22,000Lb Grand Slam

[CINDERS]

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.