Gloucestershire Weapons Inspectors

USAF Fairford Bomb Spotting For Beginners

If you're coming weapons inspecting at Fairford here's what to look for - the big grey airplanes are easy, they're B-52's and have bombed 1 in 11 countries around the world. The bombs are a little more tricky - here's a brief guide. Before you come to Fairford for Reclaim The Bases please check out out legal and civil liberties watch pages.

The aircraft are being loaded with a mixture of munitions including - Mk82 General Purpose Bomb - these are free fall bombs used for what the B-52 does best "carpet bombing". These can be adapted using a kit into JDAM guided weapons - The B-52 can also carry a range of cruise missiles including the Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile but we've not seen any cruise for at least a couple of weeks and the increasingly common and disturbing sight of cluster bombs.

Read this article from USAF in Europe News - Building JDAMs for 'Shock and Awe'

Here's a few pictures of the general purpose free fall bombs:

Loading B-52 at Fairford 27/3/03

Thousands of these bombs are stored at Welford and brought to Fairford every couple of days in a munitions convoy.

At Fairford they are stored until required for loading. Then they are armed by adding a detonator on the nose and a tailfin to stop them being too wobbly.

They are loaded onto the B-52 and sent by air to Iraq.

Here's what it says on the bombs - altough there are different sizes (see below) they're all basicaly the same.

If you follow this link you can find out more about this family of free fall dumb bombs.