PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Biggest Non Nuke Dropped in Afghanistan
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Old 14th Apr 2017, 13:45
  #36 (permalink)  
gums
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: florida
Age: 81
Posts: 1,611
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Salute!

The B-2 picture seems to make the bomb look bigger than it really is.

OTOH, I did "fit checks" on the plane for the JDAM and another weapon. The bays are huge! You can put your auto in one. After all, it can carry 80 MK-82 boms, no kidding - 80 friggin' bombs all internal. Each bay handles 8 x 2000 lb JDAM on rotary launchers.

We have the main Special Ops base here, besides the Armament Development folks. So my neighbor (a MC-130 pilot) across the street dropped one of the older 'Daisy Cutter" bombs back in Desert Storm. We later had another MC-130 troop move in two doors down, but he didn't drop a big one in the second Iraq deal, and I don't think any were used. They said the loss of weight was not all that bad as long as you had the bird trimmed strongly nose down before the sucker rolled out the back.

Interestingly, we tried the original FAE doofers back in my day in 'nam. They were advertised the same about overpressure and using it on cave/tunnel complexes. They didn't have the mixture mechanism perfected and some of them fizzled and others only produced a small fireball and no "explosion", they were kinda like a Hollywood special effect with lottsa deisel fuel and gasoline.

They ain't kidding about the shockwave effects, though. We saw the bad guys shooting right outta the smoke from our nape. But if we dropped a MK-82 or bigger close to a gun position they didn't shoot for a minute or more. 'course, a direct hit was "game over".

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