Luftwaffe 'BUTTERFLY BOMB'

[Jeff V]

Great item Bill! Thanks for sharing!
best wishes,
jeff

[P08]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

[Alan Smith]

Thanks for posting the photos, as I have always wondered what these bombs looked like.

A good friend of mine was a P-40 pilot in the 57th Fighter Group in North Africa. He has told me many times about the Germans attacking his airfields at night with these bombs, and he vividly recalls the "swooshing" sound made by the bomblets as they came down thru the air. In fact, he has a couple of photos of tents and other gear that were damaged by fragments from these butterfly bombs.

Interestingly, every morning after a raid all available personnel (including pilots such as my friend) were required to go out and walk over the runway/taxi areas to pick up bomb fragments (which could puncture the tires of A/C on takeoff or landing).

BTW: Any history on your bomblet? If they were as hard to disarm and dangerous as you describe, I would imagine that the very few of these that were disarmed must have been done so in order to acquire examples for military ordinance authorities, i.e. not by your average soldier looking for a souvenir. Thus, examples of these bomblets must be very scarce in private collections.