Butterfly Bomb

The Butterfly Bomb (or Sprengbombe Dickwandig 2 kg or SD 2) was a German 2-kilogram (4.4 lb) anti-personnel submunition (or bomblet) used by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.

It was so named because the thin cylindrical metal outer shell which hinged open when the bomblet deployed gave it the superficial appearance of a large butterfly.

Butterfly bombs were usually painted either straw yellow (desert camouflage), or, if fitted with the DoppZ (41) or (41) A fuze, dark green or grey.

Butterfly bombs were first used against Ipswich in 1940, but were also dropped on Kingston upon Hull, Grimsby[3] and Cleethorpes in June 1943, amongst various other targets in the United Kingdom.

[6] The British Government deliberately suppressed news of the damage and disruption caused by butterfly bombs in order to avoid encouraging continued use by the Germans.

On October 28, 1940, some butterfly bombs that had failed to arm themselves properly were discovered in Ipswich by British Army ordnance technicians Sergeant Cann and 2nd Lieutenant Taylor.

By screwing the arming rods back into the fuzes (i.e. the unarmed position) they were able to recover safe examples of the new weapon system to allow the British to reverse-engineer and understand the mechanism.

Twenty to thirty aircrews had been picked to drop SD 2s and SD10s (10 kg submunitions) on key Soviet airfields, a flight of three aircraft being assigned to each field.

[11] The last recorded UK death from a German butterfly bomb in England occurred on November 27, 1956, over 11 years after the end of the war: Flight Lieutenant Herbert Derrington[12][13] of the RAF was examining an SD 2 at the "Upminster bomb cemetery" (some remote sandpits situated East of RAF Hornchurch, where explosive ordnance disposal experimental and research work took place) when it detonated.

[14] On the island of Malta in 1981 Paul Gauci, a 41-year-old Maltese man, died after welding a butterfly bomb to a metal pipe and using it as a mallet, thinking it was a harmless can.

[16] The 3 fuze types used on the M83 submunition were slightly modified versions of the original German designs: The 4-pound (1.8 kg) M83 fragmentation bomblet was used in the US M28 and M29 cluster bombs.