Dropping a bomb from a plane... help?

Question

You are working as a consultant on a video game designing a bomb site for a World War I airplane. In this game, the plane you are flying is traveling horizontally at 44.8 m/s at an altitude of 130 m when it drops a bomb.

(a) Determine how far horizontally from the target you should release the bomb.
(b) What direction is the bomb moving just before it hits the target?

This is the question I'm having trouble with. It shouldn't be that hard, but it's just not clicking for some reason. I don't necessarily want someone to do the problem (that's my job) but tell me how I should go about solving it. Thanks.

I should have been clearer in explaining part B. They are asking for the degrees below the horizontal when asking which direction the bomb is moving.

Answer 1

a]
if we neglect the air resistance, then the bomb touches the ground at a dist of 44.8*t m from the pt it was dropped.

't' can be calculated by using the equation of the y-axis, i.e,
130=(9.8*t*t)/2 (using the eqn s=ut+gt*t/2).

solving this gives t=5.15 seconds.
putting this in the eqn of x-axis.
s=44.8*5.15.
s=230.755 m.


b]
the vertical velocity at the pt when bomb hits the ground will be,
v(vertical)=9.8*5.15=50.47 m/s.

let @ be the angle at which it hits the ground.

tan @=v(vertical)/v(horizontal)
=50.47/44.8
=1.1265625

which gives @=48.4059

assuming that the plane is moving in the direction of positive x-axis, the bomb will hit an angle of 41.5941 with the positive direction of x-axis.(90-48.4059)

Answer 2

I think you should use the free fall formula. I am just starting taking physics classes. So here it is: V=(9.8)(t) 9.8 is the gravitational pull and t is time in seconds. I do think that the bomb would be moving in the direction of the plane, but you didn't specify if the plane was going west or east. I don't expect the best answer for this question but this is some idea of what you should do.

Answer 3

You need to calculate the time it takes the bomb to fall 130m (remember s=(1/2)at² under uniform acceleration) and then use that time to calculate how far horizontally the bomb will travel (s=vt). The vector sum of the horizontal and vertical velocity components are the instantaneous directions (remember that v=at² under uniform acceleration)

HTH

Doug

Answer 4

First: Squadrons do not typically engage each other like football teams… Aircraft usualy engage each other in small groups, 2 or 4 ship operations. Aircraft in an engagement are assigned to a squadron but that is a bureaucratic designation. You can just as easily have aircraft from different units flying in a package/formation. But on to your question: There were some examples of Aircraft (Helicopters) in flight being destroyed by US Aircraft with “Bombs” during desert Storm, and I believe an F-15E struck a Iraqi aircraft while it was taxiing on a runway, but I have never seen a believable record of an air to air kill with “bomb” against a maneuvering target. Side note: One of the areas of Offensive Counter Air (OCA) Operations is destruction of enemy air assets on the ground, sort of “kill them before they fly”. It is theoretically possible that a unit has been destroyed entirely on the ground by aircraft from a single enemy unit