Atlas Trail
Death from Above: Bombs and Airborne Weapons from the Zeppelin to the UMPK
This path follows weapons that reached their targets from the air, from the rigid airships of 1915 to the glide-bomb kits of the 2020s. It runs in the order they entered use, so you can see air power move from slow raiders to guided, enormous and cheaply converted bombs.
Stop 1 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The Zeppelin was a German rigid airship, and the Kaiser approved airship raids on Great Britain on 7 January 1915. The first raid struck Great Yarmouth and nearby areas that month, and the bombing campaign killed more than 500 people over the course of the war.
Stop 2 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The Thermos bomb, formally the AR-4, was an Italian air-dropped anti-personnel mine nicknamed for its resemblance to a vacuum flask. Its motion-sensitive fuze could fire if the bomb was disturbed after landing, so disposal crews usually destroyed unexploded examples in place.
Stop 3 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The Henschel Hs 293 was a German radio-guided anti-ship glide bomb first used unsuccessfully on 25 August 1943. It damaged or sank at least 25 ships over the following year before Allied radio jamming blunted it after April 1944.
Stop 4 of 9.
Weapons Systems
Napalm is a gelled incendiary mixture created in 1942 by a team led by Louis Fieser for the United States Chemical Warfare Service. It first saw combat in flamethrowers during the invasion of Sicily in August 1943, and incendiary bombs using it followed in 1944.
Stop 5 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The V-1 was an early cruise missile, the first of the Vengeance weapons used against London. The first attacks came on 13 June 1944, and roughly 10,000 were launched against England and about 2,448 against Belgium through March 1945.
Stop 6 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The Grand Slam was a 22,000 pound earthquake bomb designed by Barnes Wallis for RAF Bomber Command. Forty-two were dropped on Germany between 14 March and 19 April 1945, making it the largest conventional aerial bomb of the war.
Stop 7 of 9.
Weapons Systems
Fat Man was the American plutonium bomb detonated over Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare. Its design had been proven at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945.
Stop 8 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, called the Mother of All Bombs, was first tested in 2003. Its first combat use came on 13 April 2017 against an Islamic State facility in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, and only 15 have been built.
Stop 9 of 9.
Weapons Systems
The UMPK is a kit from the Russian Bazalt bureau that turns unguided bombs such as the FAB-500 into glide bombs. Russia began using it operationally in 2023, letting aircraft strike tens of kilometers away from outside the reach of Ukrainian air defenses.
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