The USAF is dropping 15,000 lb bombs today, Here is one result from a Google search on this weapon:
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Subject: The Daisy Cutter and the Lazy Dog
Newsgroups: sci.militaryView: Complete Thread (3 articles) | Original FormatDate: 1995/04/06
From d94-pek@juodas.nada.kth.se (Per Ekman)
Back to the source...
BLU-82 demolition bomb, 6,804kg (15,000lb) designed to clear instant helicopter landing zones in jungle; BLU-82/B 'Big Blue 82' refined version of the BLU-82 with 5,715kg (12,600lb) of GSX gelled slurry blast explosive triggered by a 970mm (38in) nose stand-off probe" -From 'The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft Armament' by Bill Gunston.
An FAE with a nose probe trigger sounds unlikely at best.
So, is the Daisy Cutter an FAE? (ie is Gunston wrong, is Newsweek (below) wrong by saying that the BLU-82 is the Daisy Cutter, or have I missed something?) '.
The "Blue-82" bomb
At 15,000 pounds, the bomb is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Also called the Daisy Cutter, the BLU-82 was used to carve out and level airfields in Vietnam.
The day before their target area had been rained with leaflets warning the soldiers below: "Tomorrow if you don't surrender we're going to drop on you the largest conventional weapon in the world.
The Iraqis who dared to sleep that night found out the allies weren't kidding.
The explosion of a Daisy Cutter looks like an atomic bomb detonating.
In the southwest corner of Kuwait that night, an enormous mushroom cloud flared into the dark.
Sound travels for miles in the barren desert, and soon Iraqi radio nets along the border crackled with traffic.
Col. Jesse Johnson, Schwarzkopf's special-operations commander, cabled a message back to the U.S.
Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida: "We're not too sure how you say 'Jesus Christ' in Iraqi.
A British SAS commando team on a secret reconnaissance mission near the explosion frantically radioed back to its headquarters: "Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait!"
The next day a Combat Talon swept over the bomb site for another leaflet drop with a follow-up message: "You have just been hit with the largest conventional bomb in the world. More are on the way. The victims below didn't need much more convincing.
Newsweek June 17, 1991 |
