Smallest bomb load of a WWII 2-engine medium bomber?

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Admiral Beez

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Oct 21, 2019
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The "Largest bomb load of a WWII fighter?" got me thinking, I bet there's some 2-engine bombers in WW2 that were underwhelming in their bomb load capacity. Excluding fighter-bomber variants of medium-bombers like the Mosquito, which 2-engine medium bombers had the smallest bomb loads?

For example, the Dornier Do. 17 could carry only 1,000 kg (2,205 lb) of bombs internally. With a Wikipedia-reported max takeoff weight of 8,837 kg (19,482 lb), this means the Do. 17 could carry 11% of its weight in bombs. As a comparison, the Ilyushin Il-4 carried 2,700 kg (6,000 lb) of bombs on a max takeoff weight of 12,120 kg (26,720 lb), equaling 22% of its weight in bombs.
 
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Mitsubishi G4M Betty, 12860kg max weight, and carrying one 858kg torpedo or 1000kg* of bombs gives it about 7.5%. Though it did have long range.
Ki-67 Peggy, 5.8%.*
It would not surprise me if the winner in this category is a Japanese twin engine.
*Specs are from Wikipedia
 
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You're probably right, though the French were pretty low too.

Lioré et Olivier LeO 45
  • Max takeoff weight: 11,398 kg (25,128 lb)
  • 1568 kg (3,457 lb) of bombs
  • 7% of weight as bombs
 
The IL-4 could only store 1000kg of bombs internally, a similar load could be carried externally. I believe for max bombload they had to sacrifice fuel load
 
Admiral Beez said:
Lockheed Hudson
It looks like there's plenty of space for bombs in the bay below. Why only 750 lbs?


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The cabin on the Model 14 wasn't very large - just enough room for about a dozen passengers and baggage.

So as a bomber, it wouldn't have a very large bay, plus it had to share the cabin with defensive gunners and such.
 
The Bomb load is going to be around 2000lbs, adjust for metric.
The Mosquito was originally classed as a light bomber, I don't know when or if it was classed as a medium bomber.

The Hudson was a light bomber. Bomb loads for it are all over the place, but 750lbs is only correct in certain situations. It would hold 10 100lbbombs or 4 250 if not more. The bomb bay was in the old baggage compartments under the passenger cabin. Bombs weigh a lot more than people on a volume basis and you can pack them in tighter than even a commuter airliner does it's passengers.

If you really want to compare these bombers you need to compare the combined bomb and fuel load. And obviously the 1937-39 bombers with their sometimes under 1000hp engines are going to have some problems carrying a load.
 
Shortround6 said:
The Bomb load is going to be around 2000lbs, adjust for metric.
The Mosquito was originally classed as a light bomber, I don't know when or if it was classed as a medium bomber.

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Probably when it started dropping 4,000lb cookies on Berlin. With the defensive armament's weight and drag on a heavy and torturous routes to form up, evade flak and deceive enemy defences the heavies frequently ended up with a bomb load reduced to that of the Mosquito in weight. Very early on in the Mosquito story the wing span was increased to cope with extra weight.
 
Shortround6 said:
If you really want to compare these bombers you need to compare the combined bomb and fuel load. And obviously the 1937-39 bombers with their sometimes under 1000hp engines are going to have some problems carrying a load.
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Agreed. One of the quokes about the AW Argosy was it could carry a tank for 20 miles or a matchbox around the world. The same applied to bombers. Max bomb load always results in reduced range
 
Yak-2/Yak-4 - max 800 kg (probably never used), standard 400 kg.
Pe-2 - max 1000 kg, standard 600 kg.
 
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