Aircraft bomb frag patterns

Am trying to find some info to help accurize (a somewhat outdated)
Vietnam era flight sim - Janes Fighters Anthology. Can any of you
military folks remember any numbers about the blast frag distances for
various aircraft bombs - 500/750/2000/3000 lb? How about
nape/CBUs/2.75 in FFARs? What would be the safe release heights for
each or any of these before you can expect to be affected by your own
ordnance? I don't have access to an F-105 or F-4 dash 34 manual, but I
bet that would answer my questions.
Thanks,
Mike Druzolowski

"Mike D" wrote...
Am trying to find some info to help accurize (a somewhat outdated)
Vietnam era flight sim - Janes Fighters Anthology. Can any of you
military folks remember any numbers about the blast frag distances for
various aircraft bombs - 500/750/2000/3000 lb? How about
nape/CBUs/2.75 in FFARs? What would be the safe release heights for
each or any of these before you can expect to be affected by your own
ordnance? I don't have access to an F-105 or F-4 dash 34 manual, but I
bet that would answer my questions.

Most of that information is in Confidential Tactical Manuals. It also varies
widely with delivery parameters, fuzes, and other variables.

You are really asking two different questions....

The Fragment Envelope for the weapon (how high, far, fast do fragments
travel) ....

And the safe release height for that weapon....

In level flight you can drop (a single MK-82 for example) from an altitude
lower than the maximum height of the frag pattern (due to your forward
velocity during the time of fall and the time for the fragments to travel
outward). The slower you are the higher you need to drop and vice versa

Then you need to throw in the fuze arming delay, diving deliveries, ripple
deliveries, type of escape maneuver (level, climbing, turning, lateral,
backup) etc....

So if you were going to check out your modeling, and simply looked at
maximum height of the frag pattern to determine if you were a 'mort' or not,
I'd think you'd be given a false view of what's really going on.

FWIW

Mark


"Mike D" wrote in message
om...
Am trying to find some info to help accurize (a somewhat outdated)
Vietnam era flight sim - Janes Fighters Anthology. Can any of you
military folks remember any numbers about the blast frag distances for
various aircraft bombs - 500/750/2000/3000 lb? How about
nape/CBUs/2.75 in FFARs? What would be the safe release heights for
each or any of these before you can expect to be affected by your own
ordnance? I don't have access to an F-105 or F-4 dash 34 manual, but I
bet that would answer my questions.
Thanks,
Mike Druzolowski

Thanks for the responses. I guess what I'm looking for is the minimum
safe release altitude (estimate) where you could release in a dive
then level out right over the target (I know, not recommended) and not
heve to worry about being knocked out of the sky. (I just don't want
to be able to drop a 3000 lb. M118 from 900 feet at 190 knots and fly
away unscathed, because I suspect that this is way too low! The
DuoSoft Toolkit allows creation and/or modification of ordnance used
within the sim, but I don't have any real world info to base some of
the characteristics on.
Thanks again everyone.
Mike D.

Mike D wrote:

Am trying to find some info to help accurize (a somewhat outdated)
Vietnam era flight sim - Janes Fighters Anthology. Can any of you
military folks remember any numbers about the blast frag distances for
various aircraft bombs - 500/750/2000/3000 lb? How about
nape/CBUs/2.75 in FFARs? What would be the safe release heights for
each or any of these before you can expect to be affected by your own
ordnance? I don't have access to an F-105 or F-4 dash 34 manual, but I
bet that would answer my questions.

Safe release heights vary considerably due to speed, angle, clean or
retard, maneuver, etc., and are much too long to list here. If you really
want this stuff you need to invest in a -34. The following info is from
the frag graphs, but realize that each of these shows a pure vertical time
vs. height envelope, as well as a coupel of horizontal time vs. height vs.
distance curves. I'm just giving you the height and max. horizontal
distances.

Max. frag. envelopes from the F-4C-34-1-1:

Mk. 82: Top of frag envelope 2,520 feet vertical @ 9 seconds after
detonation. Max. horizontal spread at ground level +- 3,100 feet 2 13
seconds plus.

Mk. 83: Top 2,820 feet vertical @ 9 sec. after detonation. Max.
horizontal spread @ ground level +- 3,400 feet @ 15 sec. plus

Mk. 84: Top 2,820 feet vertical @ 9 sec. after detonation. Max.
Horizontal spread @ ground level +-3,400 feet @ 15 sec. plus.

M117 (Tritonal filling): Top 2,450 feet vertical @ 7 seconds after
detonation. Max. horizontal spread @ ground level +-2,900 feet @ 13 sec.
plus.

Unfortunately, there's no frag envelope graph for the M118, just safe
escape and safe tables (the other bombs also have these), which would take
far too long to type in.

HTH,

Guy

Dropping a slick from level flight below 1000 is dangerous because the
bomb can bounce back up.

Known as "broaching"(if the weapon actually enters the ground below it, then
"pops back up) or "ricocheting" (if the weapon simply hits the ground and
bounces back up).

We dropped inert Mk82s at 300 AGL 500K and
the things were bouncing up level with us. (They were also bouncing
off the Avon Park range so we had to stop that.)

Walt, surely this was known about in the 60's and 70's no? I find it hard to
believe this is a recently discovered phenomena. It's not a comfortale feeling
to fly "in formation" with your own weapons. As a young co-pilot I watched one
of our Mk-82 AIRs fly up in front of the wing, then off to the side. Obviously
the AIR didn't function.


BUFDRVR

"Stay on the bomb run boys, I'm gonna get those bomb doors open if it harelips
everyone on Bear Creek"