Xi Gua Pao (西瓜砲, lit. 'Watermelon bomb')
 |
| Drawing of a Xi Gua Pao and its contains, from 'Wu Bei Zhi (《武備志》)'. |
Also known as
Pi Pao (皮砲, lit. 'leather bomb', although ironically it isn't usually made of leather), is a type of caltrop bomb that is designed for siege defence. The bomb has a round outer shell that is pasted together from forty layers of paper on the outside, and another two layers of linen cloth on the inside. It contains one to two hundred iron
caltrops as well as fifty to sixty barbed
Huo Shu (火鼠), and comes with four separate fuses, twisted together and protected by a bamboo tube, to prevent the enemy from defusing the bomb before it explodes.
Xi Gua Pao is usually dropped directly onto unsuspecting enemies from atop a wall, where it will explode into a shower of flame, caltrops and erratically-moving Huo Shu. The barbed Huo Shu hook and set fire on enemy clothes, causing the panicked victims to become more likely to step on the caltrops.
A type of signal grenade used by
Jian Ye (尖夜) that produces only sound also goes by the same name.
Zhi Hu Yuan Pao (紙糊圓砲, lit. 'Paper-pasted round bomb')
 |
| Drawing of a Zhi Hu Yuan Pao, from 'Wu Bei Zhi (《武備志》)'. |
Zhi Hu Yuan Pao is essentially a smaller, hand grenade version of Xi Gua Pao modified from the signal bomb. Due to its small size, it only carries twenty to thirty caltrops and ten to twenty Huo Shu. Unlike its larger cousin, the fuses of Zhi Hu Yuan Pao are not twisted together.
So the Ming Chinese basically had primitive cluster/shrapnel bombs? Are their any records of their actual combat effectiveness? If they were actually effective in combat, is their any contemporary European equivalent?
ReplyDeleteThe weapon was pretty ubiquitous so specific instance of its use in battle wasn't recorded. That being said there's at least one description from European observer in China at the time.
Delete"They (the Chinese) make great use of incendiary bombs of gunpowder, particularly on board ship, and they put inside them many iron crowfeet (i.e. caltrops), in sort that nobody can walk thereon. They also use fire-arrows wherewith to burn the ship's timbers; also large numbers of great javelins with iron barbs on long shafts, as also broad-swords of half a fathom for boarding."
— Friar Martín de Rada
As for European equivalent, Leonardo Da Vinci did design a mortar that shoots fragmentation bomb, but I am not aware of a version that specifically explodes into caltrops.