Bomb
A
bomb is an
explosive device that generates and releases its energy very rapidly as an
explosion and as a violent, destructive
shock wave.
Most bombs do not contain more
energy than ordinary
fuel, except in the case of a
nuclear weapon.
A bomb is usually some kind of container filled with
explosive material, designed to cause destruction when set off. The word comes from the
Greek word βόμβος (
bombos), an
onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as "boom" in
English.
They have been used for centuries in
warfare and are a central part of a
terrorist's arsenal.
Bombs are first and foremost weapons; the term "bomb" is not usually applied to explosive devices used for
civilian purposes, such as
construction or
mining, although the people using the devices may sometimes refer to them as bombs. Many military explosive devices are not called "bombs". The military mostly calls airdropped, unpowered explosive weapons "bombs," and such bombs are normally used by
air forces and
naval aviation. Other military explosive devices are called
grenades, such as
hand grenades,
shells,
depth charges,
warheads when in
missiles, or
land mines.
Experts commonly distinguish between civilian and military bombs. The latter are almost always mass-produced weapons, developed and constructed to a standard design out of standard components and intended to be deployed in a standard way each time. By contrast, terrorist bombs are usually custom-made, developed to any number of designs, use a wide range of explosives of varying levels of power and chemical stability, and are used in many different ways. For this reason, they are generally referred to as
improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Bombs fall into three distinct categories:
conventional if filled with
chemical explosives,
dispersive if filled with
submunitions, chemicals or other disruptive agents which are spread on or shortly before impact, or
nuclear if relying on
nuclear fission or
nuclear fusion for their effect.
Thermobaric weapons are a type of conventional explosive that draws its oxidizer from oxygen in the air, resulting in a more powerful explosion.
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Device originally thought to be a pipe bomb, found to be a time bomb. From a United States government publication. |
The most powerful bomb in existence is the
hydrogen bomb, a
nuclear weapon. The most powerful bombs ever used in combat were the two nuclear bombs dropped by the United States to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most powerful non-nuclear bomb is the
United States Air Force's
MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast).
The most powerful bomb ever was
Tsar Bomba: ca. 50 Mt; it had a mass of 27 tons; it was dropped from a bomber for a test, but was for various reasons not very suitable for combat.
The first
hydrogen "bomb" Ivy Mike (10.4 Mt) was even heavier in mass, 82 tons. It was too heavy to be deliverable by a plane or rocket, and therefore not very suitable for an attack.
Another type of bomb is called an
electromagnetic pulse. Its primary function is to terminate all working electrical equipment in the vicinity. Its power can range from one machine to an entire state.
The usual method of delivering military bombs to their target is by
bombing, i.e. dropping them from a
bomber plane. Modern bombs,
precision-guided munitions, may be guided after they leave an aircraft by remote control, by autonomous guidance or (in the case of
nuclear weapons) mounted on a
guided missile.
Some bombs are equipped with a
parachute, such as the
World War Two "parafrag", which was an 11kg fragmentation bomb, the
Vietnam-era
daisy cutters, and the bomblets of some modern
cluster bombs. Parachutes slow the bomb's descent, giving the dropping aircraft time to get to a safe distance from the explosion. This is especially important with airburst nuclear weapons, and in the case that the aircraft releases the bomb at low altitude.
A
hand grenade is delivered by being thrown. Grenades can also be projected by other means using a
grenade launcher, such as being launched from the muzzle of a
rifle using the
M203 or the
GP-30 or by attaching a
rocket to the explosive grenade as in a
rocket propelled grenade (RPG).
A bomb may also be positioned in advance and concealed, for example in a garbage container, car or truck as a
car bomb, or by the
roadside in a
roadside bomb, in a building as a
booby trap, or in lugguage and in a vehicle.
A bomb destroying a
rail track just before a
train arrives causes a train to
derail. Apart from the damage to vehicles and people, a bomb exploding in a
transport network often also damages, and is sometimes mainly intended to damage, that network. This applies for
railways,
bridges,
runways, and
ports, and to a lesser extent, depending on circumstances, to roads.
