Illuminating bombs

A second sun, powerful and man-made, was born on July 16, 1945. A ball of fire thousands of times hotter than the surface of the real sun illuminated the New Mexico desert. Its birthplace was the Trinity site, and the explosion was the culmination of years of work by the world s brightest scientists. It was the planet s first atomic bomb, the tangible and frightening outcome of splitting the nucleus of an atom. 

Illuminating Flare Bomb was of thin iron, conical in shape with a hemispherical nose welded at the bottom. Length 22% inches, diam at top 6% inches. Its filler was ignited by a pull igniter, resulting in a brilliant greenish-yellow light (p 241, Fig 394 of Ref 1) ... 

Some pyrotechnic formulations are used for photographic purposes and the main requirement of such formulations is that they should produce a very powerful illumination for a short duration. Such pyrotechnic formulations are known as photoflash formulations and are used in photoflash cartridges, photoflash bombs and dust bombs. 

Bombardment Flares. Pyrotechnic bombs designed to provide illumination for night bombardment. Several types of such flares are described by Ohart (1946),315-16. See also Bombs, Pyrotechnic, under BOMBS... 

Uses In tracer powder (P4) and in incendiary shells, also as casing of incendiary bombs.8 For pyrotechnic purposes for the production of dazzling white light and for use in colored fires, for signaling, and for illuminating landing fields, P2,3. 

The subjoined engraving, copied from an Illumination in a Latin manuscript of the thirteenth century, gives a representation of the mode of employing the Greek fire in naval warfare. The craft here represented seems to be in some sense the prototype of the modern bomb-proof, ram, and fire-ship, all in one. But although this drawing is taken from an ancient work, no absolute reliance can be placed on the details of the construction as represented in it, inasmuch as such drawings were made in... 

Schlieren photographs of the spark kernel and the developing flame were obtained using a conventional arrangement. A flash-lamp-pumped dye laser was used to furnish a 1 ys light pulse (X 600 nm) to illuminate the interior of the combustion bomb. 

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