Leaflet bombs

[zengrifter]

I'm Covered in Leaflets!
The secrets of airborne propaganda distribution.

By Daniel Engber
Posted Tuesday, July 18, 2006, SLATE

Israeli warplanes have dropped thousands of pink and yellow propaganda leaflets into Lebanon over the past week. Anyone who offers aid to Hezbollah, one of the flyers says, "is putting his life in danger." How do you drop leaflets from an airplane?

With a leaflet bomb. Capt. James Monroe invented the American propaganda bomb during World War II. Thousands of pieces of paper were stuffed into a laminated paper cylinder with a detonator and a delay, and then loaded into a B-17. The "Monroe bomb" exploded on the way down, sprinkling leaflets over enemy territory from a low altitude. The Air Force quickly developed more advanced versions of the same idea. For many years, their standard leaflet bomb was the M129, a fiberglass case that holds up to 80,000 flyers.

...continued here - http://www.slate.com/id/2145997/?nav=tap3