Earthquake bombs on the Ashley Walk Range.

In his book 'Bombs', Stephen Flower describes the testing of the 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs on the Ashley Walk Range. Both of these devices (designed by Barnes Wallis) were intended to penetrate deep into the earth before exploding, causing a localized earthquake, thus bringing down near-by structures. The former (12,000 pounds) and the latter (22,000 pounds) had terminal velocities of well over 3500 feet per second! They were subsequently used, with a great deal of success, on bridges, railway tunnels, viaducts, submarine pens and the battleship 'Tirpitz'. Many of them (879 Tallboys and 41 Grand Slams) were dropped by 617 (Dambusters) squadron. ISBN 0 7524 2987 6Wallis' bouncing bomb ('Upkeep') used on the sucessful raids on the Ruhr dams was also developed on this range on various dam-wall targets which have subsequently disappeared.

cl-06-20-08-411617934 1.kmz (2.74 KB)

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'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.'
- George Santayana
'You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.'
- Leon Tolstoy (?)

One of the targets for the Tallboy bombs was the V-3 site under construction near Mimoyecques in France.

Easy identifiable some of the Tallboy hits in GE.

Attachments:

V3 Bunker Mimoyecques.kmz (701 B)

And also the V-1 launch site in Siracourt shows till nowadays the two Tallboy impacts: one at the northwestern edge and one at the southern end in the ceiling.

Attachments:

V1-Bunker Siracourt Wasserwerk 1.kmz (713 B)