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SB 1000
The SB 1000 (Spezialbombe) was a luftmine (aerial mine) used by the German Luftwaffe during World War II. History The SB series of bombs were high-capacity bombs intended to create the largest lateral blast effect, in contrast to most other German bombs, which were armor-piercing, cluster bombs, fragmentation or incendiaries. Since the SB series was not designed to pierce armor or to create fragments, the casings were very light and the ratio of charge to weight was high at 73%, while most general-purpose bombs were up to 50%. Design The SB 1000 had a welded sheet metal body with either a drawn or welded steel nose piece. The nose piece was threaded and was streamlined to reduce drag while the bomb was attached to the aircraft. The SB 1000 had no base plate and was filled through the nose with a central exploder tube which ran through the center of the bomb from the fuze pocket to the nose. The tail of the SB 1000 was constructed of drawn steel and had four fins ins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabteilung'' of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force. During the interwar period, German pilots were trained secretly in violation of the treaty at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. With the rise of the Nazi Party and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the ''Luftwaffe''s existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through German rearmament and conscription would be announced on 16 March. The Condor Legion, a ''Luftwaffe'' detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armor-piercing Shell
Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many warships and cause damage to their lightly-armoured interiors. From the 1920s onwards, armour-piercing weapons were required for anti-tank warfare. AP rounds smaller than 20 mm are intended for lightly-armoured targets such as body armour, bulletproof glass, and lightly-armoured vehicles. As tank armour improved during World War II, anti-vehicle rounds began to use a smaller but dense penetrating body within a larger shell, firing at very high muzzle velocity. Modern penetrators are long rods of dense material like tungsten or depleted uranium (DU) that further improve the terminal ballistics. History The late 1850s saw the development of the ironclad warship, which carried wrought iron armour of considerable thickness. This armo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cluster Munition
A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines, disperse chemical or biological weapons, or to scatter land mines. Some submunition-based weapons can disperse non-munitions, such as leaflets. Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians and/or unintended targets long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. Cluster munitions are prohibited for those nations that ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin, Ireland, in May 2008. The Convention entered into force and became binding international law upon ratifyi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fragmentation (weaponry)
Fragmentation is the process by which the casing, shot, or other components of an anti-personnel weapon, bomb, barrel bomb, land mine, IED, artillery, mortar, tank gun, or autocannon shell, rocket, missile, grenade, etc. are dispersed and/or shattered by the detonation of the explosive filler. The correct term for these pieces is "fragmentation"; "shards" or "splinters" can be used for non-preformed fragments. Preformed fragments can be of various shapes (spheres, cubes, rods, etc.) and sizes, and are normally held rigidly within some form of matrix or body until the high explosive (HE) filling is detonated. The resulting high-velocity fragments produced by either method are the main lethal mechanisms of these weapons, rather than the heat or overpressure caused by detonation, although offensive grenades are often constructed without a frag matrix. These casing pieces are often incorrectly referred to as "shrapnel", particularly by non-military media sources. History The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incendiary Device
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact are designed to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start or maintain the reaction. Napalm for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a 'gel' to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression. Pre-modern history A range of early thermal weapons were utilized by ancient, medieval/post-classical and early modern armies, including hot pitch, oil, resin, animal fat and other similar compounds. Subs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General-purpose Bomb
A general-purpose bomb is an air-dropped bomb intended as a compromise between blast damage, penetration, and fragmentation in explosive effect. They are designed to be effective against enemy troops, vehicles, and buildings. Characteristics General-purpose (GP) bombs use a thick-walled metal casing with explosive filler (typically TNT, Composition B, or Tritonal in NATO or United States service) comprising about 30% to 40% of the bomb's total weight. The British term for a bomb of this type is "medium case" or "medium capacity" (MC). The GP bomb is a common weapon of fighter bomber and attack aircraft because it is useful for a variety of tactical applications and relatively cheap. General-purpose bombs are often identified by their weight (e.g., ). In many cases this is strictly a ''nominal weight'' (the counterpart to the ''caliber'' of a firearm), and the actual weight of each individual weapon may vary depending on its retardation, fusing, carriage, and guidance syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trunnion
A trunnion (from Old French "''trognon''", trunk) is a cylindrical protrusion used as a mounting or pivoting point. First associated with cannons, they are an important military development. Alternatively, a trunnion is a shaft that positions and supports a tilting plate. This is a misnomer, as in reality it is a cradle for the true trunnion. In mechanical engineering (see the trunnion bearing section below), it is one part of a rotating joint where a shaft (the trunnion) is inserted into (and turns inside) a full or partial cylinder. Medieval history In a cannon, the trunnions are two projections cast just forward of the center of mass of the cannon and fixed to a two-wheeled movable gun carriage. As they allowed the muzzle to be raised and lowered easily, the integral casting of trunnions is seen by military historians as one of the most important advances in early field artillery. With the creation of larger and more powerful siege guns in the early 15th century, a n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dive Bomber
A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughout the bomb run. This allows attacks on point targets and ships, which were difficult to attack with conventional level bombers, even ''en masse''. After World War II, the rise of precision-guided munitions and improved anti-aircraft defences—both fixed gunnery positions and fighter interception—led to a fundamental change in dive bombing. New weapons, such as rockets, allowed for better accuracy from smaller dive angles and from greater distances. They could be fitted to almost any aircraft, including fighters, improving their effectiveness without the inherent vulnerabilities of dive bombers, which needed air superiority to operate effectively. Method A dive bomber dives at a steep angle, normally between 45 and 60 degrees or ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aluminium Powder
Aluminium powder is powdered aluminium. This was originally produced by mechanical means using a stamp mill to create flakes. Subsequently, a process of spraying molten aluminium to create a powder of droplets was developed by E. J. Hall in the 1920s. The resulting powder might then be processed further in a ball mill to flatten it into flakes for use as a coating or pigment. Characteristics The melting point of aluminium powder is 660 °C. Usage * autoclave aerated concrete * cosmetic colourant * fingerprint powder * metallic paint * pyrotechnics (including the M-80 firecracker) * refractory * rocket and missile fuel such as the solid rocket boosters of the Space Shuttle * thermite Depending on the usage, the powder is either coated or uncoated. Safety Aluminium is insoluble. If the powder or dust is breathed in then little of it will be absorbed but it may interfere with the clearance mechanism of the lung. High levels of exposure over many years may result in alu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
