Oil Bombs

Spinechicken · Post by **Spinechicken** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:42 am

I've been transcribing some local history documents about the Blitz and I've come accross one where the author mentions discovering what he calls an "Oil Bomb" lying in a field. According to the document, the bomb:

had an explosive device inside it, which when it hit the ground it blew up and scattered phosphorus and oil around the place. The idea of it was to burn crops, so it was dropped in the daylight.

I've never heard of this before, does anyone know if such a thing actually existed?

Cheers,

-SC

rclayton · Post by **rclayton** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:44 pm

Hi
Yes Oil Bombs did exist and were used by Lufwaffe - and the RAF most certainly had the same sort of thing in its arsenal pre-war. The RAF bomb was a 30lb device filled with a petrol benzol mixture. Experiments were also carried out with a 250lb device containing - believe it or not - a mixture of paraffin and rags.
The information concerning the two RAF devices is contained in 'Royal Air Force Armament - Volume 1 - Bombs and Bombing Equipment'. This was published by the Air ministry post war there are copies in the collection of the RAF Museum library at Hendon.
Incidentally, the official version concerning these bombs was that "they were little used and not very effective".
Information concerning German oil bombs is contained in documents at the National Archives (PRO), check the catalogue and just type in Oil Bomb, all the relevent document references will come up.
I've seen them listed in the catalogue but never actually inspected the files so I can't say precisely what they contain, but these bombs did exist and were used.

Hope that's been of some help
Regards - Ron Clayton

Grzesio · Post by **Grzesio** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:20 pm

Here you can see how a German liquid incendiary bomb looked like:

Flam C 500 on the left hand side and two of the Flam C 250 type.

Germans used a lot of incendiary bombs with liquid filling. These included B 10 (weight 11 kg, carried in cluster containers), Brand C 50 A (just 41 kg, looking as ordinary 50 kg bomb), Brand C 50 B (36 kg), Flam C 250 (125 kg, illustrated above), Flam C 250 B and C (110 kg), Brand C 250 A (185 kg), Flam C 500 C (225 kg).
The Flam type bomb was filled with mixture of gasoline and mineral oil and had a central chamber for explosive charge intended to splash the liquid.
The Brand type bomb was filed with incendiary liquid and glass containers filled with phosphorus, acting as incendiary elements. It had a very small explosive charge near the fuze, which acted like an igniter.

Regards

Grzesio