Barnes Wallis' Papers

By the end of March 1941, Barnes Wallis had produced his paper 'A note on a method of attacking the Axis Powers'.

B483

• Read a transcript
• Enlarge the diagram

These extracts from the paper outline Wallis's reasons for the targets he chosen as well as a proposed weapon; 'the big bomb'. Although the Air Staff rejected the idea of 'the big bomb' further research was allowed due the encouraging results of experiments.

A year later Wallis's second paper contained the idea of the bouncing weapon, referred to in the paper's title; "Spherical Bomb - Surface Torpedo".