This image appeared on my Facebook feed. It’s a bullet-shaped thing, larger than a jeep, that appears to be designed to run on railroad tracks. There is a hatch on the side, but no windows. Speculation in the post is that it’s a railroad bomb. i.e., it’s a bomb designed to run on tracks to intercept Allied-controlled trains. Other speculate its a rocket sled, or a gunnery target. Can anyone identify this thing?
This one is over to you guys: we have no idea what it is! It was found in Japan by the US after the war, and there is no solid answer on what it is. It is quite large (see the Jeep behind, for scale), and sits on rails. Looks like it may be constructed from aircraft panels. One theory is that it is a railway bomb. What do you think?
[NB: Don’t bother clicking the link under the description quoted above, as it does not apply.]
Looks like a lot of expense and effort for a railway bomb.They were usually just a regular aerial bomb lashed to some axles with small wheels and driven by a starter motor and a couple of batteries. I can’t even find a photo of one so they must not have been very common.
How big is the thing, really? A lot depends on how far away that jeep is. It is difficult to say because it’s not obvious what focal length lens the photographer was using. A wide-angle lens would make objects in the foreground appear larger than normal, while a long-focus lens does the opposite.
It’s hard to guess the gauge of the tracks but they look rather light, such as you might see on a narrow-gauge railway.
Judging by the louvres on the side and what looks like an exhaust port at the lower edge, it is petrol-powered. The hatch presumably gives access for starting etc.
I too think it’s a railway bomb; I can see no provision for a fuse, but it looks as if there’s plenty of room for an effective war-head. I suggest that while it would certainly destroy an ordinary train, it’s an expensive way to do it. I therefore suggest it was aimed at armoured trains. But where?
Armoured trains were used in China in the twenties and early thirties during the Chinese Civil War, notably by warlord Zhang Zongchang, who employed refugee Russians to man them. They were used by both the Chinese and the Japanese in Manchuria, in the Sino Japanese War. I think this thing was intended for Manchuria.
OT, but the same day this thread was posted, I caught sight of Japanese Vickers Crosley model 25 armored cars in The World at War. Absolutely the cutest armored car you’ve ever seen
There were so few railway bombs made I can’t find a photo of one, although I have read a very nice article about them. Picture this cart with a 500 lb bomb lashed to it and a automotive starter motor and a couple of batteries. Nearly zero cost and quick to make. The nice aerodynamic car shown is absolutely not a railway bomb. It would be costly and silly to make one so elaborate for it’s 10 minute life.
They were fraught with peril. Imagine just turning one loose on the rails and hope it doesn’t jump the track or hit a car crossing the tracks. It’s not even certain if any were actually used in combat.
Yeah. I sent this to a friend of mine who I thought might have seen it before or know more. She finally got back to me and among other things her response was the photo seems “almost designed” to be frustrating. According to the writer of the Atlantic article, it comes from the Strategic Bombing Survey. We (…well. Mostly her) went through all 108 reports that were prepared by the Japanese section, and it doesn’t seem to be in there. They took thousands of other photos, though, most of which aren’t online.
A Japanese commenter in the Facebook thread says they don’t think the picture looks like it was taken in Japan. If so—I have no way to evaluate that—maybe that’s more evidence for it coming from Manchuria, or the Philippines, or Truk or something.
Facebook commenters think it’s a Shinkansen prototype or some kind of railway bomb or kamikaze train power car. I’m with mixdenny, though—I’m not aware of any other examples of such a thing, especially for something that seems so narrow gauge, or any reason why you would build one at all instead of just dynamiting the tracks. If it’s even on the tracks in the first place.
My friend conjectures, and I agree, that it’s not obvious that it’s a vehicle at all, instead of just something that looks superficially like one, especially if you prime the audience to say “what is this weird train thing?” In other ways it doesn’t really look like a vehicle—the precisely squared-off back, for instance. But if not, then what?
Keep in mind that the USSBS focused mostly on (naturally) assessing and documenting strategic bombing. They were not just taking pictures of random things that caught their eye. If you really forced me to guess, my guess would be it’s some kind of industrial machinery whose use (processing coke? distillation? filtration?) isn’t obvious to us today. If so, the USSBS photographed it in the course of documenting Japan’s dispersal of their industry in response to US bombing, which is a very common theme in their reports.
A guess with even less confidence would be that it’s not from the home islands. The closest photos that seem similar come from the island-hopping campaigns, where there was more improvisation and more one-off and/or ersatz equipment. This is all assuming it is from the USSBS, and from the Japanese section. The photo is almost designed to frustrate identifying it, from the cropped building roof to the limited vegetation and absence of people. I could convince myself I see a blurry street lamp at the far left of the image.
One last thing… I haven’t looked too hard, but I couldn’t turn up any contemporary reporting or books on strange craft like this. There might have been some interest: one of the minisubs that attacked Pearl was sent on tour, so Americans were familiar with odd Japanese vehicles including the “Baka bomb” you mentioned, and the Strategic Bombing Survey did document Japan’s attempts at jet aircraft and turbine engines. That also puts me in the mindset of thinking that this was something mundane or uninteresting for whomever took and later reviewed the photo.
(Baka bomb was the American pejorative name for the Yokosuka MXY-7 kamikaze rocket. Probably the reason Facebook leans towards the bomb hypothesis as something, hey, the Japanese probably would’ve done)
She also pointed to the Atlantic article Lucas_Jackson linked to as the source of the image. OTOH, a Redditor says they saw the photo “on a TV show, could have been any time in the last 3 decades though, and I don’t remember anything about them.” They never followed up, but I’d guess the photos in the archives must have a little bit more written on them—at least where they were taken?
It wouldn’t be costly or silly if it put an armoured train out of action. Possibly it was stream-lined to:
Make its approach less obvious
To get more speed out of a small engine.
Speed could be crucial because if the armoured train sees a bomb heading towards it it’s going to open up with every machine gun pointing in the right direction.
However, it is a fact that armoured trains often pushed up to three empty freight wagons in front of them to deal with landmines etc, so maybe it would not have been too effective.
A friend of mine suggested it was a storage container for Roman dodecahedrons. Not helpful.
