Mother of all bombs - 21,000 pounds bomb

What is the naval equivalent of the USAF's Massive Ordnance Air Blast
(MOAB) bomb, which weighs 21,000 pounds and is the largest guided
air-delivered weapon in history?

The New York Times
December 25, 2005 Sunday
SECTION: Section 1; Column 3; National Desk; Pg. 41

HEADLINE: Albert L. Weimorts, Designer of Big Bombs, Dies at 67

Albert L. Weimorts, a civilian engineer for the Air Force who conceived
and designed some of the biggest, most powerful nonnuclear bombs ever
made, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was
67. The cause was brain cancer, his son Todd said. In 2003, in honoring
him at his retirement, the Air Force Research Laboratory cited Mr.
Weimorts's role in developing two extremely powerful bombs. One was the
GBU-28 ''Bunker Buster'' used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The
other was the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the ''mother of all
bombs.'' It was made for the second Iraq war as a dramatic
manifestation of ''shock and awe,'' but never used.''Time after time,
Weimorts has put weapons in the warfighter's hands and has made a
difference in the national defense of our country,'' the laboratory
said in a statement issued in 2004. Mr. Weimorts (pronounced
WEE-morts), as chief engineer for the laboratory's Munitions
Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Fla., had begun work
as early as October 1990 on a bomb capable of piercing hardened
concrete and exploding only when it had penetrated to a certain depth.
The need for this new bomb came after 2,000-pound bombs failed to break
through a hardened bunker used by Iraqi leaders, possibly including
Saddam Hussein himself. A book prepared by U.S. News & World Report,
''Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf
War'' (Times Books, 1992), said ''numerous officials'' claimed the bomb
was built explicitly to kill Mr. Hussein, although the first President
Bush publicly said the Iraqi leader was not a target. ''We understand
quite well what it takes to penetrate targets -- what it takes in terms
of fusing, survivability, explosives and all,'' Mr. Weimorts said in an
interview with the authors. Ideally, such a bomb would have to be
dropped from a high altitude, meaning the United States and its allies
needed to establish total air superiority in order to use the weapon.
''Just three days into the war, it looked to me like that was
possible,'' Mr. Weimorts said. ''So I sketched out something that we
could carry high, and it would be heavy.'' The need was to make a much
bigger, more destructive version of the 2,000-pound GBU-27 that had
been dropped on targets in downtown Baghdad. Yet it could not have a
bigger diameter than the earlier bomb or else it could not be mounted
on a fighter's bomb rack. So it had to be longer. Mr. Weimorts was
project manager of the technical effort to develop the GBU-28, and then
chief engineer for the balance of its development. Lockheed and Texas
Instruments, among others, worked on the bomb. As is true with almost
all weapons projects, others joined Mr. Weimorts in integral leadership
and staff roles. Speed was so important that work began without signing
of formal contracts. There was no time to develop and manufacture
parts, so Mr. Weimorts decreed that only off-the-shelf materials could
be used. Then he and his team were at first stymied in finding a steel
tube long and strong enough to hold the explosives. A retired Army
veteran who worked for Lockheed recalled that the Army stockpiled old
gun barrels, which happened to be made of the same hardened steel
needed for the bomb's body. The barrels were traced to an arsenal in
Pennsylvania. Without waiting for Pentagon approval, Mr. Weimorts
requested that the arsenal ship the barrels to another arsenal, this
one in upstate New York, where the bombs were assembled. Within five
weeks of the Air Force's request for the weapons, two GBU-28s, each
weighing 5,000 pounds, were dropped on a highly fortified bunker 15
miles northwest of Baghdad, destroying it. It took several hours to
determine that Mr. Hussein was not inside. But the technology worked.
Mr. Weimorts was awarded the Air Force Award for Meritorious Civilian
Service. In 2002 and 2003, he conceived and guided development of the
Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which weighs 21,000 pounds and is the
largest guided air-delivered weapon in history. It was meant as a
replacement for a 15,000-pound bomb used in Vietnam popularly known as
the Daisy Cutter. The Air Force made 14, but none were used against
Iraq. Mr. Weimorts was also project engineer for a cluster bomb that
had a production rate of eight million bomblets a month during the
Vietnam War. Another success was reducing the weight of a 2,000-pound
bomb by half without sacrificing any destructive power in the
mid-1990's.

Albert Lee Weimorts was born March 6, 1938, in DeFuniak Springs, Fla.
He grew up in Mobile, Ala., and graduated from Mississippi State
University with a degree in mechanical engineering. His first job was
designing piping systems at Newport News Ship Building. He next worked
for the Air Force as a project engineer on the shipment of dangerous
liquids. He joined the munitions directorate in 1966 and in 1970
returned to Mississippi State to earn a master's degree in mechanical
engineering. In the 1990's, he served two tours as a weapons inspector
for the United Nations in Iraq. Mr. Weimorts is survived by his wife of
45 years, the former Nancy Williamson;