WWII secret - 2nd only to the Atomic Bomb

Actually, the Ultra Secret, was a even better kept secret. And there are some other secrets that have been taken to the grave. Such as "The Man Who Never Was."
 
fat tony said:
What's even more awesome is the voice of the announcer. . . :D
Click to expand...

All the newsreel and propoganda narators sound the same, even the German ones! One suspects that there is a "standard" way that was either taught or they did auditions!:D
 
These radio proximity fuzes were called "VT fuzes" in WW2. "VT" stood for "Variable Time" to confuse the ennemy and make them believe the fuses were ordinary variable delay fuses. The VT fuses were at first issed to AA batteries and kept secret but later in the war they were issued to the ground artillery in europe andc they proved extremely effective against ground troops and were afterward issued in great number. The VT fuse insured perfect airburst and reduced the effectiveness of trenches, foxholes and open top armored vehicle. The German hated those fuzes!
 
The radio proximity, or VT fuze was a major advancement over a simple timed airburst because it was triggered by proximity to the target, rather than a simple time delay from arming. This made it unnecessary to estimate time of flight to manually set the fuze.
 
I'm wondering though, if they were used after WWII, because the 'daisy cutter' fuzes allegedly were used in Vietnam, this is sort of puzzling, unless it's like the story about WWII British night fighter pilots eating carrots to sharpen their night vision, when in fact Radar was being used, to throw off the enemy. . . :confused:
 
I have a friend who has been an engineer for quite some time now, back when he was starting his career, he worked for an electronics company, anyways, one of the more senior engineers he met there, had done a lot in his career, one of the projects he worked on was for either the Rhodesian Government or the South African Government, if you know, there was an arms embargo going on at the time, so they had to make do, one of the projects he was working on was a light 250 - 300lb bomb for counter- insurgency during the Bush War, it was made of mainly fibreglass, and had a layer of ball bearings to give the shrapnel effect, they tried it with a regular fuze and noticed the bombs would dig themselves in eliminating the sharpnel effect, so they devised a fuze with a long extension, so the actual bombs sharpnel field would be quite a bit above ground, when they tried them out on the enemy with the extension, the pilots noted that they were now working 'just fine' :evil: :D

[youtube]XtOgY8L3Jy0[/youtube]
 
Last edited:
I have a book Winds of Destruction the autobiography of a senior Rhodesian pilot. One of his staff jobs was the development of those sorts of weapons for the Rhodesian Air Force in conjunction with the South African equivalent of the NRC.

Some very interesting stuff. to wit:

Project Alpha, also called the golf ball bomb, a cluster bomb with spherical bomblets. The bomblets were made double walled, with a layer of rubber balls between which caused them to bounce. The fuse activated on impact and lit a short delay train which let the bomblet bounce back into the air before bursting. The rubber balls also caused the casing to break where the balls were making 20mm discs that flew like little buzzsaws.

Project Golf was originally intended to be a Fuel /Air bomb, but was too technically difficult, so they ended up making a 450kg ANFO bomb with a one metre long "proboscis" to make them detonateabove ground. There was also a miniture version for smallere aircraft that deployed a contact from the nose on a wire, insterad of the long probe.

There were also a bunch of other projects, including machined extensions that screwed onto a 37mm rocket to increase the size of the warhed. the added weight apparently made them slower, but just as accurate. He also helped develop fibreglass napalm tanks which worked better than imported metal ones, and could be made locally without using strategic or rare materials. Also, side door machine gun remote mounts and various other wierd and wonderfull stuff.

A very interesting book
 
Last edited:
fat tony said:
I'm wondering though, if they were used after WWII, because the 'daisy cutter' fuzes allegedly were used in Vietnam, this is sort of puzzling, unless it's like the story about WWII British night fighter pilots eating carrots to sharpen their night vision, when in fact Radar was being used, to throw off the enemy. . . :confused:
Click to expand...

I suspect that the reason that fuze extensions are used for bombs rather than proximity fuzes is probably due to the lower cost to do the same thing. You can't really fit a fuze extension to an artillery shell, but the extra length is no issue for a bomb mounted on a pylon.
 
fat tony said:
I have a friend who has been an engineer for quite some time now, back when he was starting his career, he worked for an electronics company, anyways, one of the more senior engineers he met there, had done a lot in his career, one of the projects he worked on was for either the Rhodesian Government or the South African Government, if you know, there was an arms embargo going on at the time, so they had to make do, one of the projects he was working on was a light 250 - 300lb bomb for counter- insurgency during the Bush War, it was made of mainly fibreglass, and had a layer of ball bearings to give the shrapnel effect, they tried it with a regular fuze and noticed the bombs would dig themselves in eliminating the sharpnel effect, so they devised a fuze with a long extension, so the actual bombs sharpnel field would be quite a bit above ground, when they tried them out on the enemy with the extension, the pilots noted that they were now working 'just fine' :evil: :D

[youtube]XtOgY8L3Jy0[/youtube]
Click to expand...

That's all very nice, but what happens if you have 36 (?) rounds in the hoppers all set up for your expected threat and the threat suddenly changes??

Take them out and refuze them or just blast them off until you can reload with the ones you want, and hope the threat hasn't arrived before you do that?:rolleyes: Do they really feed the rounds into the fuzer by hand?!

Lots of sound and fury and little holes in the target; great for Somali pirates in open boats, but where's the blast damage?

They had automatic 57mms on PT boats in WWII, now that's a main deck gun for a destroyer?? These people have forgotten the lessons of history, and I don't mean WWII, just the Falklands.:rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom