Bouncing Bomb Boo Boo

During WWII, the British had developed an interesting little weapon known as the "Bouncing Bomb." It did exactly as was described: when dropped from a plane, it would actually bounce along the water before detonating. It was going to be used against dams and battleships, but I don't think it ever entered into use. Why? Well, the catch was you had to be flying about 20 feet above the water and at exactly 215 knots (about 250 mph) in order for it to bounce correctly. In this video, we see a bouncing bomb bounce a bit to high and strike the tail of the aircraft that dropped it

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• aircraft
• airplane
• crash
• accident
• bomb
• WWII
• military

[undertake782]

@TheRantingCabbie The point was to avoid torpedo nets.

[karadan100]

That's a very dead test pilot :(

[Carlyxando]

Que tio mas inútil...

[TheRantingCabbie]

@keithyoung I guess that explains why. Thanks for the info.

[keithyoung]

@TheRantingCabbie torpedo nets

[TheRantingCabbie]

I don't see why they didn't use a giant size torpedo. The way I see it, you would get the same effect or accomplish the same thing. I'm sure you could hang a torpedo from the belly that has the same amount of HE as well as payload. After all, torpedoes didn't swim that deep when deployed against a ship.

[nortonius]

It's not a Mosquito, it is US A-26C-25-DT Invader 43-22644 testing Barnes Wallis's Highball bouncing bomb for use by the USAAF, off the coast of Florida in 1945. By this time Highball had been tested intensively for use by the RAF using Mosquitos, but was never used by them. The RAF did use a larger version of the same type of bomb, called Upkeep, against German dams in 1943, when Lancaster bombers dropped them in what became known as the 'Dambusters raid'.

[Myles0Harcourt]

Actually it was used against several dams in the Ruhr valley. It actually worked on two, the Mohne and Eder.

That is a mosquito; they used them to test it.

[Myles0Harcourt]

Actually it was used against several dams in the Ruhr valley. It actually worked on two, the Mohne and Eder.

[Spasticatedtoad]

Whoops!