Re-inventing the wheel (or bomb in this case)

[sisemen]

Extract from a news report in "The West Australian" newspaper today...

"The Pentagon is speeding up delivery of a colossal bomb designed to destroy hidden weapons bunkers buried underground and shielded by 4500kg of reinforced concrete.

The 15 tonne behmoth - called the "massive ordnance penetrator" .....

The precision guided bomb is designed to drill through earth and almost any underground encasement to reach weapons depots, labs or hideouts." etc etc etc

Err.. p'raps the US of A might have saved themselves a few bob if they had looked at what the RAF were doing in 1945

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/British_Grand_Slam_bomb.jpg/300px-British_Grand_Slam_bomb.jpg (http://www.pprune.org/wiki/File:British_Grand_Slam_bomb.jpg)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/Seismic_bomb.gif (http://www.pprune.org/wiki/File:Seismic_bomb.gif)

Stick a GPS or Tomtom in the nose and - shazzam - you have what was ordered :ok:

YouTube - Grand Slam bomb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Mm-zFW_nA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Mm-zFW_nA

Oh, and a piston engined aircraft was the delivery platform - not a B2 :}

[Gainesy]

Post war the USAAF took a few Grand Slams or Tall Boys the latter I think) and put a flare in the tail and added radio guidance, it was called Tarzan and was dropped by a B-29.

[TEEEJ]

The second image posted is a US munition. The US took the design up to 43,600 lb. The Grand Slam was 22,000 lb.

U.S. ARMY ORDNANCE MUSEUM (http://www.ordmusfound.org/t1244kb.html)

T12 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T12)

TJ

[EyesFront]

Must be a new interpretation of the term 'general purpose'