FACT FILE: High Drag Gravity Bombs
By fitting a conventional low-drag gravity bomb with an aerobraking
assembly, you create a high-drag bomb. The advantage of an HD bomb is that
the aerobrake quickly retards the bomb's descent to dramtaically and quickly
increase the distance between bomb and aerospace craft. Therefore, if bombs
must be dropped at low altitude or speed, the HD bomb is often better than
the LD for the application. The disadvantage of the HD model is that the
aerobrake can substantially affect the bomb's trajectory, often pulling
it off course. Aerobraking assemblies are available for most models of
LD bomb. When fitted, the bomb is referred to by the same number as before,
and the prefix simply changed from LD to HD.
Bomb Nomenclature
There is a very wide array of bombs available to the SFMC, but
they fall into general categories that each have there own designating
prefix for the bomb's nomenclature: LD (low drag), HD (high drag), GBU
(guided bomb unit), CBU (cluster bomb unit), AP (armor-piercing), FAE (fuel/air
explosive), M/A (matter/antimatter). The number that follows is particular
to the series of bombs in question and gets larger with the size of the
bomb's warhead. For example, HD-8500 designates a high drag (HD), high
explosive gravity bomb (8xxx series), with a 500kg warhead.
Some material on this page ruthlessly plagerized from the SFMC's Aerospace Branch Manual by Matt Kelley and available from SFMC Academy.
WebPage designed & maintained by Kevin "MAC" Nulty
