Bombs and Fuzes, Section II: British Bombs; General Information

ALLIED BOMBS AND FUZES

BRITISH BOMBS - SECTION 2

Bomb Data	File No.: 1200
Nationality: British	Information Date: October 1942

GENERAL INFORMATION

SHAPE	British bombs have the following in common:
	They are fully streamlined, fuzed in the nose and/or tail, and suspen-ded by one lug on the side over the center of gravity, i.e. 1/3 back from the nose on the overall length of the bomb. The standard length is five times the maximum diameter.
CONSTRUCTION	The General Purpose bombs are of cast iron, and the Ar mor-Piercing and Semi-Amor-Piercing of forged steel con struction. The re cently developed High Capacity bombs, used in the heavy raids on the Ger-man cities because of their great blast effect, are of "boiler plate", welded con struction, consisting of very thin walls and a 75% loading factor.
	This is an exception to the low loading factors characteristic of all other types of British bombs. For General Purpose bombs the figure is about 30%; for Semi-Armor-Piercing, 17%; and for Armor-Piercing, 8%.
FILLER	The fillers are: Amatol for the General Purpose and High Capacity types, T.N.T. for the Semi-Armor-Piercing, and Shellite for the Armor-Piercing types. Shellite is picirc plus dinitrobenzene.
COLOR	Formely all British bombs were painted Yellow, but this color is now Olive Drab. This should be kept constantly in mind in examining the following pages which contain references, based on earlier sources, to the Yellow body color. Practice bombs are painted black.
MARKINGS	The standard markings of British bombs are as follows:
	1. Red and green criss-cross hatched rings denote an amatol filler.
	2. Red Ring painted on the bomb means that it has been filled.
	3. Green Ring means composition exploding booster C.E. (Tetryl). T.N.T. stencilled on top of the Green Ring means that there is a T.N.T. booster in addition to the C.E. one.
	4. A White Ring around the nose above the Red Ring indicated a Se-mi-Armor-Piercing bomb.
	5. White Rings around the nose or either side of the Red band indica-tes an Armor-Piercing bomb.
STENCILLING	All British bombs are stencilled on the body and the following items are shown: Type of filling, such as Baratol, Amatol, or T.N.T. (Ty-trol); type of bomb; weight class; mark number; company or station filling the bomb; date of filling; lot number; and on bombs over 20 lbs., the actual weight of the bomb complete with tail but without fuzing components. A typical example would be as follows:

G.P.
Bar.
R 25/2/42
Lot. 1234
118 lbs.

120 I
10/90

	There are ten main types of British bombs likely to be in present pro-duction. Certain absolete classifications are nevertheless included, for existing stocks of these may not be entirely exhausted. It is re-ported that the Japanese have captured stocks of British bombs in Malaya and it is entirely possible that these stocks (some of which may be obsolete) will be used by the enemy.
	The ten main types are presented in the following order and identified by these abbreviations:

		F –	Fragementation
		GP –	General Purpose
		MC –	Medium Capacity
		HC –	High Capacity
		SAP –	Semi-Armor-Piercing
		AP –	Armor-Piercing
		AS –	Anti-Submarine
			Incendiary
			Practice
			Small Yellow AA bomb.

The following identifications are no longer used, and the bombs indi-cated thereby are only to be found in very old stocks:

		R.A.F.
		S.N.	(reported to be a very old bomb once used against Essen, Germany, and hence the name "S . . . N")
		R.L.	(meaning made at Royal Laboratories, Woolsey).

It should be noted that all airplanes now being received by the British from the United States are so adapted that AN bomb and fuzes, as well as British, can be carried.