Bomb
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A bomb is a device that generates and releases its energy very rapidly. The explosion creates a violent, very destructive shock wave. Bombs cause destruction and injury to objects and living things within the blast radius by the crushing action of the shockwave (pressure) and by mechanical impact of fragments, including shards of the bomb casing (often called "shrapnel") or objects from the surrounding area propelled by the blast. Bombs have been used for centuries in both conventional and unconventional warfare. Most bombs do not contain more energy than ordinary fuel, except in the case of a nuclear weapon.
The word comes from the Greek word βόμβος (bombos), an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as "boom" in English.
Bombs are first and foremost weapons; the term "bomb" is not usually applied to explosive devices used for civilian purposes, such as construction or mining, although the people using the devices may sometimes refer to them as bombs. Many military explosive devices are not called "bombs". The military mostly calls airdropped, unpowered explosive weapons "bombs," and such bombs are normally used by air forces and naval aviation. Other military explosive devices are called grenades, shells, depth charges (used in water), warheads when in missiles, or land mines.
Experts commonly distinguish between civilian and military bombs. The latter are almost always mass-produced weapons, developed and constructed to a standard design out of standard components and intended to be deployed in a standard way each time. By contrast, civilian bombs are usually custom-made, developed to any number of designs, use a wide range of explosives of varying levels of power and chemical stability, and are used in many different ways. For this reason, they are generally referred to as improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
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[edit] Types
Thermobaric weapons are a type of conventional explosive that draws its oxidizer from oxygen in the air.
The most powerful kind of bomb in existence is the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon with destructive power measured in megatons of TNT (Mt). The most powerful bombs ever used in combat were the two bombs dropped by the United States to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most powerful non-nuclear bombs are the United States Air Force's MOAB (officially Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or more commonly known as the "Mother Of All Bombs") and the Russian "Father of All Bombs" (tested in September 2007, is being claimed as being four times more powerful than MOAB)[1].
Bombs can also be classified according to the way they are set off and radius of effect.
[edit] Delivery
The first air-dropped bombs were used by the Austrians in the 1849 siege of Venice. Two hundred unmanned balloons carried small bombs, few bombs actually hit Venice.[2] Today large bombers usually have an internal bomb bay while fighter bombers usually carry bombs externally on pylons or bomb racks, or on multiple ejection racks which enable mounting several bombs on a single pylon. Modern bombs, precision-guided munitions, may be guided after they leave an aircraft by remote control, or by autonomous guidance. When bombs such as nuclear weapons are mounted on a powered platform, they are called guided missiles.
Some bombs are equipped with a parachute, such as the World War II "parafrag", which was an 11 kg fragmentation bomb, the Vietnam-era daisy cutters, and the bomblets of some modern cluster bombs. Parachutes slow the bomb's descent, giving the dropping aircraft time to get to a safe distance from the explosion. This is especially important with airburst nuclear weapons, and in situations where the aircraft releases a bomb at low altitude.
A hand grenade is delivered by being thrown. Grenades can also be projected by other means using a grenade launcher, such as being launched from the muzzle of a rifle using the M203 or the GP-30 or by attaching a rocket to the explosive grenade as in a rocket propelled grenade (RPG).
A bomb may also be positioned in advance and concealed.
A bomb destroying a rail track just before a train arrives causes a train to derail. Apart from the damage to vehicles and people, a bomb exploding in a transport network often also damages, and is sometimes mainly intended to damage that network. This applies for railways, bridges, runways, and ports, and to a lesser extent, depending on circumstances, to roads.
In the case of suicide bombing the bomb is often carried by the attacker on his or her body, or in a vehicle driven to the target.
The Blue Peacock nuclear mines, which were also termed "bombs", were planned to be positioned during wartime and be constructed such that, if they were disturbed, they would explode within ten seconds.
The explosion of a bomb may be triggered by a detonator or a fuse. Detonators are triggered by clocks, remote controls like cell phones or some kind of sensor, such as pressure (altitude), radar, vibration or contact. Detonators vary in ways they work, they can be electrical, fire fuze or blast initiated detonators and others..
[edit] References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007) |
- ^ Associated Press. Russia Tests Powerful 'Dad of All Bombs'
- ^ Justin D. Murphy, Military Aircraft, Origins to 1918 p.10 http://books.google.ca/books?id=7pS1QpH8FRgC&pg=PA10&dq=Venice+bombing+1849&lr=&sig=mCN924uCybWfcThJuN2nRryGtNg<ref></ref> The first bombing from a fixed wing aircraft was in 1911 by the Italians against Arabs in what is now Libya. The bombs were dropped by hand.<ref>Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing, pp 32, 33. Also see http://books.google.ca/books?id=R-I3Zsdm14wC&pg=PA76&dq=Lindqvist+Bombing+Libya&lr=&sig=BZhmF-8ew2loSKwVQj30Aq9Yu9Y#PPA76,M1</li></ol></ref>
[edit] External links
- FAS.org Bombs for Beginners
- MakeItLouder.com How a bomb functions and rating their power
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