Were FAE bombs used in WWII?

[offtaskagain]

In the memoirs of a soldier on this page he states the following :

Near Vyasma, I saw a terrible sight. We overran a Red artillery position and everybody was dead. What was so scary was that all the dead Ivans had their lungs exploded inside their bodies; there was no visible sign of artillery impacts, craters, or torn and twisted steel. Their guns were still manned, the loaders still had shells in their hands, but everybody was dead. We were ordered never to speak of what we had seen, that a new kind of weapon (but not poison gas) had been tried out, with devastating results. For the rest of the war, I never again saw such a sight and I still wonder what the weapon could be that would wreak such total destruction of life, but not destroy materiel.

What sort of weapon could cause this? It sounds to me like a fuel air explosive but I didn't think they were used in WWII.

[Stalin's Organ]

FAE's were not used in WW2, nor anything vaguely resembling them AFAIK.

I don't think they'd have the effect given here anyway - you'd expect to have the bodies and clothes, etc burned and not the "lungs exploded".

IMO it sounds like an attack by automatic weapons - machine guns and light cannon.

Perhaps the battery was straffed - there would be little damage to the heavy metal guns and no shell craters, but 20mm HE shells could do a lot of damage to a human torso.

[offtaskagain]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

IMO it sounds like an attack by automatic weapons - machine guns and light cannon.

Perhaps the battery was straffed - there would be little damage to the heavy metal guns and no shell craters, but 20mm HE shells could do a lot of damage to a human torso.

But the author had already experienced combat by this point and would have known what a gunshot wound looked like. It sounds to me like some sort of blast effect weapon, something similar to the "Daisy Cutter".

[Stalin's Organ]

That's supposition on your part - IMO there's no particular evidence that he author had experience of large numbers of dead bodies.

You asked if FAEs were used in WW2 - the answer is no, they were not, and the evidence of this account is really quite minimal and I dont' think you can assume that there's necessarily anything unusual to blame at all.

The commen ts about secret weapons etc could have been (and sound to me like) a wind up.

[gunnergoz]

Concussion? Some weapons have large blast effect with relatively little shrapnel (thin-walled bombs or shells carring a large HE content). This could be the real-life result of something akin to the CMBB Sturmtiger but I suspect rockets.

IIRC, rocket rounds (neblewerfer & katyuska) were of this variety...thin walled with almost no shrapnel but a lot of blast effect.

[MikeT]

I have seen drawings/picutres of Fw190s with cluster bombs. Possibly this just such a strike.

MikeT

[karch]

I think I've read something similar a few times. I think it was caused by Neblewerfers. The rockets have their motor/engine at the front firing through a tube going to the base. the last 1/2 of the rocket or so was explosive without much of a case at all so it would be nearly all blast effect without much shrapnet at all.

I thought I read the first usage of the neblewerfer was a secret even to the Germans it was supporting. It seemed to frighten everyone. the casualties were noted to have the symptoms you mentioned and the remains of the exploded rockets looked like peeled bananas. There were also notes of the lack of any craters, meaning the rockets nose/engine hit and exploded while all the explosives were still above ground so there was nearly no cratering.

This is what I remember reading about them. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[kevsharr]

Paul Carell in his book "Hitler moves East"[which by the way is an outstanding book,a must read]relates this episode and it was caused by the concussive effect of the nebelwerfer

[Flesh]

I seem to remember reading about the use of "blast bombs" on the Eastern Front. As far as I can tell, this seems to have been a reference to rockets with a very large HE warhead. Perhaps even some kind of exotic explosive in the warheads.

Anybody know if any kind of special explosives were used in artillery rounds or rockets that could produce a larger than normal concussion/shockwave?

[karch]

Originally posted by Flesh:

Anybody know if any kind of special explosives were used in artillery rounds or rockets that could produce a larger than normal concussion/shockwave?

