22,000Lb Grand Slam

Thought this would be some good reading;

Vintage News
Strangeness, 6 November 2015
The RAF discovered that a 15 year-old
‘Gate Guard’ Grand Slam bomb – was actually LIVE!!!!
Apparently when Lincolnshire County Council were widening the road past RAF Scampton’s main gate in about 1958, the ‘gate guards’ there had to be moved to make way for the new carriageway. Scampton was the WWII home of 617 Sqn, and said “gate guards” were a Lancaster…and a Grand Slam bomb.
When they went to lift the Grand Slam, thought for years to just be an empty casing, with an RAF 8 Ton Coles Crane, it wouldn’t budge. “Oh, it must be filled with concrete” they said. Then somebody had a horrible
thought …. No!….. Couldn’t be? … Not after all these years out here open to the public to climb over and be photographed sitting astride! …. Could it? …. Then everyone raced off to get the Station ARMO. He carefully
scraped off many layers of paint and gingerly unscrewed the base plate.
Yes, you guessed it, live 1944 explosive filling! The beast was very gently lifted onto an RAF ‘Queen Mary’ low loader, using a much larger civvy crane (I often wonder what, if anything, they told the crane driver), then driven slowly under massive police escort to the coastal experimental range at Shoeburyness. There it was rigged for demolition, and when it ‘high ordered’, it proved in no uncertain terms to anyone within a ten mile radius that the filling was still very much alive!
Exhaustive investigations then took place, but nobody could find the long-gone 1944, 1945 or 1946 records which might have shown how a live 22,000 lb bomb became a gate guard for nearly the next decade and a half. Some safety distance calculations were done, however, about the effect of a Grand Slam detonating at
ground level in the open. Apart from the entire RAF Station, most of the northern part of the City of Lincoln, including Lincoln Cathedral, which dates back to 1250, would have been flattened.

The Grand Slam was a 22,000 lb (10,000 kg) earthquake bomb used by RAF Bomber Command against
strategic targets during the Second World War. It was the most powerful non-atomic bomb used in the war.
Known officially as the Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 lb, it was a scaled-up version of the Tallboy bomb
and closer to the original size that the bombs’ inventor, Barnes Wallis, had envisaged when he first developed his earthquake bomb idea. It was also nicknamed “Ten ton Tess”.
When the success [of the Tallboy bomb] was proved, Wallis designed a yet more powerful weapon… This 22,000 lb. bomb did not reach us before the spring of 1945, when we used it with great effect against viaducts or railways leading to the Ruhr and also against several U-boat shelters. If it had been necessary, it would have been used against underground factories, and preparations for attacking some of these were well advanced when the war ended. —
Sir Arthur Travers Harris (1947).

On 18 July 1943, work started on a larger version of the Tallboy bomb, which became the Grand Slam. As with the original Tallboy, the Grand Slam’s fins generated a stabilizing spin and the bomb had a thicker case than a conventional bomb, which allowed deeper penetration. After the hot molten Torpex was poured into the casing, the explosive took a month to cool and set. Like the Tallboy, because of the low rate of
production and consequent high value of each bomb, aircrews were told to land with their unused bombs on board rather than jettison them into the sea if a sortie was aborted.

After release from the Avro Lancaster B.Mk 1 (Special) bomber, the Grand Slam would reach near supersonic speed, approaching 1,049 ft/s (320 m/s), 715 mph (1150 km/h). When it hit, it would penetrate deep underground before detonating. The resulting explosion could cause the formation of a camouflet (cavern) and shift the ground to undermine a target’s foundation.
Unlike Tallboy, Grand Slam was originally designed to penetrate concrete roofs. Consequently, it was more effective against hardened targets than any existing bomb. The first Grand Slam was tested at the Ashley Walk Range in the New Forest, on 13 March 1945. By the end of the war, 42 Grand Slams had been dropped on active service
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Originally Posted by CINDERS

The effect of a Grand Slam detonating at
ground level in the open. .... Lincoln Cathedral, which dates back to 1250, would have been flattened.

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That is one powerful bomb. Shudder the thought of losing lives and the beautiful Lincoln Cathedral -- it is also the church my ancestors attended in the 1500s.

