Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Bull
Certain sections of todays' media seem to confuse 'Cluster' with 'Anti-personnel' but let's not have exactitude get in the way of a good headline.... 
In WWII, the German 'butterfly bombs' were dropped in a canister which then split and distributed anti-personnel bombs over a wide area ; certainly used against airfields in the UK.
A true 'Cluster bomb' was the British Cluster projectile 500lb No. 14 which consisted of 106 x 4lb incendiary bombs, which was a strategic, not strictly anti-personnel bomb. |
The 'butterfly' bomb was used against Grimsby (My home town) and its neighbour Cleethorpes. It was used against one other town but this was not named. A complete curtain was pulled down on these attacks. If the Germans found out how demoralising these weapons were, they would have used more of them. To my knowledge, none were used against airfields. The sensitvity of the bombs depended on how much of the fuse was unscrewed by the vanes on the way down. There was only one way to deal with them,- four sand bags were placed round the bomb, a wad of gun cotton with a fuse was laid (carefully) alongside the bomb and two more sandbags were laid, (Again, carefully) on top. The fuse was lit and every one took cover. The explosion from something smaller than a condensed milk tin was astounding. In the main it was children and animals that suffered.
Ken