Z 1007 and Its Bomb's

[Brady]

Hi- I am looking for any references for the Z 1007 and its use of the Various bomb loads shown below operationally during the war, specifically a reference for the use of the larger Bombs, the 800 KG in particular :








Thanks, Brady

[Dili]

Not sure i understand, do you want a specific mission?

Caveat: the 800kg bomb was not considered very effective because the fuze was not considered reliable. They preferred to employ the 500kg and the 500kg OR(with timer for 72 h ).

Number of bombs at war start I= incendiary, T = GP, M=SAP , Spezzoni= for cluster F-fragmentation, MTR- pre fragmented

800kg 362
500kg 3396
500kg S 1000 unclear what this bomb is.
250kg T 12793
100kg T 47965
100kg M 152972
50 kg T 276459
20kg spezzoni 8880
15kg M 767963
12kg 355259
3kg MTR 86203
2kg F 1403796
20kg I spezzoni 1001426
2kg I spezzoni 6887
4Kg AR spezzoni - aria denial cluster - called by British "thermo" bomb. Probably in special bomb numbers

160kg CS (anti submarine) 4410

There are also 127000 special bombs including chemical ones, probably in this number it is the 500 OR and the 4kg AR.

[Brady]

Yes an example or two of a specific mission, for the 500 kg and 800 kg bombs, I am looking for what the doctrine was governing there employment

[Dili]

I am only aware of 500kg bombs dropped in Malta( could only be Br.20 or Z.1007 - i don't think S.81 operated above Malta- and Alexandria(by S.81). I know that SM84 dropped 1000kg - probably a prototype of sorts -bombs in Malta.

All these were port attacks.

In Punta Stilo naval battle the Italian Navy made one of their more massive level bombings of war:
8 bombe da 500 Kg 236 da 250 kg e 270 da 100 kg were dropped in one of the phases of this combat. The 500kg bombs were dropped by S.81 since at this operation only S.81 and S.79 were available in South/Sicily.

Edit: 500kg might have been also dropped by Cant Z.506 floatplane bomber/patrol

[Brady]

What’s interesting is the use of all those GP bombs against naval targets at sea, unless they had SAP versions in the 250 and 500 kg classes that are not listed but the explosive ordnance manual does not list the 160 kg SAP either so...

I don’t suppose you know what altitude they dropped on the ships from ?

Tganks btw...

[Dili]

No SAP in that 250 and 500kg altitude was usually 3000-4500m

[Brady]

So airfield atacks Aganst Malta used presumably the larger numbers of smaller bombs ?

[Dili]

Yes.