There are a number of different, more powerful explosives that could be used. the main reason they werent usually used in artillery rounds is that they were also more sensitive and could explode from the shock of firiing and so had to be desensitized. I think usually with wax of some sort. Rockets, having a much slower launch and less stress on the payload and shell body, could probably use more potent/sensitive explosives than gun shells. Aside from being able to fire more sensitive explosives, they could fit far more into the body since the body walls could be relatively thin as they didn't have to support the stress of being fired from a canon. Just dragged along by a rocket.

So a Neblewerfer could, in my theory, carry a higher percentage of explosives than any comparable shell size, and it could be of a more potent explosive that wouldn't be safe enough to fire in a gun shell. I don't know it this was the case, but it seems to me that it could be. Any Neblewerfer specialists?

Here are a few quicktime VR movies of the Neblewerfer launchers at Aberdeen.

360 degree pan

[Flesh]

The accounts I've read lead me to believe that the Russians used some kind of very powerful explosive in at least some of their rockets.

Karch, you seem to saying that you suspect that the Germans did this with their nebelwerfers.

Anybody out there know any more about this? I'm intrigued...

[Grisha]

Actually, the VVS (Soviet air force) had fuel-based incendiaries in WWII. They were called VAP-250, and were two 250kg canisters filled with fuel (I don't know what the actual chemical compound was). These were attached to Il-2s, and because of the way the canisters were attached made the Il-2 less responsive to an extent.

The way it was used was that the canisters jettisoned the fuel in spray form, then ignited it, resulting in two long tails of flame behind the Shturmoviks. A low level pass could be very destructive to 'soft targets.'

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by kevsharr:

Paul Carell in his book "Hitler moves East"[which by the way is an outstanding book,a must read]relates this episode and it was caused by the concussive effect of the nebelwerfer

Paul Carell is famous for the inaccuracy of of his accounts, so I would tend simply to disregard this as evidence for some mysterious blast weapon unless it can be supported from another independent source.

A good deal of nonsense is talked about blast, often even by servicemen who really should know better. Blast is a very poor method of inflicting personnel casualties, whereas fast-moving pieces of metal work extremely well even in tiny sizes (a gram or so is plenty). Even with those very rare munitions that genuinely do contain more explosive than fragmentation material (and I'd bet that this includes no artillery weapons at all) are still likely to produce considerable amounts of secondary fragmentation, i.e. fragments that are not formed from the projectile material.

On the question of FAE, I believe that there were rumours of a large FAE weapon being used during the reduction of the Warsaw Ghetto, but that these were never confirmed. CM:BB players familiar with the way the Sturmtiger's weapon is modelled might see how it might be mistaken for an FAE weapon, as I believe Warsaw was the only place the Sturmtiger was used outside Germany.

All the best,

John.

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by kevsharr:

Paul Carell...

Paul Carell? Ah, you mean SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Schmitt who was a leading figure in the ministry of propaganda in WW2?

I'd take the accuracy of his works with a BIG grain of salt...

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Grisha:

Actually, the VVS (Soviet air force) had fuel-based incendiaries in WWII. They were called VAP-250, and were two 250kg canisters filled with fuel (I don't know what the actual chemical compound was). These were attached to Il-2s, and because of the way the canisters were attached made the Il-2 less responsive to an extent.

The way it was used was that the canisters jettisoned the fuel in spray form, then ignited it, resulting in two long tails of flame behind the Shturmoviks. A low level pass could be very destructive to 'soft targets.'

I don't believe this qualifies as an FAE as such.

The descriptions around on the various Il-2 game sites (the only place it gets a mention on the web) are of spherical containers of petrol also containing phosphorous.

From my limited chemistry the way this would work is the containers drop out of the pods holding them on the aircraft (18 per pod). They would hit the ground or a target and burst, and the phosphorous would ignite on contact with the air, so igniting the petrol.

This is a flame weapon, whereas FAE's are blast weapons. That is the VAB-250 destroys be setting things on fire and burning them (or so it seems to me), whereas FAE's destroy by appling instantaneous overpressure to destroy things.

