Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From:  (D Murphy)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Big conventional bombs
Message-ID: <6939@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 27 May 89 03:17:18 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Edinburgh University Chemistry
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: D Murphy <>

In some discussion - I think in a local group in the UK - refernce was made
to the USAF dropping a large conventional bomb on the North Koreans during
the Korean War as a `hint' to the Chinese - even though a presidential
decision had been made not to use nuclear weapons in the war.

This got me thinking about large conventional bombs - I remember seeing some
Vietnam footage of a really huge device being dropped from a C-130 (it was
attatched to parachutes and was wheeled out of the rear loading doors on a 
trolley). How big was this ? I was under the impression that the 22000lb
`Grand Slam', designed by Barnes-Wallis and used by the RAF against the
Bielefelt viaduct and the Brest submarine pens, was the largest conventional
air-dropped bomb ever used (this thing was *huge* and it was a real tribute
to the design of the Avro Lancaster that it could carry it).


Murff....

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D.J. Murphy     *Artificial* intelligence ?  Evidently.....