Bomb Gallery

Missile, Cruise, V-1 (Fi 103, FZG 76), ca. 1945. Creator: Gerhard Fieseler Werke GmbH

The V-1 (Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or Vengeance Weapon One), was the world's first operational cruise missile. This name was given to it by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, but the original Air Ministry designation was Fi 103, after its airframe designer, the Fieseler company. Powered by a simple but noisy pulsejet that earned it the Allied nicknames of "buzz bomb" and "doodle bug," more than 20,000 were launched at British and continental targets, mostly London and Antwerp, from June 1944 to March 1945. It carried a one-ton, high-explosive warhead and had a range of about 240 km (150 miles) but was very inaccurate. The Smithsonian acquired this V-1 on 1 May 1949 from the U.S. Air Force. It was moved to the National Air Museum's storage facility in Suitland, Maryland in January 1955 and was restored in 1975-76 for exhibition in the new National Air and Space Museum building

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Explosion on the Rue de la Loi, Paris, France, 24th December 1800 (1882-1884)

Explosion on the Rue de la Loi, Paris, France, 24th December 1800 (1882-1884). The bomb was an assassination attempt by a group of Breton royalists on the life of the First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon escaped unscathed but several innocent bystanders were killed. The street is known today as the Rue de Richelieu. A print from La France et les Francais a Travers les Siecles, Volume IV, F Roy editor, A Challamel, Saint-Antoine, 1882-1884

© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images

British soldiers attacking the Hindenburg Line, World War I, 1917-1918.Artist: Realistic Travels Publishers

British soldiers attacking the Hindenburg Line, World War I, 1917-1918. Soldiers bombing Germans out of their deep dug-out with grenades. The Hindenburg Line was a vast system of defences built on the Western Front by the Germans in the winter of 1916-1917. It extended from Lens in the north to beyond Verdun and was believed by the German High Command to be impregnable. In fact British and Newfoundland forces using tanks briefly broke through the line at Cambrai in 1917, and it was breached in several places in September 1918 during the Allied Hundred Days Offensive. Stereoscopic card detail

© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images