I'd expect an attack by VAB-250's to show considerable signs of burning - things blackened and burned basically, and you wouldn't mistake these signs for anythign else.

[Lumbergh]

I am pulling stuff off of Google now:

Learn about FAE. Complete with equations.

Human Rights Watch knows a lot about FAE ??? Apparently So....

Columbine FAE? HUH?

The last guy might be a little out of touch. He claims that an FAE device would be easy to build. Erm, sure buddy.

[kevsharr]

So Paul Carell is famous for his inaccuracies could you direct me to a site that verifies this?Most of his book's are made up of anecdotal information and if there all lies he's got a pretty good imagination

[kevsharr]

As for the effect's of the nebelwerfer [that Carell also mention's]I turn to James Lucas from his book War on the Eastern Front..

"There were several very interesting and apocryphal stories concerning the Nebewerfer.One of these was that the rocket's used in the first month's of the waragainst the Soviet Union had been charged with liquid oxygen explosive.The presence of so many dead showing no external sign's of injury seemed to support that theory.The truth was more prosaic.The rapid and succesive detonation's produced during a Nebelwerfer barrage produced such rapid variation's in air pressure within the bombarded zone that many victim's suffered extensive damage to their lung's which killed them."

I guess Carell was right about one thing in his extensive but inaccurate writing's.

[Robert Isenberg]

I believe FAE weapons where used during WW2,but in a different form than a bomb

Propane was pumped into the sewers during the Warsaw uprisings and detonated to kill those using the sewers as a safe passage lanes

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by kevsharr:

So Paul Carell is famous for his inaccuracies could you direct me to a site that verifies this?

The only one I can find in a quick search (linked from Andres' excellent Beobachtungsabteilung site) is:

http://www.nachkriegsdeutschland.de/p_paul_carell.html

...which as you might guess is in German. I don't read German well enough to follow it closely. If you don't read German, you might have some fun with this site and Babelfish.

Originally posted by kevsharr:

Most of his book's are made up of anecdotal information and if there all lies he's got a pretty good imagination

I do not for one moment dispute that he is a very accomplished propagandist.

All the best,

John.

[Andreas]

Kevsharr is quite correct about the makeup of the 15cm Nebelwerfer (the larger calibres were of standard design, since they were anti-bunker, not anti-personnel). Lucas (another of those grain of salt types) in the source Kevsharr uses actually has a Soviet account of the effects at the receiving end, so that should be a bit more correct.

A 15cm NW rocket would have a poit 60cm above ground as its detonation point. AIU the blast effect of one rocket would not work that well - saturate the target area however with 4x6 rockets from one battery, and the story is ever so slightly different.

The described effect in that quote would gel with how I understand Nebelwerfers would work. I am not an expert though.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by kevsharr:

As for the effect's of the nebelwerfer [that Carell also mention's]I turn to James Lucas from his book War on the Eastern Front..

"There were several very interesting and apocryphal stories concerning the Nebewerfer.One of these was that the rocket's used in the first month's of the waragainst the Soviet Union had been charged with liquid oxygen explosive.The presence of so many dead showing no external sign's of injury seemed to support that theory.The truth was more prosaic.The rapid and succesive detonation's produced during a Nebelwerfer barrage produced such rapid variation's in air pressure within the bombarded zone that many victim's suffered extensive damage to their lung's which killed them."

I guess Carell was right about one thing in his extensive but inaccurate writing's.

It doesn't seem to me that he was likely to be right about this. As I said before, talking nonsense about blast is a common activity, even among people who should know better.

The following table is originally due to D W Kitzier, and is quoted in Dr Nick Colovos' "Blast Injuries", available at mediccom.org/public/tadmat/training/ NDMS/Blast_Document.pdf

Peak overpressure (psi) Effect

5...........Possible eardrum rupture

15..........50% incidence of eardrum rupture

30..........Possible lung injury

40..........Concrete shatters

75..........50% incidence of lung injury

100.........Possible fatal injuries

200.........Death more likely than not

This table does not specify the impulse duration, but we may assume from the context in which it was found that it reflects conditions typical of high explosive blasts of the size likely to be found in the field.

