History
Wallis presented his ideas for a 10-ton bomb in his 1941 paper A Note on a Method of Attacking the Axis Powers, which showed that a very large bomb exploding deep underground next to a target would transmit the shock into the foundations of the target, particularly since shock waves are transmitted through the ground more strongly than through air.
Wallis designed the "Victory Bomber" of 50 tons, which would fly at 320 mph (510 km/h) at 45,000 feet (14,000 m) to carry the heavy bomb over 4,000 miles (6,400 km), but the Air Ministry were against a single-bomb aircraft, and the idea was not pursued beyond 1942.
Following Wallis' 1942 paper Spherical Bomb — Surface Torpedo and the design of the "bouncing bomb" for the Dam Busters of Operation Chastise, the design and production of Tallboy was done without a contract on the initiative of the Ministry. As such, the RAF were using bombs they had not bought and that were still the property of the manufacturer, Vickers. This situation was normalised once their capabilities were recognised.
Accomplishments of the Tallboy included the 24 June 1944 Operation Crossbow attack on La Coupole — along with Grand Slams — which undermined the foundations of this V2 assembly bunker, and a Tallboy attack on the Saumur tunnel on 8–9 June 1944, when bombs passed straight through the hill and exploded inside the tunnel 60 feet (18 m) below the surface.
The last of the Kriegsmarine's Bismarck-class battleships, the Tirpitz, was sunk by an air attack using Tallboys.
Read more about this topic: Tallboy (bomb)
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