The Grand Slam story reminds me of a bomb episode on a more miniature scale, but very close to me -- my existence on this planet was the result of unexploded bombs:

Headline: U.S. Minelayer Beat Off Four Suicide Plane Attacks
New York Herald Tribune, August 4th, 1945
FELLED THREE PLANES OFF OKINAWA; FOURTH FLED SMOKING

Washington, Aug 3, (UPI) – The Navy told today of the exploits of the new destroyer-minelayer Harry F. Bauer, which shot down three suicide planes and drove a fourth away seriously damaged without itself suffering a scratch.
The Bauer previously had shot down four other enemy planes in single attacks upon larger formations of which the minelayer was a member. In this attack, she was the sole target of four enemy suiciders.
The action took place at Okinawa on Sunday, April 29th. Three Japanese single engine fighters and a two-motored bomber suddenly came out of the clouds and headed straight for the Bauer, which was on an isolated patrol station.
The bomber came in first, and the ship’s main battery let loose. The enemy plane exploded in mid-air, and a single parachute opened as the bomber plunged into the sea.
The next plane came in low and fast, and the Bauer’s gunners saw their hits flaming from the plane. But it kept coming. Finally the pilot lost control and the plane executed a snap roll and plunged into the sea. The bomb exploded as the plane hit the water, shaking the minelayer sharply but inflicting no damage.
The second fighter headed for the ship but was forced away by the Bauer’s accurate fire and circled briefly out of range. At the same time the last enemy plane headed in for the small ship.
Again accurate fire hit the fighter, which burst into flames and then aimed in a death-plunge straight for the Bauer. It cleared the ship’s stacks by a scant ten feet to crash into the sea. The bomb let go as it struck the water, and the Bauer was again shaken, but unhurt. The surviving plane fled, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

Headline: DEATH LURKS UNDERFOOT
by Richard J. O’Keefe, Philadelphia Inquirer War Correspondent (June 30, 1945)

SHIP HELD UNEXPLODED JAP BOMB 17 DAYS AFTER BATTLE

Aboard a fast carrier, Halsey’s Third Fleet, June 30th – A local Navy man is an officer aboard the destroyer minelayer Harry F. Bauer which shot down 13 Kamikaze planes in action off Okinawa and learned today that for 17 days since the battle they had been literally walking with death underfoot. He is Lt. (jg) Robert B. Lynch, (Combat Information Officer) , who will remember for the rest of his days that three threads on a bomb fuse probably was all that prevented him from becoming another name on the Navy Department casualty lists.
BOMB IN FUEL TANK
Unnoticed during the heat of battle, a 550-pound aerial bomb from a kamikaze hit the ship. The kamikaze released the bomb just moments before crashing into the ship amidships with a glancing blow. The bomb pierced the hull and fell into a fuel tank without exploding. The unexploded bomb was discovered when the flooded fuel tanks of the destroyer were emptied. The hole in the tank had been believed caused by shrapnel.
3 THREADS FROM DEATH
No one with sufficient experience in defusing bombs was aboard the destroyer, and a hurry call was sent for Lt. Charles M. Rupprecht of Englewood, N.J. air ordnance officer aboard one of Halsey’s Third Fleet carriers. The Lieutenant, who is over six feet tall, removed the bomb on June 30th. He worked alone for four hours in the bottom of the tank, removing the tail and nose fuses of the bomb and fitting a hoist to it so it could be lifted from the ship. Later examination of the fuses belied the ordnance officer’s state that his job was “just routine.” It was found that three threads in each fuse were all that prevented the firing pins from dropping on the charges. Apparently the kamikaze pilot released the bomb just a moment too late to arm the bomb. Had the arming propeller turned another second, the bomb would have become armed, dropping the firing pins on the charges. Had the pins dropped, the bomb would have exploded and probably caused the loss of the destroyer and all its crew, other ordnance officers said.
UNEXPLODED TORPEDO
During the battle, the destroyer was also pierced by an aerial torpedo, which entered the port bow and passed through the starboard bow, also without exploding. The “tail” of the “fish” was left hanging inside the ship, and discovered when the ship was surveyed for repairs.
Lt. Lynch is the son of Mrs. Mildred Lynch, 86 Strathmore Road, Cranston, and the husband of Mrs. Robert B. Lynch, 5 Legion Way, Cranston. -30-

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Originally Posted by CINDERS

22,000Lb Grand Slam

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I thought you were going to tell us you found one for your collection...

