Hi Olafo,
I'd just like to add one word of caution to your finds. Even though the blue
bombs are practice bombs, they may not technically be "inert". All the
practice bombs I have seen demonstrated have a shotgun shell charge inside.
This shell is meant to explode on impact, which doesn't destroy the bomb, but
is designed to make a white puff of smoke to aid the scorer who is in the
tower that you saw, determine exactly where a particular plane's bomb struck.
All the pilots are graded on their practice drops.
Just so... I think that Olaf knows that the practice bombs have some
sort of charge. The slick practice bombs (bigger and heavier) that
we used until about 6 years ago, the 28lb ones, had quite a charge in
them.
snip...
scattered throughout. IIRC, a top score is a practice bomb that lands within
50 ft of the target.
For the RAF, a Direct Hit (or DH) has to be a little closer than that
- except on the northern Dutch ranges at Noordvader and Vliehors
where you might be given a "DH a little long" ;-). Those Dutch
scorers were my favourite... especially as they did not get too
excited if you dragged your live gun through their tower by lining up
on the wrong target!
If you think that sounds difficult, and it is, I have
seen these practice bombs actually strike the target directly and bounce off.
Another word of caution in case you're around when the aircraft are shooting-
the "guns" 20 and 30mm etc, are shooting live rounds, and security would have
to be tight to make certain you're not in line with the approach. The gun
target here looks like a giant white sheet with a red bullseye painted on it.
There's a pit dug next to it, and from the angle of the aircraft's approach,
much of the rounds fall into this big pit. (At least that's the plan).
There is generally a "berm" in front of and behind the strage targets
on US ranges to soak up the near misses. The bullseye BTW is near
invisible at open-fire range, around 1100 yards on your typical pass
with a 20mm. You can just see the shape of the target which normally
counts the rounds passing a sensor. The rounds are still supersonic
at these ranges and the crack is quite noticeable. The US
Gatling-type aircraft guns make the coolest sounds as they wind up to
speed (very quickly of course), firing their rounds. The sequence of
sounds is: high-speed electric whine, very fast banging of the rounds
firing followed by the firecrackers of sonic booms. If they were
shooting explosive rounds the bangs at the target would follow the
sonic booms.
Regards
Chris
Best regards,
George S.
--
~~~~~ ><>
Chris Barker
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