The T-12 (also known as Cloudmaker) earthquake bomb was developed by the United States from 1944 to 1948 and deployed until the withdrawal of the

Convair B-36 Peacemaker The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber that was built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built. It had the longest w ...

bomber aircraft in 1958. It was one of a small class of bombs designed to attack targets invulnerable to conventional "soft" bombs, such as bunkers and

viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...

s. It achieved this by having an extremely thick, hardened nose section designed to penetrate deeply into hardened concrete structures and then detonate inside the target after a short time delay.

Development

The T-12 was a further development of the concept initiated with the United Kingdom's Tallboy and Grand Slam weapons developed by British aeronautical engineer

Barnes Wallis Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attac ...

during the

Second World War 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 opposi ...

: a hardened, highly aerodynamic bomb of the greatest possible weight designed to be dropped from the highest possible altitude. Penetrating deeply in the earth before exploding, the resulting shock wave was transmitted through the earth into targets. The resulting underground cavity and

ground motion Ground motion is the movement of the earth's surface from earthquakes or explosions. Ground motion is produced by seismic waves that are generated by sudden slip on a fault or sudden pressure at the explosive source and travel through the earth a ...

could also undermine structures. The bomb could also be used against hardened targets. These types of bombs can reach

supersonic speed Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound ( Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times ...

s and have tail fins designed to spin the bomb for greater accuracy. Originally designed to meet a target weight (one half of the maximum payload for the Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" bomber), with its hardened case was slightly less than . The final T-12 weighed . This was twice the size of the United States' previous largest bomb, the M110 (T-14), the American-built version of the British Grand Slam. The T-12 was not a simple scale up of the M110, but incorporated modifications based on testing and calculations. The B-36 was redesigned so it could carry the T-12, although a converted

B-29 Superfortress The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is an American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 ...

was used for testing.

References

External links

{{Commons category
"Big Bomb Tight Fit In B-29 Bomb Bays"
''Popular Science'', October 1951, p. 144. Photo showing T-12 being fitted to B-29 bomb bay
"The USA's 30,000 Pound Bomb", ''Defense Industry Daily''
Article on the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), has history of earlier systems.

by Dr. William S. Coker. ''Air University Review'', March-April 1967. Anti-fortification weapons Cold War aerial bombs of the United States

Development

See also

References

External links