Bombs Away!!
Entry posted by ncharles
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In the history of the world, there have been millions of bombs dropped by any nation during a war. However, what most people never think about is the physics behind dropping a bomb. The bombardier must take into consideration the speed at which they are flying, the horizontal distance away from their target and the height at which they are flying. Say, for example, the average B-42 bomber has a cruise altitude of 39,00 ft (12,000 m) and a cruise speed of 545 mph (926 kph). If a bomb were to be dropped with these conditions, the bomb would travel a horizontal distance of 12.72 km in its fretful in 49.5 seconds (ignoring air resistance). If the bomb team was given a target to hit with a radius of 1 km, then mistiming the drop my a mere 5 seconds could cause the bomb to miss by 300 m. This could mean the difference between winning or losing an entire war...some pretty big stakes. Luckily now there are bombing systems that are very accurate and a bomb team is no longer required; but back in the day, this was a stressful task that took much focus and careful calculations.
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