{"id":6426637,"date":"2026-07-20T14:23:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/tallboy-grand-slam-barnes-wallis-earthquake-bombs\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T14:23:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:23:31","slug":"tallboy-grand-slam-barnes-wallis-earthquake-bombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/it\/tallboy-grand-slam-barnes-wallis-earthquake-bombs\/","title":{"rendered":"La bomba progettata per mancare il bersaglio"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n\n<p>Every bomb ever built before 1944 was designed to hit the thing it was aimed at. Barnes Wallis built two that were designed to land next to it.<\/p>\n\n<p>This was not a compromise or an admission that bombing was inaccurate. It was the entire principle. Wallis had worked out that if you could get a very large charge deep enough into the ground beside a structure, the explosion would not need to touch it. The earth itself would do the work, transmitting a shock wave through the target's foundations and shaking it apart from underneath.<\/p>\n\n<p>He called it the earthquake bomb, and the two he built remain the largest conventional weapons ever dropped by the Royal Air Force.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px;border-radius:8px;margin:24px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.8\">\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px\">Informazioni rapide<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Tallboy:<\/strong> 12,000 lb, 21 feet long, 38 inches maximum diameter, 5,200 lb of Torpex<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Grand Slam:<\/strong> 22,000 lb, 9,200 lb of Torpex, nicknamed Ten Ton Tess<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Case:<\/strong> hardened steel over four inches thick at the nose<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Release altitude:<\/strong> optimum 18,000 feet, 37 seconds of fall, impact at around 750 mph<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Fusing:<\/strong> detonation delay of up to sixty minutes, so the bomb explodes after burial<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Carrier:<\/strong> Avro Lancaster only. The Grand Slam needed the B Mk I (Special) with bomb doors removed entirely<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Squadrons:<\/strong> principally 9 and 617, using the SABS Mk IIA bombsight<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Totals delivered:<\/strong> 854 Tallboys and 41 Grand Slams<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Five months, if he got Sheffield<\/h2>\n\n<p>Wallis had proposed a ten-ton bomb in 1939 and been ignored. After 617 Squadron breached the Ruhr dams in May 1943, people at the Ministry of Aircraft Production started returning his calls. His own account of the conversation is characteristically dry.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;After the dams had been burst, Sir Wilfred Freeman asked me if I remembered my mad idea of a 10-ton bomb which I had put up in 1939. I said, Yes, indeed, Sir Wilfred, I do. Well, he said, how soon could you let me have one? I said, June, July, August, September, October, five months if I have all the labour available in Sheffield.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Barnes Wallis<\/strong> &mdash; Recalling Sir Wilfred Freeman, Chief Executive at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, after the Dams Raid<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p>He did not get the ten-tonner immediately. His ideal weapon needed releasing from 40,000 feet and no aircraft in the world could take it there, so the Ministry authorised a scaled-down 12,000 lb deep-penetration bomb instead. That became Tallboy.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=961356595  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/tallboy-bomb-12000lb-barnes-wallis.jpg\" alt=\"Tallboy 12,000 lb earthquake bomb on display\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A Tallboy. Twenty-one feet of hardened steel with 5,200 pounds of Torpex inside it. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>Wallis's whole approach to the war was that of an engineer looking for the load-bearing member and hitting that, rather than hitting everything. He described the logic behind his earlier dams work in exactly those terms, and the same reasoning produced Tallboy.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;I thought of what would be an engineer's way of stopping the war and that would be to cut off the power supply to their great armament factories in the Ruhr, which involved bombing and destroying the dams because you know it takes 150 tons of water to make 1 ton of steel and if we robbed them of all their water supply they couldn't produce steel and the war would have come to an end.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Barnes Wallis<\/strong> &mdash; On how he approached the problem of shortening the war<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The physics of hitting nothing<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is what actually happens when a Tallboy works properly.<\/p>\n\n<p>Released from 18,000 feet, it falls for 37 seconds. Because it is dense, streamlined and spin-stabilised, it accelerates to around 750 miles per hour, close to the speed of sound. That velocity plus that mass plus a forged steel nose means it does not stop at the surface. It punches into the ground and keeps going, well beneath the foundations of whatever it was aimed near.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then the delay fuse fires, up to an hour later if required.<\/p>\n\n<p>The explosion underground does two things. It blows out a cavity, which then collapses, dropping whatever sits above it into the resulting crater. And it sends a shock wave through the earth, which is a far better transmission medium than air. Foundations up to 150 yards from the detonation could be shaken and weakened. Even when a target did not collapse outright, the damage was frequently enough to make repair uneconomic, which for a bridge or a viaduct in wartime amounts to the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NHPEP7ziKmU\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<p>This is why near-misses were acceptable and, in a sense, the design intent. A conventional bomb that misses by fifty yards has failed. A Tallboy that misses by fifty yards has just detonated fifty yards away and eighty feet down, and the target is coming down anyway.<\/p>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Saumur, and the reinforcements that never arrived<\/h2>\n\n<p>The first operational use came on the night of 8 to 9 June 1944, two days after D-Day. Nineteen Tallboy-armed Lancasters of 617 Squadron attacked the railway tunnel at Saumur in France, through which German reinforcements from the south would have moved toward the beachhead.