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Cluster munition : a long history of horror

In the current Russian invasion of Ukraine we have seen the aggressor make use of cluster bombs and in this short video I shall try to explain what they are and something ot their history. A cluster munition is a bomb or shell that opens up in mid-air to release many smaller bombs which can cover a very wide area. The military advantage of this type of weapon is that it can cover a much greater area than would traditional explosive. The problem with them is that a very large percentage of the smaller bombs often fail to explode and can leave a hazard for many years. Cluster munitions were developed at the same time in Germany, Italy, USSR and USA. In the Soviet Union, the first name given for this type of weapon was the Rotary Scattering Aerial bomb also called the Rotational dispersive bomb (RRAB). It was a thin-walled welded cylinder. The body and vanes were made of steel sheets 1 mm thick. A stabilizer of three or four folding wings, also made of 1 mm thick sheet steel , mounted at an angle of 45 ° to the longitudinal axis of the hull, was attached to the tail vanes . The internal part of the hull was divided by plywood partitions 10 mm thick into several compartments, the type of compartments would depend on the type of submunitions used. As the bomb fell, it span due to the air flow on the oblique surfaces of the stabilizers and this dispersed the submunitions by centrifugal force. Three such bombs were produced weighing one tonne, 500kg and 250kg. Preparation of this type of weapon took a long time. Each small bomb had to be individually prepared and packed into a cassette, like oranges or lemons in a box, and there were more than one hundred of them. In the event that the attack would be cancelled, for security reasons the cassette had to be emptied by hand. The British journalist John Langdon-Davies who was writing for the News Chronicle, witnessed one such attack in 1940. As it fell from an aircraft, a small turbine on the nose turned to release a spring loaded casing which, on opening, scattered 100 or more incendiary bombs; the main HE charge in the tail of the weapon continued to fall as a conventional bomb.[ In Finland they were called Molotov 's breadbaskets as it was widely believed that the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs had denied reports of the bombing of Helsinki , stating that sacks of bread were dropped from planes for starving Finnish workers. There is a theory that the word Molotov cocktail comes from this weapon as a drink to go with the food. The Luftwaffe used this type of weapon for the first time in an air raid against Ipswich in 1940. It also used them in later operations against ports along the east coast of the UK until 1943. Nazi Germany developed various types of cluster bomb. One had a fuse that would explode on impact, the second was set to blow up between five and thirty minutes and the third was a booby trap bomb which could explode if it were tampered with on the ground. It is the latter type of bomb which is particularly dangerous and indeed many bombs of the former two types end up being in this category as they do not explode when designed to do so. Cluster munitions can be the same as conventional bombs : anti personnel, anti armour, incendiary or contain leaftlets. More than 80 years after the first attacks, cluster bombs still use the same principles. The most successful use of such weapons on a large scale occurred on the first day of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s assault on the USSR, on 22 June 1941 when Soviet airfields were attacked, often by only three Luftwaffe planes which wanted to do as much damage as possible. The local Soviet commanders who had not been warned of an on coming attack left their planes close together at airfields and once the cluster bombs had started the fires and explosions then the conflagrations did the rest. This permitted the Luftwaffe to attack so many airfields as it did on the first day and in the process destroy a large part of the Red air force. Within 24 hours, German reports claimed 1,489 Soviet aircraft destroyed on the ground alone. At first, these statistics seemed barely credible. Even Hermann Göring refused to believe the figures and had them secretly checked. After the Soviet airfields were captured, over 2,000 wrecks were found although of course not all of them occurred on the first day and only some of them were by cluster munition, however it undoubtedly helped a great deal. The first time I know of when both sides used cluster munitions was during the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 as the competing air forces used it to attack enemy armoured formations.   / historysite   Production of independent researched history is time consuming and expensive. Please consider supporting me on Patreon.   / alanheath