In the case of
suicide bombing the bomb is often carried by the attacker on his or her body, or a in a vehicle driven to the target.
The
Blue Peacock nuclear mines, which were also termed "bombs", were planned to be positioned during wartime and be constructed such that, if they were disturbed, they would explode within ten seconds.
The explosion of the bomb has to be
triggered by a
detonator or a
fuse. Detonators are triggered by
clocks,
remote controls like
cell phones or some kind of sensor, such as pressure (altitude),
radar, vibration or contact. Detonators vary in ways they work, they can be electrical, fire fuze or blast initiated detonators and others.
Bombing may be directed at
military targets; such as
ships,
logistic and transportation centres,
warehouses or
weapons industries such as armament factories. They may be detonated also at civilian targets, such as
office buildings, commercial areas or whole
cities. Bombing of particular targets such as ships, railroad trains or military vehicles such as
tanks is called
tactical bombing; bombing of areas such as military bases or
infrastructure, such as bridges, industrial centres, transport facilities) is called
strategic bombing. Strategic bombing of civilian targets is controversial and considered a
war crime by most and a defining characteristic of terrorism by others, and may be considered
terror bombing. Area or
carpet bombing of cities using
incendiary bombs may result in a
firestorm and extensive casualties especially when the city is fire-prone, largely constructed of timber buildings or used to store flammable materials, and it is windy.
Bombing of civilian targets
The first recorded bombing of a civilian target took place on
October 16,
1912,when a force of
Bulgarian aircraft dropped two bombs over the city station in
Edirne -
Greece.The second recorded bombing of a civilian target took place on
January 19,
1915, when a force of German
zeppelins dropped 1,200kg of
high explosive on a number of towns and villages in
East Anglia. This was not, however, a deliberate targeting of civilian populations, since the airships were very poor at finding their assigned military targets. However, following an accidental bombing — there had been previous such, see plaque, right — of
London in May 1916, in July the
Kaiser permitted urban centres to be deliberately targeted. The zeppelins proved rather ineffective at this task, but continued to raid the city sporadically to the end of the war. A chilling anticipation of things to come in later wars, however, was provided by the introduction of the German
Gotha bomber, which was giant for its time. On
13 June,
1917, a raid by 18 of these killed 18
children, and injured 30, at a
school in
Poplar,
East London, exposing the inadequacy of the
air defences over London and delivering a blow to British
morale that the airship raids had never achieved. Gotha raids continued to the end of the war, but German war production could not sustain the sort of really destructive air offensive to be seen in later years.
During the inter-war years, the imperial powers, including
Italy in
Abyssinia and Britain in
Iraq, bombed civilian targets in the process of maintaining their
colonial rule. The
Spanish Civil War (1936-39) saw extensive aerial bombing of civilians. The bombing of working class areas of
Madrid in November 19-23 1936, during the
Siege of Madrid, by the Nationalist's German allies in the
Condor Legion was perhaps the first mass targeting of civilians by air power. The infamous
bombing of Guernica in the
Basque Country on
April 26,
1937, again by the Francoist air forces, was the first aerial bombing of a civilian target to achieve significant urban destruction.
During
World War II there were instances where civilian targets had been bombed—first, during the
German invasion of Poland in 1939 and the
Netherlands and
Rotterdam, then following
The Blitz directed at
London and other British cities and the
RAF and
USAAF bombing of Dresden and other German cities.
Towards the end of the
Pacific War, when air defense over Japanese cities had become weak,
United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific engaged in extensive incendiary-bombing of Japanese cities such as
the bombing of Tokyo. This campaign culminated in the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with
nuclear weapons, which would play a major part in ending the war. Due to the huge size of a nuclear blast, such weapons can intentionally or unintentionally cause massive civilian casualties, from the initial blast and subsequent damage to infrastructure and from the
nuclear fallout and radiation effects.
Bombing in peacetime
One
peacetime use for aircraft bombing is to break
ice dams that form on some rivers.
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Bombs for Beginners*
How a bomb functions and rating their power
