With each test modifications were carried out to the casings and trials continued on January 9th and the 23rd of the month resulting in a skip of 13 times and on the 10th January a bomb skipped 20 times before finally sinking. Finally on February 5th it had proved possible to skip the bomb for over yards and for it to generally remain intact at the end. On January 28th he showed the films of the Chesil Beach tests to a gathering of high ranking staff from the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production.
The Royal Navy expressed considerable interest with a view to using the weapon against the German battleship Tirpitz and in fact by the end of January an order for weapons was placed on behalf of the Royal Navy who were impressed with the potential of the weapon.
He was concerned that in the event the Royal Navy used the weapon against ships the technology would be made available to Germans and the element of surprise lost.
Doubts however still existed about the feasibility of using upkeep against the dams and Harris who had a strong dislike of any dissipation of effort from the bombing of Germany was not at all keen on the idea.
Other operational factors were now coming into play and it was realised that for the dam breaking operation to have the maximum effect it should be carried out when the reservoirs were at their fullest and this would also maximise the effect of the weapons themselves. That was in May and to give the necessary time for crew training, production and provision of all the necessary equipment and planning, a decision on the operation needed to be made by February 15th if it was to occur in He explained that an up rated bomb of 10,lbs would be needed for the operation and a specially modified Lancaster would be needed to carry it.
He further explained that a specially trained Lancaster Squadron would need to be relieved of its normal bombing duties for two to three weeks beforehand to carry out the required training. It was planned at this stage bombing in full moonlight using radio altimeters which were much more sensitive that the usual barometric models normally used.
The following day a meeting was held at the Air Ministry attended by Wallis and Mutt Summers where it was decided to proceed with the construction of one upkeep bomb and to modify one Lancaster with the required dropping equipment.
Harris was informed but was not impressed. Sir Ralph Cochrane, commanding officer of No 5 Group and therefore the man who would be responsible for carrying out the operation if it went ahead was convinced that he plan would work and he arranged a further meeting between Wallis and Harris. Harris remained strongly against the plan but agreed to watch film of the drops at Chesil Beach and following the film agreed to the conversion of three Lancasters for further development work.
Wallis offered to resign but continue working on the project over the next couple of days. At the Air Ministry however, things were moving quite rapidly.
Two days later he was asked to attend a conference at the Ministry of Aircraft production where it was explained that the Chief of Air Staff now wanted every effort to be made on the development of the aircraft and bombs so that the project could go ahead no later than May 26th when it was estimated that the water levels in the dams would fall to low for the best results.
This sudden change in policy faced Wallis with a new problem. Time was now extremely short for the development and production of the bomb, the modification of the aircraft and the training of the crews. Demonstrations of progress with Highball occurred in testing between 15 and 17 May With crew on board HMS Malaya , inert Highball prototypes fitted with hydrostatic pistols were aimed at the ship and released, successfully striking the ship, and one punched a hole in the ship's side.
On 17 May, for the first time, prototypes were released in pairs, only one second apart. By the end of May , problems with releasing Highball had been resolved, as had problems with aiming, which required a different method to that for Upkeep, and were resolved by Wallis's design of a ring aperture sight fixed to a flying helmet.
However, Highball was never used in action. On 12 November , its primary target, Tirpitz , was capsized by Lancasters from 9 Squadron and Squadron in Operation Catechism , using Tallboy bombs : these were also developed by Wallis, independently of his work on bouncing bombs.
Other potential targets were considered, both during Highball's development and later, including ships of the Italian navy , canals, dry docks, submarine pens , and railway tunnels — for which testing took place, in — but, while the Italian navy ceased to be an enemy from 3 September , the remainder were dismissed, in effect, as impracticable.
Drop tests were carried out over Choctawhatchee Bay near Eglin Field , Florida, but the programme was abandoned after the bomb bounced back at ACDT Invader on Water Range 60, causing loss of the rear fuselage and a fatal crash on 28 April As well as the two types listed above, a smaller weapon for use by MTBs was proposed by the Admiralty in December Known as Baseball, this would be a tube-launched weapon weighing pounds kg , of which half would be explosive, and with an anticipated range of 1, to 1, yards to 1, m.
Inert prototype bouncing bomb on display at Abbotsbury Swannery : note that it is lying on one side. Inert prototypes of both Upkeep and Highball that were dropped at Reculver have been recovered and these, along with a number of other examples, are displayed at various sites:. In , a diving project in Loch Striven successfully located "at least eight" Highball prototypes, under more than feet 35 m of water.
After Operation Chastise, German forces discovered an Upkeep bomb intact. This was in the wreckage of the Lancaster commanded by Flt Lt Barlow, which had struck high tension cables at Haldern, near Rees, Germany, and crashed: since the bomb had not been released, and the aircraft had crashed on land, none of the detonation devices had fired. However, the importance of back-spin was not understood, and, dropped in trials by a Focke-Wulf Fw , it proved to be dangerous to the delivering planes, as the bomb matched the speed at which it was dropped.
Attempts to rectify this with booster rockets were ultimately a failure, and the project was discontinued in In , a project was initiated to re-create a Dambusters raid. Buffalo Airways was selected as the company to fly the mission, with their own plane and pilots. Buffalo would drop a re-created 'Upkeep' bouncing bomb from their DC It involved dropping a replica dummy bomb, and blowing up a replica dam.
Military Wiki Explore. Popular pages. Grant Richard Winters Harry Welsh. Project maintenance. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Bouncing bomb. Edit source History Talk 0. Which kind of behaviour is followed depends principally on the angle at impact and the velocity range within which the projectile impinges, the density of the projectile and that of the target, and the mechanical properties of both bodies.
In ricochet the projectile usually undergoes little or no permanent deformation but the target is ploughed. Rebound or ricochet is essentially due to the dynamic pressure of the target material acting upwards on the projectile to overcome its gravitational weight. The mechanisms of elastic restitution and dynamic pressure are of different kinds. Ricochet usually describes impact and rebound such that at no time has the projectile been wholly below the water surface.
Auckland Meccano Guild. Retrieved 21 July Two remaining personalities still alive from that era were consulted, namely Arthur Porter and Maurice Wilkes , but neither could substantiate the rumour. For the effects of back-spin, see e. Magnus effect , Backspin , Flower , pp. Note that this is prolate spin, as opposed to the flat, oblate spin of a skipped stone. For Wallis's own reference to "'golf ball' experiments", the origin and use of the generic name "Golf mine", and dimpled prototypes, see Sweetman , Part 1 , pp.
Diagrams from document produced by Dr Wallis to explain how the bouncing bomb Upkeep worked. The National Archives. Retrieved 10 August UK: Elsevier. Digital object identifier: See also Tirpitz Battleship — "Operational history". The Dambusters Squadron. Retrieved 12 August
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