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

I thought you were going to tell us you found one for your collection...

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Thank heaven he hasn't

Dick

Gads foiled again Batman! Now I heard there was a............

I'm surprised that they didn't just steam the TNT stuff out the original bomb once they'd got the filler plate (?) off - or whatever it was they took off to inspect. I doubt whether it was fuzed. Someone has made an exact replica of a bouncing bomb. Maybe Airfix could do a full size Grand Slam replica

Now there's a thought PL the instructions would be pretty easy just 2 halves but the bleedin' glue would set you back a pretty penny!

Steaming out explosives ~ they used to do that with the aerial mines the Germans dropped was to steam the explosive out after cutting a hole in the mine casing it was called tree-panning, there were a few types the Germans dropped ~ magnetic or acoustic, magnetic & acoustic in one then as the Mine disposals got good at it delousing the damn things.
Then they introduced George with photoelectric cells under the rear dome the only way into the bomb which had to be removed first to get inside so as soon as sunlight hit it bang no more mine disposal officer they assembled it in filtered sunlight so the only way to defeat the damn thing was in total darkness.(This mine also had the very first printed circuitry board in it)
They used phosphor bronze tools on the magnetic mines and were very very careful with acoustics each movement of the keeper rings was measured in fraction of inches one disposal chap lost his life when a lorry got through somehow and the noise and vibrations set it off, if you look at a pic of a WWII German acoustic mine it has one giant ear.
Next lot they put in a thing called a ZUS-40 which grabbed the fuse from inside the mine so any attempt to remove the fuse would set off the ZUS - 40 and fire the mine they defeated this item 2 ways with a very long string to pull the fuse out where a trap was suspected or drill small holes and fill the fuse area with pure alcohol and sugar which when the alcohol evaporated the sugar crystals stopped the booby trap from activating.


Some of the things these chaps did well they deserved the Victoria cross but as they were RNVR vollunteers they could only get the George cross just a couple of ones for you, being lowered into an empty gasometer to delouse a magnetic/acoustic mine standing knee deep in tar with no hope of escape.
Working on a mine fuse hanging upside down with the fuse out of sight on a barge full of munitions and the fuse ran he beat the fuse by the slimiest of margins having to use a tool to stop it running as you only had 17 seconds to run 400 yards its lethal zone whilst upside down! with no hope of escape.
Being on the mud flats with a live acoustic and thinking it was dead and dragging the test chain over it to test it but someone took some chain and they were within the lethal zone as the chain mounted the mine it detonated just as he said "See I told you it was dea......" it bent his knees 90 degrees the wrong way.
They disposed of mines under water as well.
The one they could not defeat very well was the oyster mine which went up with the passing of a ship and the underwater pressure wave it created moving through, there were lots of other mines as well that scared even the Germans who made them.
One character was the civilian professor who devised allot of methods in dealing with these treacherous things and was often seen with his lady secretary taking notes with a helper working on the mines they were called The Holy Trinity until one day all three were atomized by a mine that got them all.
HMS Vernon was the place they were taken to when safe to pull right down and look at (a spoof ship) it was a base workshops, or at a quarry with a ships name as another red herring where they were safely detonated.
All this in "Softly Tread The Brave" By Ivan Southall I highly recommend this book to read

There is another called "Open the Ports" a sequel to the above book which is set during and after the war to open up the ports in Europe of which it was deemed so highly dangerous that it was not officially sanctioned by the military..........they were only reserves who did this task!

Make a sand mold and cast it from solid lead...

The filler plate on a Grand Slam bomb is accessed after removal of the tail section of the bomb which is made of a much lighter gauge sheet metal than the actual bomb casing containing the explosive. The filler plate is just a circular steel plate with holes round the edge for bolting it to the rear of the bomb casing. I found out this information by looking at several Grand Slam bombs in museums such as the Brooklands Museum, surrey. Its a shame the above bomb casing wasn't saved.

