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From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Whistling bombs
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.072951.12211@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Feb 91 07:29:51 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.020147.11646@cbnews.att.com>
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From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste)

In article <1991Feb12.020147.11646@cbnews.att.com> GO5@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Kjell E. Grotland) writes:
>
>Somewhere in the back of my memory (as faulty as it is) i remember the
>germans or the allies (during WWI or WWII) putting some type of device
>on the tips of their bombs or artillery shells which would make a piercing
>whistling noise as it was falling towards its objective. This was done
>for psychological reasons as i recall. Does this memory of mine have any
>basis in reality? Thanks in advance for any help on this.

During the Blitz, some of the bombs dropped were set with delay fuses, or
with more insidious things than that. Some of these fuses were electric,
and in order to prevent them from exploding in the plane, they had a rather
clever mechanism:

On the rear of the bomb, between the fins, there was a small propeller which
would spin in the air as the bomb dropped. It was connected to a small
generator which charged up a capacitor, which was then used as the power source
for the fuse.

I would imagine that these propellers would make a shriek as the bombs fell.