The 'Accidental' British Bomb That Was Too Big for Any Plane скачать в хорошем качестве

The 'Accidental' British Bomb That Was Too Big for Any Plane

March 14th, 1945. The Bielefeld Viaduct in Germany had been attacked 54 times. 3,500 tons of bombs had already been dropped on it. It was still standing. One Lancaster dropped a single bomb. 400 feet of viaduct collapsed. The Grand Slam weighed 22,400 pounds. It was 25 feet long. No aircraft could carry it, so Britain built one specifically around it. The Lancaster B.1 Special had its gun turrets removed, its doors stripped off, its armour plated out. The wings bent visibly under the load. Pilots were told not to make corrections during the bomb run. Barnes Wallis had proposed this weapon in 1941. The Air Ministry said no plane existed to carry it. He spent four years proving them wrong. Between March and April 1945, 41 Grand Slams were dropped. They destroyed four major targets in five weeks, including U-boat pens with 23-foot concrete roofs that Tallboy bombs had failed to penetrate. I researched this using RAF operational records, 617 Squadron war diaries, and post-war structural assessments of the Bielefeld and Arnsberg viaducts. The Grand Slam is the only bomb in WWII that required an entirely new aircraft to be designed and built just to carry it. #GrandSlam #BarnesWallis #617Squadron #Lancaster #WWII