Luftwaffe armour-piercing bombs - when did/didn't they have any?

Hi, I have some posts on various forums (and an mention in Wikipedia) that the Luftwaffe didn't have any armour-piercing bombs, but when I search the internet (and Wikipedia) I can find lists of the types of armour-piercing bombs the Luftwaffe did have. Does this mean that it is just rubbish or that the Luftwaffe didn't have armour-piercing bombs at some time or other? It doesn't make sense to me, why would they not have bombs that could penetrate fortifications even if they hadn't thought about using them against ships?

 

Hi Vakarr, The Raf had to get some special bombs to pierce the concrete of the Atlantik Wall bunkers for instance. That's one of the Reasons. When they realised their regular "Cookies" couldn't penetrate the several meter thick concrete at Lorient, Saint Nazaire or other U-Boote Pens, or buried V1 instalations etc... They had to inovate and get bigger bombs.

The highpoint was the invention of the "Tall Boy" and the" Grand Slam" made especially for the Dambusters. It was so heavy that the Lancasters which caried them had to be especially adapted. At the same time the Organisation Todt made permanent improvements to get the German defenses thinker and more efficient. (thicked layers, smalls holes on the bunkers to make bobms bounce, the use of imported pink Granite (more resistant than the grey French granite) from Norway, at the U-Boote pens.

Germany was on a defensive way and invested so much time and money to keep its instalations on the field, that it had no money to invest in these kind of bombs. Itwhich would require new bombers or impoved ones. You know that it could not afford to send heavy bombers to the Uk in 1944-45 -except one or two isolated attacks witht the Greif, which were catastrophic because they were ready and their engines heated before even reaching the targets.






[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]Weapon:[/TD]
[TD]Tallboy[/TD]
[TD]Grand Slam[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Length:[/TD]
[TD]21 ft (6.4 m)[/TD]
[TD]25.4 ft (7.74 m)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Diameter:[/TD]
[TD]38 in (0.97 m)[/TD]
[TD]46 in (1.17 m)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Weight:[/TD]
[TD]12,000 lb (5443 kg)[/TD]
[TD]22,000 lb (9979 kg)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Warhead:[/TD]
[TD]5,200 lb* (2359 kg)[/TD]
[TD]9,135 lb* (4144 kg)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]CWR:†[/TD]
[TD]43%[/TD]
[TD]42%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]# Used:[/TD]
[TD]854[/TD]
[TD]41[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


Weapons of WW2 RAF Bomber Command - Grand Slam, Tallboy

 

AFAIK Wallis's "earthquake bombs" (tallboy and grand slam) were not stricly AP as they were designed to create huge craters not penetrate armour, but being very thick skinned they could be used effectively for that role too.
The Germans never developed something that size (6 to 10t) but had plenty of smaller AP bombs, ther SZ series went from 125 to 500 Kg and the SC series includes a 2t weapon. (Pulling this out of my personal WW2 weapons database so check them up).
Of course the Fritz-X glider bomb was also AP, in a couple of instances it went through the armoured deck and the side/bottom of the ship before exploding.

 

TOS, you constantly amaze me with the depth and breadth of your knowledge.

 

Yes, I know all that stuff about the tallboy bombs ect, my question is about the Luftwaffe, some people think that the Luftwaffed didn't have any armour-piercing bombs in 1940 and I wonder how they got such an idea, since clearly the Luftwaffe did have such bombs, the only question is, when?

 

the answer is yes the LW indeed have AP bombs. may I suggest under TOS's posting and if interested in the Frit-X is Martin Bollingers "Warriors and Wizards" development // Defeat of the radio controlled Glide Bombs

 

Well it seems nobody has a shred of evidence to prove the Luftwaffe didn't have AP bombs in 1940. It must be one of those "I read in the paper somwhere" rumours. I read in a book about German secret weapons that the Luftwaffe radio-controlled bombs could be jammed simply by turning on an electric razor!

