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Untitled
editMy name is Graham Clifton.
My late father was Mr Frank Clifton, b 20 Oct 1920, resident at 36 Kingsway, London SW14, the home of his parents, Mr Harold and Mrs Hilda Clifton, during 1939-1941.
Frank Clifton once mentioned to me, that a German parachute mine had fallen on to the road bridge, "Clifford Bridge" on A205 Clifford Avenue, South Circular Road, crossing Southern Railway.
The weapon apparently landed on the north west abutment of the bridge, and was said to have been approached by a bomb disposal officer (presumably all of the local residents had been evacuated).
My father said that the officer withdrew from the bomb, but that it had exploded. It was said that the officer's clothes were blown off. (This may have been a propaganda story, clearly the officer must have been killed outright by blast.)
All of the 1920's houses on the north west side of the bridge have been replaced by post-war elderly peoples' flats.
Both my father, Frank Clifton, and my mother, Dorothy Clifton (b 07 Dec 1921) made reference to "land mines" being dropped by the Luftwaffe, together with free fall bombs.
It was conventionally understood at the time, that "land mines" were intended to explode on ground contact rather than penetrating into the ground, and thus the lateral blast effect of the "land mine" could demolish a number of houses.
Detonation
editHow were the bombs detonated, if not by impact? Spicemix (talk) 19:34, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Notice -- post on reliability of ww2today
editPlease review and respond here:
Inconsistency
edit'Blast effects' says they exploded at roof top level, 'History' says 24 seconds after landing. 86.187.163.21 (talk) 21:13, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
- They exploded 17 seconds after impact, but owing to the parachute this impact was quite gentle and thus they didn't bury themselves in the ground. So their blast effect wasn't blocked by masses of soil and they were effective at removing lightly constructed roofs and windows. They were often used together with oil fire bombs, the idea being that a fire could be started and spread more easily if the roof was off. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:52, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Move Page
editShould this page not be removed and any relevant information moved to naval mine page? This is after all simply a naval mine repurposed on land. There are plenty of other parachute bombs described in other, more accurate article. Disambiguation from this page could link to naval mine, bunker buster and bomb for example.