page_title: Aerial bomb
section_title: Early bombs
hierarchical_section_title: Aerial bomb / Early bombs
caption_attribution_description: A North American F-100D Super Sabre (s/n 56-3397) of the 308th Tactical Fighter Squadron, detached from the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, assigned temporarily to the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, being loaded with M117 750 lb bombs at Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, in early 1966. This plane was retired to the MASDC on 26 January 1979 as FE0453.
context_page_description: An aerial bomb is a type of explosive or incendiary weapon intended to travel through the air on a predictable trajectory, usually designed to be dropped from an aircraft. Aerial bombs include a vast range and complexity of designs, from unguided gravity bombs to guided bombs, hand tossed from a vehicle, to needing a large specially built delivery vehicle; or perhaps be the vehicle itself such as a glide bomb, instant detonation or delay-action bomb. The act is termed aerial bombing. As with other types of explosive weapons, aerial bombs are designed to kill and injure people and destroy materiel through the projection of blast and fragmentation outwards from the point of detonation.
context_section_description: The first bombs delivered to their targets by air were launched on unmanned hot air balloons, carrying a single bomb, by the Austrians against Venice in 1849 during the First Italian War of Independence.
  The first bombs dropped from a heavier-than-air aircraft were grenades or grenade-like devices. Historically, the first use was by Giulio Gavotti on 1 November 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War.
  In 1912, during the First Balkan War, Bulgarian Air Force pilot Christo Toprakchiev suggested the use of aircraft to drop "bombs" (called grenades in the Bulgarian army at this time) on Turkish positions. Captain Simeon Petrov developed the idea and created several prototypes by adapting different types of grenades and increasing their payload.
  On 16 October 1912, observer Prodan Tarakchiev dropped two of those bombs on the Turkish railway station of Karağaç (near the besieged Edirne) from an Albatros F.2 aircraft piloted by Radul Milkov, for the first time in this campaign.
caption: An F-100 Super Sabre of the 308th TFS, being loaded with Mk 117 750 lb bombs, Tuy Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam (1966)
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