Grand Slam (original) (raw)
Not the one referred to here.
This one is on display at RAF Lossiemouth
(Note the Airman on the left side of the bomb)
Apparently when Lincolnshire County Council were widening the road past RAF Scampton's main gate in about 1958, the 'gate guards' there had to be moved to make way for the new carriageway. Scampton was the WWII home of 617 Sqn, and said "gate guards" were a Lancaster...and a Grand Slam bomb.
When they went to lift the Grand Slam, thought for years to just be an empty casing, with an RAF 8 Ton Coles Crane, it wouldn't budge. "Oh, it must be filled with concrete" they said. Then somebody had a horrible thought .... No!..... Couldn't be? ... Not after all these years out here open to the public to climb over and be photographed sitting astride! .... Could it? .... Then everyone raced off to get the Station ARMO. He carefully scraped off many layers of paint and gingerly unscrewed the base plate.
Yes, you guessed it, live 1944 explosive filling! The beast was very gently lifted onto an RAF 'Queen Mary' low loader, using a much larger civvy crane (I often wonder what, if anything, they told the crane driver), then driven slowly under massive police escort to the coastal experimental range at Shoeburyness. There it was rigged for demolition, and when it 'high ordered', it proved in no uncertain terms to anyone within a ten mile radius that the filling was still very much alive!
Exhaustive investigations then took place, but nobody could find the long-gone 1944, 1945 or 1946 records which might have shown how a live 22,000 lb bomb became a gate guard for nearly the next decade and a half. Some safety distance calculations were done, however, about the effect of a Grand Slam detonating at ground level in the open. Apart from the entire RAF Station, most of the northern part of the City of Lincoln, including Lincoln Cathedral, which dates back to 1250, would have been flattened.
| "Grand Slam" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Deep Penetration Bomb | ||
| Length | 7.7 meter (26 feet 6 inches) | ||
| Diameter | 1.17 meter (3 feet, 10 inches) | ||
| Tail Section length | 4.11 meter (13 feet, 6 inches) | ||
| Weight | 9,979 kg (22,000 lb) | ||
| Warhead | 4,144 kg (9,135 lb) Torpex explosive * | ||
| Number used | 41 | ||
| The "Grand Slam" (Earthquake) bomb was of the same design as the Tallboy but larger and heavier weighing 9,979 kg (22,000 lb). The Grand Slam was first used on 14 March, 1945 when a force of Lancaster bombers led by Royal Air Force Squadron Leader C.C. Calder attacked the Bielefeld railway viaduct destroying two spans. In another attack against submarine pens (Bunker Valentin) near Bremen two Grand Slams penetrated 4,5 meters of reinforced concrete. 41 Grand Slam Bombs were dropped by the end of the war mainly against bridges and viaducts.The "Grand Slam" bomb was the biggest bomb used in WWII at all. | |||
| * "Torpex" means Torpedo Explosive. It was originally used for torpedoes and therefore got this name. | |||
| Pictures | |||
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| Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Picture 3 | Picture 4 |
| Picture 1 | On these pictures you can see the size of the "Tall Boy" compared to the "Grand Slam" and their size related to a human being. | ||
| Picture 2 | |||
| Picture 3 | A "Grand Slam" leaves an Avro 683 Lancaster. " Phil Martin (DFC and Bar) was the pilot" [Pilots Log] | ||
| Picture 4 | A 9,979 kg (22,000 lb) Grand Slam bomb on display. Note the man on the left side of the bomb. |
