Cluster Bombs in WWII

Just a weapons thought. What affect would anti-armor or personal cluster bombs have on the Second World War? I think they would have made niftty anti-tank weapons, P-47 armed with them could make short work of the German Panzer columns. On the Axis side, the Germans could use them against Russian human wave attacks.
 

CalBear

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Obviously a CBU with ICM bomblets would be devestating, given that it is to modern armor, but the fact is that it would very much be guilding the lily.

The various Jagerbombers, be they P-38s, P-47s, Typhoons, Tempests or the Soviet IL-2 (not technically called a Jager, but...) could open up the top of any WW II tank like a can opener & napalm served much the same role as a CBU does today.

Dead is dead.
 
Thanks for the info, never heard of the butterfly bomb before.

There were so many dropped over London that when I was a kid we used to wander over the acres of bomb sites collecting any bits of debris we could find. The metal leaves of the "butterfly bombs" were a common find.
 
The USAAF also had a incindinary cluster bomb, first used on the Doolittle Raid (18 Apr 1942), and often used in Europe and in the B-29 campaign against Japanese cities.
 
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