Chugalug,
Now I must be careful, for we have an Armourer (harryhrrs), of my age group among us, quite possibly in earshot (where are you, Harry ?), who may well jump out on me, and lay bare my ignorance for all to see.
AFAIK, the thing is, the bigger (and presumably more expensive) a bomb is, the more room they have for and the more they can afford to spend on the fuse. Therefore they can build better and more sophisticated safety features into it, making it safer for the user. When you get down to the 11 or 12 lb level, I think all they had was a sort of split-pin (like a Mills bomb), while it's
in you (should) be all right.
Of course, no device is proof against idiots; if you circumvent all the safety measures, then it matters little whether you are sitting next to a 250lb or a 2000lb one - you won't feel a thing either way. I don't know if a 11lb would kill you, but it would sure make your eyes water !
Familiarity breeds contempt. On one of our sqdns in East Bengal, an armourer had to take out the fuse from a 250lb sitting on a bomb trolley. Some grit had got in, the fuse/detonator was jammed in its thread. He collected a hammer and a cold chisel, straddled the bomb and went to work.
They found one wheel and half the chassis of the trolley some distance away, but that was all. (It is quite likely that something similar caused the RAF Fauld disaster in 1944).
Storage ? I don't think anybody bothered much
where they were stored. Until it's fused, a bomb is very safe. But in our case, we were dropping the things as fast as (or faster than) they could be got up to us; it was a sort of just-in-time system, storage was not a problem.
When we moved from one
kutcha strip to another a few miles away, we always flew across bombed-up - to ease the MT load, and to be ready for action as soon as we landed. In those cases, the long sides of my bed had to go by road - the armourers jibbed at having to fit a bomb
and my bed section on the same rack!
The only "proper" bombs I ever dropped were the GP 250s and 500s HEs, usually fused "NITI" (Nose instantaneous, Tail instantaneous), sometimes with "Rods", about 12in long , fitted to the nose fuse so that the blast would go sideways instead of being wasted digging big holes in Burma (never turned up any crated Spitfires, though).
Too much already, Goodnight,
Danny.