The "para-frag" bomb used by the Fifth Air Force in the SWPA during WW II was not, strictly speaking, a cluster bomb. It was a small 23 lb. anti-personnel fragmentation bomb with a small parachute attached to allow it to be dropped from very low altitude without damaging the plane doing the bombing. It was developed by Captain (later General) Kenney in the 1920's. A B-25 could carry dozens of these bombs in the bomb bay and deliver them at low altitude where their effect was very similar to cluster bombs. A rotary dispenser was developed to allow even more of these bombs to be carried and dropped during a prolonged bomb run over Japanese airfields.

Combined with heavy forward firing .50 caliber MG batteries in modified B-25's, the para-frag was a devastating weapon. In one attack on Borum airfield on New Guinea, in August, 1943, a group of B-25's, covered by P-38's shattered Japanese air power on New Guinea;

"thirty-three B-25s with eighty-three P-38s as cover made a simultaneous attack on Borum, Wewak, and Dagua [all airdromes in the Wewak area]. Sixteen B-25s, scheduled to hit But [also in the Wewak area], had run into bad weather and did not make the rendezvous. Lieutenant Colonel Don Hall, [who had] first used my parafrag bombs at Buna in September 1942, led the B-25 line abreast attack on Borum. Coming in over the tops of palm trees, Don saw a sight to gladden the heart of a strafer. The Jap bombers, sixty of them, were lined up on either side of the runway with their engines turning over, flying crews on board, and groups of ground crewmen standing by each airplane. The Japs were actually starting to take off and the leading airplane was already halfway down the runway and ready to leave the ground. Off to one side fifty Jap fighters were warming up their engines ready to follow and cover their bombers. Hall signaled to open fire. His first burst blew up the Jap bomber just as it lifted into the air. It crashed immediately, blocking the runway for any further Nip take-offs. The B-25 formation swept over the field like a giant scythe. The double line of Jap bombers was on fire almost immediately from the rain of fifty-caliber incendiaries pouring from over 200 machine guns, antiaircraft defenses were smothered, drums of gasoline by the side of the runway blazed up, and Jap flying crews and ground personnel melted away in the path of our gunfire, in the crackle of a thousand parafrag bombs, and the explosions of their own bomb-laden aircraft. We hit them just in time. Another five minutes and the whole Jap force would have been in the air on the way to take us out at Marilinan."

The Japanese lost over 150 aircraft at the three airfields, plus almost all of their pilots and aircrew, as well as over 300 ground crew. They referred to it as the "Black Day of August 17th." The Americans lost not a single plane.

http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/Books/Rodman/rodman.pdf

I think they were...only 'think', mind you....because I quite recently read a book which mentioned butterfly bombs having to be laboriously cleared by the entire personnel of a bomber airfield by searching every inch of the base.

And now, I have to confess that I cannot recall either the book or the circumstances...DOH !

But if I do, I'll get back to this thread.....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

The germans actually dropped over 1000 of these on Grimsby and Cleethorpes in 1943. They were still killing people months afterwards. It was all hushed up at the time just in case it caused the germans to repeat the process as it caused a great deal of alarm

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103 Squadron - Noli Me Tangere

There were more than a thousand dropped on Grimsby and Cleethorpes. From the number of containers found, it was estimated that about 2,500 were dropped. I lived in Grimsby and remember them well, I also remember them being found and exploded. This was ongoing well into the late fifties. The largest number found in one location was at least thirty in a disused cemetary. Two children were killed in that cemetary, I think it was somwhere in the Ainslie Street area. It is true that there was a reporting blackout for newspapers ands the BBC.

Ken