Agreed, but for them to try to boil the explosive out would have taken a considerable amount of work they obviously weren't interested in...too bad though.

The first picture was taken by me years ago at Brooklands and shows a Grand Slam bomb on the left out side what was the motoring club house and the one on the right a part size Tall Boy experimental bomb. The site was taken over by Vickers in WW2 and these bombs were displayed outside for many years before being put under cover in the late 1980s. I believe that Barns Wallis office was on the 1st floor and his office window is between the 2 bombs. This is where he did much of his design work. This is now part of the Brooklands museum and is well worth a visit.

The 2nd and 3rd pictures shows the result of a German mine laying aircraft being shot down over Clacton on Sea, Essex on the 30th April 1940. Amazingly only 2 on the ground were killed but 160 were injured.

Thanks 10 it puts it in black and white what the RNVR guys were dealing with and like one fatalist said the explosion is faster than your nervous system you wont feel anything.........I think they contained about 1000kg of high explosive

The large tall building next to the Brooklands Clubhouse contains the Stratosphere Chamber also designed by Barnes Wallis, post war I believe. This was built to mimic high altitude for the purpose of testing of aircraft components at low temperatures and presumably at low pressures. The Chamber itself looks like, in my opinion, a giant diving decompression chamber and there is little room left inside the building because of all the ancillary equipment needed to operate the chamber.

The incident of the mine laying aircraft being shot down may have been what gave the Luftwaffe the idea to start dropping modified sea mines over land normally by parachute and I haven't heard of this happening before the Clacton incident. It is my understanding that the mines used were modified magnetic mines but this I haven't seen confirmed from another source. I believe that they were normally dropped by parachute but there were cases of them being dropped experimentally without. I have heard of cases of the parachute catching on trees and parts of buildings causing the mine to be suspended in mid-air and one can imagine nightmare this would cause the bomb disposal engineers. I do have a slight person connection with this incident in that my family were living only 2 or 3 miles away at the time.

I can only imagine that a sea mine dropped on land would act as one of those 4000lb block buster things. Just a thin skin packed with dynamite to blast everything open. But without crates of incendaries to set fire to everything afterwards, pretty pointless.

The underground engineers tunnelling the new U-Bahn found plenty of dud incendaries. Mind you, at the same time nearby along the Rhine, they also found an unexploded 4000lb blockbuster too! AND defused it! Mind you an earlier 1000punder killed a few while being defused. Not a job for me!

I thought the idea of dropping the parachute mine was to cause an air-burst explosion and so cause damage over a wide area. I would think that a bomb that explodes below ground will have some of the power absorbed by the ground and the rest of the blast mainly going up-wards in a fairly confined area.

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

... I would think that a bomb that explodes below ground will have some of the power absorbed by the ground and the rest of the blast mainly going up-wards in a fairly confined area.

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Actually, I believe it causes a miniature earthquake which causes significantly more damage.

The top of my road in East London recieved a parachute mine from Jerry during the war, as evidenced by the 1950's low rise flats at the end and the change in house design half way down the road also there's severe cracking still showing on the Victorian/Edwardian concrete re-enforcement for the road crossing of the Great Northern outfull sewer that runs a hundred yards from my house (sounds worse than it is, the new trendy name for it is the "greenway") I can remember elderly neighbours telling me of the "blooming great 'ole" it left

My father survived being dive bombed with the closest of the stick of 10 bombs landing a matter of a few meters away in the front garden of the bungalow he was living in because the bomb went down along way into the soft soil before exploding. There was a huge crater in the garden and another in the road where the second landed. The bungalow was seriously damaged and had to be rebuilt after the war. My father suffered serious hearing damage which didn't heal. Sadly 4 other people in the village lost their lives because their home had a direct hit.

