FAB-5000

The bomb was designed by Soviet chemical engineer (1903-1989) in 1942. Gelperin planned and built bombs with thin metal casings, in order to reduce the use of cast iron and aluminium. In Gelperin's developments, the metal casings represented only 35 percent of the bomb's weight. In order to load the device, the bomber's bay doors had to remain half-open. The tests, however, were successful. By the end of the war, 98 FAB-5000s had been delivered to the Soviet Air Forces, all of them produced in 1943. ==Operational use==

The first combat use of the FAB-5000 took place on the night of 28 April 1943, when coastal fortifications at Königsberg were hit. apparently on 26 May 1943. On 7 February 1944, another two FAB-5000 bombs were dropped on Helsinki, in the course of the 1944 Great Raids. A couple of days later, two more bombs fell on Finland's capital. The last FAB-5000 was dropped on the railway station of Brailiv, Ukraine, on 9 March 1944, during the Soviet offensive on the Kamenets–Podolsky pocket, halting all railroad traffic for several days. == In popular culture ==

• In the 2012 video game War Thunder, the FAB-5000 is included as a payload option for the Pe-8 bomber. It gained a large amount of infamy and notoriety in the community for being the largest-yield bomb in the game, until it was outclassed by the British 12,000 lbs Blockbuster bomb available on Avro Lancaster and Lincoln. == See also ==