Key point: America took the idea from Britain...and made it even bigger.
Here's a name that the head-chopping terrorists of ISIS should remember: Barnes Wallis.
He's the British chap who inspired that twenty-one-thousand-pound U.S. Air Force GBU 43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)-also called "the mother of all bombs"-dropped on an ISIS tunnel complex in Afghanistan April 13.
However, the MOAB is but the prodigal son of weapons developed during World War II. MOAB's grandparents were Britain "earthquake bombs," including the twelve-thousand-pound "Tall Boy" and-biggest of all-the twenty-two-thousand-pound "Grand Slam."
Earthquake bombs were the brainchild of Barnes Wallis, the legendary British bomb designer famous for such weapons as the " bouncing bomb " used to blast holes in German dams in the "Dambuster" raids. But Wallis faced another challenge, one that still vexes today's bomb designers.
Some targets are easily destroyed by high-explosive bombs that detonate when they hit the ground or are fused to explode in the air. Tanks, artillery-even mortal flesh-are vulnerable to such bombs, be they dumb or smart. As for cities, bombs ranging in size from five hundred pounds to four thousand pounds, along with incendiary devices, were sufficient to flatten or burn out most every big German and Japanese city.
But when the Nazis built concrete or underground structures, the Allies had a problem. German U-boats based in France operated from concrete "submarine pens" with concrete roofs as thick as twenty-five feet. During raid after raid by British and American bombers, streams of conventional bombs fell like exploding hail on the sub pens. They had as much effect as hitting a tank with a ping-pong ball. Just as worrisome, the Nazis adopted the way of the mole and began to move their factories into underground chambers. And what about targets such as railway tunnels, key to the German logistical system and yet shielded by entire hillsides from aerial bombardment?
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