Disney bomb

The Disney bomb, also known as the Disney Swish, officially the 4500 lb Concrete Piercing/Rocket Assisted bomb was a rocket-assisted bunker buster bomb developed during the Second World War by the British Royal Navy to penetrate hardened concrete targets, such as submarine pens, which could resist conventional free-fall bombs. Devised by Royal Navy Captain Edward Terrell, the bomb was fitted with solid-fuel rockets to accelerate its descent, giving it an impact speed of —substantially beyond the free-fall impact velocity of the 5 tonne Tallboy "earthquake" bomb for comparable purposes. The Disney could penetrate of solid concrete before detonating. The name is attributed to a propaganda film, Victory Through Air Power, produced by the Walt Disney Studios, that provided the inspiration for the design. The Disney bomb saw limited use by the United States Army Air Forces in Europe from February to April 1945. Although technically successful, it initially was insufficiently accurate for attacking bunker targets. It was deployed late in the war and had little effect on the Allied bombing campaign against Germany. During the Second World War, Barnes Wallis developed two large "earthquake" bombs for the Royal Air Force: the five-tonne Tallboy and the ten-tonne Grand Slam, for use against targets too heavily protected to be affected by conventional high explosive bombs. These enormous weapons were designed to strike close by their target, to penetrate deeply into the earth, and to cause major structural damage by the shock waves transmitted through the ground. In practice, they proved capable of penetrating a significant thickness of concrete if they scored a direct hit, despite not being designed for that purpose by Wallis, who had to work within the accuracy limitations of current bombsights and the resulting low accuracy of the bombings. The Disney bomb, by contrast, was designed from the start to penetrate the thick concrete roofs of fortified bunkers. Whereas the earthquake bomb's target was the bunker itself, the Disney bomb's target was the bunker's contents.