 

Not quite up with the guidance methods of said weapons...but if the guidance was "wired", then a closed circuit should exist and defeating the signal would be impossible...

 

AFAIK the German bombs guidance system was radio, and the Germans were not as advanced in electronics as the allies. Some sources claim the Henschel Hs 293B. was wire guided, others it just had a harder to jam guidance system, but the more commom 293A was not. The X-4 AAM was wire guided. As a personal note my father's university mentor ing. Crocco worked during the war on a device known as cacafilo that was meant to allow guidance wires to be laid at the speed required by bombs and missiles without breaking, not a trivial engineering feat, family legend is there is still a prototype of that device in our basement but I never found it. Previously there had been experiments with wire guidance for torpedoes but that's a lot easier as the speed is much less.

 

As I said earlier, what was the use to develop such bombs if they didn't have the bombers to drop them ? This is precisely why the V1s and V2s were later developped. They could be sent directly to a target without an aircraft. It (theoretically only) solved the problem of crew shortage, aircraft shortage and metal shortage.

 

armour piercing is irrelevant since an bomb doesnt have to hit the tank to kill it. The problem was hitting the tank. This was solved by either the Stuka and other attack planes with precision or simply dropping enough bombs with mediums and heavies. There were several ground attack planes that carried weapons that could kill a tank from above. Armour piercing is important for a ship.

 

AP bombs are mostly used against warships and fortifiations. I can see the LW not having much to attack warships as that wasn't invisioned to be much of a target for them. Fortifications on the other hand are a different matter.

In any case this page:
Armour Piercing Bombs, Air-Dropped Weapons
has a list of German AP bombs but no introduciton dates. It could be that they had a few just not enough. It's been pointed out in some of the Sea Lion threads I've read that they didn't have enough mines for the mine barrages proposed. Nor did they have a good arial torpedo at that time.

Lots of info on them at:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/TM/pdfs/TM9-1985-2-German.pdf
but no dates of introduction.

I did find in the above that the German "SAP" bombs didn't seem to be really designed for that purpose more for a fragmentation effect and fused to explode above the ground rather than exploding after impact.

This book might answer your quesitons:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/German-Air-...1741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286122717&sr=1-1

 

Thanks, I ordered the book, it will be interesting to get a German point of view, I hope it says something about armour-piercing bombs and torpedos in 1940!

 

For torpedoes try the various links off of:
Germany Torpedoes


Please tell us what you find out from the book. Also consider reviewing it in the book review forum.

 

Unfortunately the book is mainly designed to help with bomb disposal and deliberately does not talk about anti- ship weapons other than the late war guided bombs. It doen't give production figures although it does mention that the Luftwaffe used up its stock of 20,000 ordinary bombs during the Polish campaign and had to use alternative designs and captured (French & Belgian) bombs afterwards. It also says that there was an attachment for ordinary bombs designed to make them explode under a ship rather than skip off the surface of the water. It does say that there were armour-piercing bombs in 1940 but not how many. It says that trials of armour-piercing type bombs were conducted on the Sudetenland fortifications shortly after the conquest of Czechoslovakia. Also, that there were armour-piercing bombs avaialble early in the war that had rocket propulsion to increase their speed after they were dropped so as to maximise their armour penetration.

The review is here: http://www.ww2f.com/eto-mto-eastern-front/58825-german-air-dropped-weapons-1945-a.html#post648567

 

Forum Unbound Frogs • Consulter le sujet - AXIS TORPEDO BOMBERS "at the end of the thirties Germans had well-known PC (Panzersprengbombe Cylindrisch) cylindrical armor-piercing bomb family, developed in 1937-1938 and equipped with a cast-steel body with a hardened cast-steel nose cone, filled with cast TNT and Amatol (60/40) mixture, or TNT and wax combined explosive charge. They were available in weights of 50, 250, 500 and 1000 kg and represented a standard armament of well known, standardized German level and dive-bombers (He 111, Ju 87, Ju 88, Do 17)."