That is one of the aspects of the Second World War that made it stand apart, the civilian toll was staggering. In modern times, "professional armies" place so much emphasis on limiting collateral damage, that there are instances when it has cost service members lives, through denial of artillery, fast air, and other area effect weapons. However that is necessary the evolution of the laws of armed conflict, and the application of warrior ethics, humanity reaches a very ugly tipping point when unrestricted warfare is conducted without regard for non-combatants.

While no side is ever completely faultless in a war, the conduct of the Axis powers during the Second World War was especially reprehensible. I believe these horrible actions galvanized the majority of the Allied forces and their civilian population into supporting the "war effort". This was probably a different social atmosphere than most modern conflicts where the majority of "folks at home" have never had the war show up on their doorstep, or in the case of Flying 10's father, had an enemy bomb detonate in their garden.

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Originally Posted by Sentryduty

While no side is ever completely faultless in a war, the conduct of the Axis powers during the Second World War was especially reprehensible

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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.

However, to make your point more emphatic, the horror inflicted on Warsaw by both the German and Russian Armies is chilling. At the Warsaw Rising Museum is a computer generated video shot from the nose of a B-17 trying to drop supplies for the Polish resistance. The city that housed 1.1 million people is GONE -- flattened, bombed out, decimated. What the Germans didn't destroy, the Russians did. Ugly. And the Russians wouldn't let the B-17s flying in supplies to Poland land in "friendly" Russian territory to refuel. So the B-17s had to carry fuel sufficient for a round trip from Brindizi, thus lessening the amount of replenishment supplies for starving Poles. This was how the Russians said thank you in return for the Allies replenishment of guns, aircraft, trucks, etc. to fend off Hitler. Pretty ugly.

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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.........

I will have a look in the book and get back to you it talks a little on the various mines but is more about the sheer will power of these chaps delousing them I will see if I can find the mine pic on line with I think Syme delousing a magnetic caption reads, Photo's of actual mine taken at great risk? it gives some scale as to the size of the chute.
Understand that initially these were not fitted with impact fuses they were there to destroy and terrorize the populace which they did very well indeed......

Not a great pic but you get the drift on the size of the risers for the parachute in the background just how heavy the mine was exposed are the fuse etc
The other is a magnetic stuck in the mud what call bravery getting the fuse out of that thing when the blast kill radius was 400 yards which you had to cover in 17 seconds the time it took the fuse to run?

Another for your collection...

I am still diggin for that one BAR just gotta figure how I can fit it in a suitcase and dodge excess baggage :rofl::madsmile:

Nope, you'll have to pay for that one.

During the war my Grandfather received an official looking letter asking him if he would like to volunteer to join the Royal Navy to do work of a "secretive nature". It went on to say that if he accepted he would be given the rank of 2nd Ltn and the pay to match. My Grandfather had no previous maritime or boating experience but was a qualified Electrical engineer. He decided to decline the offer because he thought that the navy don't just hand out officer posts for nothing and if he took it on his life expectancy probably wouldn't be very long. He always thought that the work probably involved the German magnetic mine; he certainly wasn't wanted for his seamanship. Unfortunately the letter doesn't seem to have survived.

This is me with the 33 EOD Regt RE Grand Slam, at Lodge Hill Camp, Chattenden, Kent in circa 1990.

Lodge Hill has now been sold off for development and a colony of rare newts are currently holding up building work, or similar.

The was also the slightly smaller 12,000lb Tall Boy laid nearby on the ground.

In the Museum to the left, was a V2 Rocket, in two parts so that it fitted in.Attachment 69111

I remember the Bombs and the V2 looking in a sorry state. I did think it should have been better preserved.

The 617 Sqn Tall boy and Grand Slam from RAF Lossiemouth have now gone too.

Where have they gone to? Somewhere sympathetic I hope. I understand that the grand slam at Chattenden was just buried in the site - so that one day in a few years time someone will be digging his garden and.................... Can you imagine the phone call to the cops and especially the answer when he describes how big it is..................

Yes like most things they go there were 2 x 15 inch projectiles for years outside the Byford Army magazines land has been developed and the projies gone. Rumour has it they are gracing the entrance to Garden Isl Naval Base here in W.Aust one hopesit is true. As for all else kit is only people who can keep the memories alive heres hoping......