<\/p>\n\n<p>One Tallboy bored through the hillside and detonated inside the tunnel roughly sixty feet below the surface. The tunnel was completely blocked.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is worth pausing on that. A weapon delivered from three and a half miles up, at night, in 1944, went through a hill and closed a tunnel underneath it. The bombsight that made this possible, the SABS Mk IIA, required an extremely stable bomb run and a great deal of crew training, which is why only a handful of squadrons ever operated these weapons.<\/p>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Tirpitz<\/h2>\n\n<p>The most famous target was not underground at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>Tirpitz was the sister of Bismarck, and simply by existing in a Norwegian fjord she tied down British naval strength that was needed elsewhere. She had survived midget submarines, carrier strikes and previous bombing. On 12 November 1944, Lancasters of 9 and 617 Squadrons flying from Lossiemouth at their absolute maximum radius of action put three Tallboys directly into her.<\/p>\n\n<p>She turned over.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1736736712  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/tirpitz-capsized-tromso-1944-tallboy.jpg\" alt=\"The German battleship Tirpitz capsized at Tromso after Tallboy attack\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Tirpitz, capsized near Tromso. Three Tallboy hits ended a ship that had survived everything else the Allies tried. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>Against armour that thick, the earthquake principle was not even needed. A twelve-thousand-pound bomb arriving at 750 miles an hour simply goes through a battleship.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r10Rrf1Cack\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Ten Ton Tess<\/h2>\n\n<p>In July 1944 Wallis finally got approval for the original concept. The Grand Slam weighed 22,000 pounds and contained 9,200 pounds of Torpex.<\/p>\n\n<p>Manufacturing it was close to absurd. Only the Vickers Don Valley works in Sheffield could forge a casing that size. Once cast, the steel took two days simply to cool. It was then filled with molten Torpex, which took a full month to set. On top of that went an inch of TNT as an initiator, four inches of wood-meal and wax, a plywood washer drilled for three fuse pistols, and a bolted steel end plate. The tail carried four fins offset by five degrees to spin the weapon at over 300 rpm for accuracy.<\/p>\n\n<p>Because each bomb represented a month of a production line, crews were under standing orders to bring one home rather than jettison it if they could not attack the target. Landing a Lancaster with a live ten-ton bomb aboard was considered preferable to wasting it.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=493504223  decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/lancaster-617-squadron-grand-slam-bomb.jpg\" alt=\"Avro Lancaster B Mk I Special of 617 Squadron loaded with a Grand Slam bomb\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A Lancaster B Mk I (Special) with a Grand Slam. The bomb doors have been removed entirely because the weapon does not fit inside the aeroplane. Photo: Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>Look at that photograph for a moment. The bomb bay doors are gone, because there is no configuration in which the weapon fits inside the aircraft. The mid-upper and nose turrets have been deleted, armour has been stripped out, and uprated Merlin 25 engines fitted, all to buy back enough performance to get the thing airborne. The Lancaster is not carrying the Grand Slam so much as accompanying it.<\/p>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Bielefeld<\/h2>\n\n<p>The Grand Slam went to war on 14 March 1945, against the Bielefeld Viaduct, a rail link the RAF had been trying to drop for months. 617 Squadron sent 28 aircraft with Tallboys and one with the Grand Slam.<\/p>\n\n<p>It landed within eighty yards of the viaduct. Eleven seconds later the ground beneath opened into a crater, the structure was fatally undermined, and the Tallboy near-misses finished it. Two spans came down.<\/p>\n\n<p>Eighty yards. A conventional bombing attack that missed by eighty yards would have been recorded as a failure.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zeUQKl81aN4\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What survived the idea<\/h2>\n\n<p>The earthquake bomb had a short career. By the time 41 Grand Slams had been dropped the war was ending, and within a few years the deep-penetration problem was being addressed with nuclear weapons, which do not require you to be precise about anything.<\/p>\n\n<p>But the principle never went away. Every modern bunker-busting weapon, up to and including the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is a direct descendant of Wallis's insight: that the way to destroy something built to survive a surface explosion is not to hit it harder from above, but to get underneath it first and let the ground carry the blow.<\/p>\n\n<p>He worked that out in 1939, in a paper nobody wanted to read, using arithmetic and an unusually stubborn temperament.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Sources: Barnes Wallis Foundation, Imperial War Museums, RAF Museum, Yorkshire Air Museum, contemporary Bomber Command records.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\">\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Post correlati<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/dambusters-operation-chastise-bouncing-bomb-1943\/\">The Dambusters: Bouncing a Bomb Across a Reservoir<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/suez-1956-operation-musketeer-air-war-sea-hawk-canberra\/\">L&#039;ultima guerra aerea vecchio stile<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/operation-linebacker-ii-b52s-hanoi-1972\/\">Eleven Days of Christmas Over Hanoi<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barnes Wallis costru\u00ec due bombe che non erano mai state progettate per colpire il bersaglio. Tallboy e Grand Slam funzionavano seppellendosi accanto ad esso e scuotendolo dal basso per farlo a pezzi.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":6426220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6426637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Bomb Designed to Miss<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tallboy and Grand Slam were built to land beside the target, not on it. 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