Channel4.com/programmes/ Building the Bouncing Bomb

[heebeegeetee]

This look's interesting:
>>Cambridge engineer Dr Hugh Hunt tries to recreate Barnes Wallis's famous Second World War bouncing bomb, and blow up a specially constructed dam in Canada

Next on Channel 4
Mon 02 May, 8pm <<

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IeGYkwVIWw&fea...

[mybrainhurts]

That was good...

heebeegeetee said:

look's interesting

That wasn't...

[Eric Mc]

This looks good.

Impressive.

How much does the modern bomb weigh? I think the original was 7 tons.

And what is the carrier aircraft?

[heebeegeetee]

Omigod I fear I may have abused an apostrophe.

[Simpo Two]

Impressive.

A pity the explosion is stuck on afterwards but I suppose H&S stopped them actually carrying a bomb. I mean, it might have fallen off and blown up a dam or something.

[Eric Mc]

The important aspect of the "bouncing bomb" was that the spin kept it up against teh wall of the dam as it sank. It was in reality a depth charge rather than a bomb and exploded when the device had sunk below a certain depth.
It didn't explode on impact (not deliberately anyway).

[Simpo Two]

'Hydrostatic pistol' I believe.

In this case it looked fake because the water behind the dam appeared undisturbed, and the time taken for the water to look calm again would be much longer than the time taken for the bomb to sink to the base of the dam.

I they were testing the physics part more than the explosive part.

[FourWheelDrift]

Eric Mc said:

And what is the carrier aircraft?

Looks like a DC-4 / C-54 to me ---> http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dambusters-buil...

[Eric Mc]

I was wondering were they using the Canadian Warbird Heritage Lancaster.

It looks like a DC-4/DC-6 in the second clip.

[Simpo Two]

Eric Mc said:

I was wondering were they using the Canadian Warbird Heritage Lancaster.

That would have been ideal, but they probably didn't want cut it about to fit the bomb mounts!

[Eric Mc]

I doubt the CWH would have countenaced their precious aerioplane being hacked about and being made cary a 7 ton weight. It would have looked good though.