alternatehistory.com

Earthquake bombs were one of the inventions of Barnes Wallis, who sought to design ordnance that would only explode after penetrating some distance into the ground--the resulting explosion would create shockwaves similar in effect to a limited earthquake.

The main hurdle was that in order to reach an effective penetration speed, such bombs had to be dropped from an altitude that available heavy bombers were unable to reach:

Wallis' first concept was for a ten-ton bomb that would explode some 130 feet (40 m) underground. To achieve this, the bomb would have had to be dropped from 40,000 feet (12 km). The RAF had no aircraft at the time capable of carrying a ten-ton bomb load aloft, let alone lifting it to such a height. Wallis designed a six-engine aeroplane for the task, called the "Victory Bomber", but he was not taken seriously by the military hierarchy of the day.
So what I'm wondering is whether an alternate solution might have been to drop them from a lower altitude but to boost their speed with rockets, allowing them to hit the ground with the requisite velocity.

Would it have been feasible with mid-WW2 technology? Does the idea even make sense?
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