A Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster of No. 101 Squadron RAF drops “Window” countermeasures (left) and incendiaries and a Blockbuster bomb (right) over Duisburg, Germany, on 14-15 October 1944 “Operation Hurricane”

Posted by HeStoleMyBalloons

10 Comments

  1. I’m coming from this region. The bombs are a daily topic Till this day. In our area (Ruhrgebiet) we find New WW2 bombs in a daily bases. Problem ist, that they get more and more unstable. In the past we could nearly always defuse them. Nowdays we need to bring them to contolled detonation more often. The big fuck is, that it’s expected that some fuses might go off after some time and then shit will hit the fan.

  2. ExtensionConcept2471 on

    There was method in the bombing and types of bomb used. First they would use bombs that exploded deep in the ground to destroy the water supply network into the city then use high explosive bombs to ‘open up’ buildings and then drop incendiaries to burn whatever was left. Correct me if I’m wrong….i read the book a long time ago.

  3. Don’t think that is a blockbuster or maybe that is a name for a “cookie”. RAF firebombing loads usually included a single 4,000 “cookie”, and lots of incendiaries. The cookie would either break the roof of a building to let the incendiaries in, or hit in the street and break the water mains so fires could not be fought. Then the incendiaries would do their job. Send a thousand bombers over a city at night and you could create a firestorm. It was an effective tactic.

  4. DragonfruitThen3866 on

    It´s bits of aluminum being dropped, to make the German radar unable to see the number of aircraft.

  5. A fun fact. The UK had Window aka chaff, which it passed onto the USA via the Tizard Mission, whilst the Germans had Düppel which was essentially the same.

    Neither side wanted to use it as they knew it would screw up their radar detection systems. Until of course Bomber Command went fuck it, and first used it on Operation Gomorrah to a lot of success.