Tallboy, 12,000 lbs. Made a big splash. A B29 couldn't carry that load.
Imagine the fish floating arond there.
Fish dinners for the whole town!
Tallboy, 12,000 lbs. Made a big splash. A B29 couldn't carry that load.
They had a 20,000 pound bomb load capacity.
A B-29 could carry 20,000 lbs over a short distance and low altitude. I believe they could have been used to deliver them in the ETO, but no '29s ever operated there during WWII, so it's a moot point. The B-17 or '24 were not even close to capable of delivering a Tallboy.
The US did some development on a similar bomb, but it was never used...They went straight to double-dog dare...Mushroom clouds-r-us...
Lancasters were used to carry the "Tallboy", but had to be modified to do so. I think 617 Squadron dropped the vast majority, if not all, of the Tallboys deployed.
The Tallboy was an invention of Barnes Wallis, the same guy who brought you the "Bouncing Bomb" used in the Dams Raids (Operation Chastise).
There was a bigger version, the Grand Slam, that weighed 22,000 lbs, also a Barnes Wallis invention. The guy apparently like big bombs..
Tallboy, 12,000 lbs. Made a big splash. A B29 couldn't carry that load.
They had a 20,000 pound bomb load capacity.
But they had to build 27 special B-29s with different bombays for the A-bomb.
Same thing they did with the Lancs. They had the basic platform, they just had to modify it to carry the Bouncing bombs, Tallboys, and Grand Slams.
Imagine being in a ship and having several of those just miss you.
I bet there would be all kind of [bleep] broke up and not working,
tons of people beat up and broken bones.
All feeling "lucky"!