1976 there was no morality in it just stating the facts of what happened 70+ years ago with no reference to anything going on in the world today.

More information on other good reads about these fiendish mines Service Most Silent By John Frayn Turner which basically deals with the underwater side of the delousing of these things, the jerries also had another with a very long antennae which when it touched the ship static electricity set the mine off you could not see the antennae in the water.
Also in the aerial mines was a clock which would activate the mine at any pre determined time over 6 days, or a pre set number of times it was swept say in the case of an acoustic it may become active after 4 sweeps where an acoustic was suspected they had a ship with a set of large hammers in the bow to trigger the mine at a safe distance.
Acoustics would not fire if the ship was doing less that 5 knots as the sound signature of the engine, prop wash and other equipment would be below the initiation threshold to detonate the acoustic.
They had a couple of things for the magnetic mine a "Wimpy" with a large ring around it that was highly magnetized by a generator on board it flew low over the water to trigger the magnetic mine a rather dicey do with a 1000 kg charge of explosives going off in the water the plume reaching up 100's of feet well above the aircraft's flying height to activate them.
Then they decided to fit a giant magnet in a ship which really was a laugh as watches were ruined in a couple of days spanners leapt from pockets to stick to bulk heads, they then put a generator on a barge and had 2 long wires set up at different lengths creating a huge magnetic field this was a called the double loop method so only the wires were blown up by the magnetic mine.
And lastly degausing of a ship to neutralize its magnetic signature this had to be done on a regular basis as the ships became magnetic over a period of time due to the earths magnetic fields.

I wasn't even replying to your comment Cinders, I enjoy your input, we're good..:beerchug:

I'm referring to the comparison some make between the bombing campaigns of the Axis forces and how some will assign equal moral depravity to the Allied response. As in, somehow the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima or the Dresden raid was as deprived as the Blitz or Pearl Harbor. Basically, Pay backs are a beach and I for one have no problem with either event.

An old time friend of mine, the late Fl/Lt Leslie Barham, later a Sq Ldr was a wartime Wellington and later Lancaster bomber pilot. I often spoke to him while browsing through his flying log that read like an atlas of Western Europe - with his favoured targets of Duisburg, Essen, Wuppertal and Dusseldorf - whether he had any qualms or reservations about his actions or whether his regular crew (he had several crewman changes of course) did. Better not say his exact words but he had absolutely none...........

Berlin was a feared trip but a trip to the industrial heart was said to be more lucrative for its sheer effect on industry

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

whether he had any qualms or reservations about his actions

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My dad was the same. He still used disparaging terms towards those of his fellow man to his dying day, with no contest from anyone...

I'm interested to know exactly what modifications the Luftwaffe did to the magnetic mine for converting it to drop over land. Presumably a different fuse was fitted and a parachute??? We nearly lost HMS Belfast to a magnetic mine in 1939 and it only just made it back to port. She needed a total rebuild- they were powerful weapons.

Correct me if I'm wrong but sea mines are really a container of dynamite(?) with a detonation mechanism. It operates on the simple principle that you cannot compress a liquid whereas that uncompressable (or is it INcompressable?) liquid has got to go somewhere and when it does, will easily break steel plates open because it acts like a impinging hydraulic system as opposed to an expansive hydraulic system.

I would imagine that a sea mine used on land would use a similar fuze system. After all, hitting land will have the same effect as hitting water......, surface tension and all that physics stuff. Interesting.........