Most Dangerous Position on a Bomber....?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Exactly. Anyhow if I were not the pilot of the bomber I would want to be in whatever position was the closest to the doors so I could jump out if the plane was going down. LOL

[cheddar cheese]

One of the things I find amazing about the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima was that the bomb had to be armed by ONE MAN in mid flight. For me he was the hero of that mission.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Do you mean the guy who had to crawl into the bomb bay and pull the safeties. I am not a hundred percent sure but I think that was all bombs.

[cheddar cheese]

Well the airfield the B-29's took off from had had lots of B-29 crashes on takeoff in the past couple of weeks. The ground crew were doubtless scared by the fact that should the Enola Gay crash on take off with an armed atomic bombthat it would be catastrophic. They decided it would be a safer bet to arm the bomb mid-flight. I think that did mean what you said, but im not sure if this was the case for all flights from that airfield.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I think that was the case on all bombers wherever they were. There were safety pins on the fuses of the bombs and they had to be removed in order to arm the bombs. I may very well be wrong but I believe they were not pulled till right before they reached enemy territory.

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

I think that was the case on all bombers wherever they were. There were safety pins on the fuses of the bombs and they had to be removed in order to arm the bombs. I may very well be wrong but I believe they were not pulled till right before they reached enemy territory.

On a lot of planes, those pins were strung with a wire that automatically pulled the pin when the bomb was released. This freed a small prop on the nose or tail of the bomb (or sometimes both) that would have to spin enough turns to tighten a screw and fully arm the bomb.

On A-Bombs it's normal for them to be armed in flight if possible. You don't want a takeoff accident to make a crater of your bomber base!

=S=

Lunatic

Originally Posted by cheddar cheese

Well the airfield the B-29's took off from had had lots of B-29 crashes on takeoff in the past couple of weeks. The ground crew were doubtless scared by the fact that should the Enola Gay crash on take off with an armed atomic bombthat it would be catastrophic. They decided it would be a safer bet to arm the bomb mid-flight. I think that did mean what you said, but im not sure if this was the case for all flights from that airfield.

Ground crews had no idea what an A-Bomb was, so I doubt they were the ones who were afriad of what would happen if the B-29 crashed on takeoff! I think the decision it should be armed in flight was made long before the bomb was ever delivered to the airfield.

=S=

Lunatic

[cheddar cheese]

They made that decision because a lot of B-29's had crashed from take-off on that airfield. If it was a larger airfield where that wasnt the case I dont think the decision would have ben made.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I think the decision to arm it in flight was just a normal procedure. You would not want an aircraft to crash on take off with armed bombs of anykind. I bet regular airfields in England followed the same procedure.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

If it was a larger airfield where that wasnt the case I dont think the decision would have ben made.

actually it wasn't just that airfield, it was pretty much anywhere in the pacific where B-29s were flown from, they would have armed the bomb in mid-flight no matter where they took off from................

and arming an atomic bomb isn't as simple as simply pulling the safetys out, there's an entire arming unit that must be inserted into the bomb, it's like when you see bombs being dissarmed, but insted of taking the fuse out, you put a rod of uranium in, however it must be screwed and bolted in, a process that that in mid-flight took well over an hour, one siple mistake could easily set the bomb off, obviously not a good thing, however the "bomb armer" as he became known spent several hours the night before practicing untill his fingers bled.........................

[cheddar cheese]

Yup, thats why I think he was the hero of the flight.

Didnt know that was the case for all B-29's though, ta.

It is normal to arm nukes in flight for any plane where this is possible. During the cold war, B-36's and then B-52's sat loaded with nukes but without the arming core installed. Only on aircraft where the bomb was not accessible was the core to be pre-installed, and these planes were never, as far as I know, actually loaded with a live nuke.

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Lunatic

[GermansRGeniuses]

Isn't the arming core where the plutonium "hammer" lies?



Or have nukes changed?



What I mean is this...


Little Boy was basically an encased gun, with a chamber with uranium at the end, and to set it off in mid air (it exploded some 1,440 feet up to create a "crush" effect on the buildings below), the plutonium fell from an upper chamber into the other material, thus setting off the explosion.

Originally Posted by GermansRGeniuses

Isn't the arming core where the plutonium "hammer" lies?



Or have nukes changed?



What I mean is this...


Little Boy was basically an encased gun, with a chamber with uranium at the end, and to set it off in mid air (it exploded some 1,440 feet up to create a "crush" effect on the buildings below), the plutonium fell from an upper chamber into the other material, thus setting off the explosion.

Littleboy was a U-235 bomb, it had no plutonium in it.

The Littleboy bomb contained two U-235 portions, a 16cm x 16 cm 38.4 kg hollow cylinder "target" and a 25.6kg "bullet" made up of a cylinderical stack of 6 rings approximately 10cm wide by 16 cm long backed by a tungston carbide disk and a steel backlplate all contained in a 1/16th inch thick steel case (that looked like a can). The target was actually made up of two parts (cut the cylinder in half to make 2 cylinders), and only one of these had to be removed to make the bomb "safe" (I use that term very loosly), though I'm not sure if both target cylinders were installed in flight or just one (I would suspect just one to ensure alignment).

Fatman was a plutonium infusion bomb, using a two piece steel encased plutonium elipsiod core. Explosive charges placed around the "egg" exploded with precise timing crush the core to generate the ciritical mass. This bomb did not need to be assmembled in flight the way the little boy did because of the critical nature of the timing of charge detonations required to generate fission. However, assembly of this bomb occured on the field and is generally considered the most complicated field preperation operation for any deployed weapon system. It pretty much had to be assembled in a hanger at the airbase immeadiately prior to use.

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Lunatic

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Thats cool I always thought they were the same kind of bombs only built differently.