Did old fashioned cannonball looking bombs really exist?

Question

Did these bombs that you may see in cartoons really exist?

They looked like a cannonball, with a fuse sticking out.


If they existed what were they called?

Answer 1

Yes they did, but were NOT usually fired from cannons. They were actually fired from mortars, short barrelled weapons designed to fire these explosive shells over fortifications rather than to destroy the defences themselves.

Such weapons were used to horrifying effect during the siege of Copenhagen (A rather shame full action by the British army/navy during the Napoleonic wars). They were more a terror weapon than anything else, being rather inaccurate but started fires, destroyed homes etc.

Answer 2

They were called--(drum roll please)--cannonballs.

The Buster Keaton film The General was made with real stuff (yes, they really crashed a train off a burning bridge) when they filmed it. Right in the middle, Keaton is setting a fuse on the cannonball he intends to shoot at the next train. The ball instead lands in the cab of his train, which he then rolls the ball off the side of the train and it blows up beside the tracks behind the train. It was this concept that people remembered when dealing with antiaircraft artillery, they could either time the explosion after the firing or, much safer, put something that estimated altitude before exploding. Otherwise you had to be a perfect shot (and that was too infrequent and hard to come by) and actually hit the plane. Back to your cannonball and fuse, usually there was a recessed place that you put the fuse in to protect it as it flew (see the General there too). Often, however, the heavy projectile flying into flesh or machines of war was enough to do the damage, but some were indeed bombs. There are examples in many civil war and old military post museums.

Answer 3

Yes they did exsist about the 18th and 19th centery they were called grenades, and were fired out of cannons, the reason they were set in a comic mode is because they were notorious for exploding at the wrong time they never could get the fuse right and were eventurly abandond , for nose caps which were much more relieble

Answer 4

they did exist. I believe they were just called cannonballs. They lit the fuse then fired it out of a cannon. When it hit its target (usually a boat or ship) it would penetrate the sides then explode.

Answer 5

Yes. It was an early form of hand grenade. Someone else will have to tell us what they were called.
The word grenade comes from pomegranate as they look similar.

Answer 6

yes