According to Andrew C Victor's "Warhead peformance calculations for threat hazard assessment", available at members.aol.com/Andrewvict/WRHDPRFM.pdf

The threshold blast overpressure for eardrum damage occurs at a scaled distance (in feet) of about (12 ft/lb ^ 1/3) from the explosion of a given weight of TNT (more powerful explosives such as RDX will count as a slightly greater equivalent weight).

It's not clear what kind of "Nebelwerfer" is under discussion here, so to be as charitable as possible, let's consider the 28cm Worfkörper Spreng, which I believe has an explosive filling of 110 lbs, about the largest the Wehrmacht fielded. Let's bump this up to 125 lbs for ease of cube-rooting, assuming still kore charitable that the explosive used is 15% more powerful than TNT. This means that the threshold blast level for ear damage would be about 60 feet from the burst. If I am reading the graph in Victor's fig. 4 correctly, the distance for "possible lung injury" (30 psi) would be at about 25 feet and for "possible fatal injury" (100 psi) at about 12 feet.

The total weight of the 28cm Wurfkörper Spreng round is 181 lb. Deducting 110 lb for the explosive filling and 15 lb for the propellant leaves us with 56 lbs of rocket casing that will produce high-velocity fragments (and Victor has plenty to say about fragmentation effects, too). I think that the likely effects of being within 25 feet of such a mass of fragmenting metal are likely to be a good deal worse than "possible lung injury". Certainly I cannot imagine many people escaping with "no external signs of injury".

If blast had indeed been the mechanism that caused these people's deaths, one would expect to see a very high incidence of ruptured eardrums in troops subjected to MRL bombardment. I have never heard of such a thing being reported.

A simple explanation for the observation of dead bodies with "no external signs of injury" is that they were killed by small high-velocity fragments. As I've already pointed out, a 1g fragment moving at the sort of speed HE can send it is big enough to kill, but small enough that the injury it causes is unlikely to be noticed on casual inspection. This, I suspect, accounts for all the stories one hears -- and not only about Nebelwerfers -- where people are supposed to have been left dead but unmarked by blast.

All the best,

John.

[Rickovich]

Sounds to me like they got hold of some chronic.Should have stuck to Vodka

[kevsharr]

Quote: Lucas (another of those grain of salt types)

Not to belabor the point but how does one get on this grain of salt list?Lucas's biblioghraphies in his book's look reputable enough,it's doese'nt look like he's making up all that he has written.David Mcollugh[i know I misspelled his name but I'm not at home]made a mistake in his book "john Adam's"when he quoted him as saying that Jefferson was a paragon of democracy or something of that nature[i tried to find the passage but was unsuccessful,have to try again]does that mean that it goes into the trash because he might have made a lot of mistake's and thereby distort's history?

John,I did a google search after I posted last and found the site you refer to and yes it's in german and no I don't speak it.I also found a review of Carell's book Hitler moves East the only problem the reviewer had was the fact that the book consisted of material gathered in interview's of german soldier's which he concedes is the rage today but is not to his liking

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Robert Isenberg:

I believe FAE weapons where used during WW2,but in a different form than a bomb

Propane was pumped into the sewers during the Warsaw uprisings and detonated to kill those using the sewers as a safe passage lanes

Again that is not a FAE.

That's a flame weapon.

FAE's work by dispersing the fuel AS AN AEROSOL. The resulting explosion causes very high overpresure over all portions of any target within the aerosol, destroying it.

Spraying around as droplets doesn't have teh same effect, while pouring it into sewers or droping it onto the ground doesn't even come close.

Instead the relatively large drops burn, causing damage by heat.

For teh grogs out there, yes I know the terms burn and explosion are not exact and they are both essentialy the same thing but happening at different speeds, but I hope you get the picture.