PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - "The Great Falkland Gamble"...
View Single Post
Old 15th Mar 2012, 12:22
  #33 (permalink)  
Not_a_boffin
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Portsmouth
Posts: 530
Received 174 Likes on 93 Posts
About the Argentine Bombs fusing, the 1000 lbs Mk17 british made bombs were used by the English Electric Canberra for mid and high level bombing.

So the biggest problem for the armorers was to fuse those bombs for extreme low level bombing.

The Argentine Navy had at that time two Type 42 Destroyers, ARA Hercules and ARA Santisima Trinidad.
We had also knowledge of the Sea Cat capabilities, the ARA General Belgrano was equipped with Sea Cat lunchers and the Argentine Marines had the Tiger Cat for air defence.
The Navy and the Air Force knew what was capabilities of the UK radars and the understanding of having to fly very low to avoid the radar detection.

The Argentine Navy Aviation was using American 500 lbs bombs Mk82 Snakeye.
Those were used by the MD Skyhawk A-4Q and the sinking of the HMS Ardent is a proved of properly lunch height of around 200 ft/60 mts was needed for exploding inside the ship.

Pilots had the selfdefence tendecy of extreme low flying not giving the proper lunching parameters.

Anyway...it wasn't a Picnic at all for anyone...


You are having a laugh, right?
Not_a_boffin is offline