Bombs, the type used in classic cartoons and strips

[beebs]

What the heck are those things? The ball-shaped lead-colored thingies with the bold sized wick on one end.

Ah, here's a good example:

They seem like an enormous liability since every time I've seen one used on The Tom and Jerry show the bombs always end up blowing up on that silly cat.

Are they a creation of fiction? Or did these steel balls loaded with gun powder and a short fuse ever used in practical warfare?

[Baldwin]

Are they a creation of fiction?

No.

Or did these steel balls loaded with gun powder and a short fuse ever used in practical warfare?

Yes. It looks like a 19th century mortar shell. You could either light the fuse before putting the shell in the mortar and firing, or rely on the mortar's ignition to light the fuse.

And I guess you could just light the fuse and throw the shell, although they're heavy. Or, if you're in a cartoon, you could write "First Prize!" on the shell, hand it to your opponent, and count on him to gush over it until it explodes. (Note that in a cartoon, having a bomb go off in your face isn't necessarily fatal or permanently scarring.)

ETA: Don't ask me why there's a small parabolic antenna on the bundle of dynamite.

[puppygod]

Not steel. Cast iron balls filled with black powder. Yes, they were real ordnance, something from XVII - XIX century warfare. Could be used either as a hand grenade (lit the fuse, throw at enemy, preferably stay hidden in your fortifications), although proportionately smaller than their stylized comic counterpart - if they were bowling - ball sized ,they would be too heavy to throw them at any meaningful distance. Or - in a slightly modified variant - as an artillery munition. Not as effective as modern weapons, but still better than throwing stones.

[Baldwin]

A good recent cinematic depiction is in The Alamo (2004). (An underrated movie, I think.) A Mexican mortar shell (well, probably made in Spain) drops into the compound, and Travis, outwardly calm because he wants to buck up morale, picks it up and pulls out the burning fuse with his knife before it goes off.

[Scumpup]

The hand-thrown variety were sometimes also made out of glass or other non-metallic materials. Pirates apparently used them when they weren't busy sodomizing.

[krisolov]

This style of bomb is also often referred to as an Anarchist Bomb.

I am not sure why, although I would agree that it really took its shape from old style mortar bombs and grenades.

[Truth and Beauty]

on a related topic - what were cannonballs filled with?

[Scumpup]

Depends on what their purpose was. Solid shot was used for battering down fortifications or punching holes in ships. Explosive shot was constructed much like the bombs and mortar shells under discussion here. There were also oddities like chain shot, but they were much less common that solid and explosive.

[OneCentStamp]

on a related topic - what were cannonballs filled with?

If you're talking about explosive shells, then through the end of the 19th century, they were filled with the same black powder that was used as a propellant. By the turn of the 20th Century, after a few short-lived experimentations with things like guncotton and lyddite, TNT (much more powerful, much less prone to accidental detonation) had been introduced into artillery shells. These days they use some kind of sophisticated high explosive, I think RDX, but I confess my real interest in military ordnance stops around the end of the U.S. Civil War.

[Truth and Beauty]

So filling a cannonball with black powder was enough to make it explode on arrival? Didn't you need a separate fuse or something to make the powder explode?

[OneCentStamp]

So filling a cannonball with black powder was enough to make it explode on arrival? Didn't you need a separate fuse or something to make the powder explode?

They had lit fuses, similar to the stereotypical cartoon cannonball. The goal, and the craft, was cutting and timing the fuse such that the shell would detonate over the enemy, rather than hitting the ground and then going off (or not going off, as would often happen if the shell hit the ground unexploded).

[krisolov]

yep, they used time fuse. Burns at a known rate of time once lit. Of course it wasn't that uniform back then; lighting a sample to check the burn time was often a very good idea and led to a longer career in artillery.

[chacoguy]

yep, they used time fuse. Burns at a known rate of time once lit. Of course it wasn't that uniform back then; lighting a sample to check the burn time was often a very good idea and led to a longer career in artillery.

So would a quick prayer to their patron saint-Santa Barbara.

[tunaman]

on a related topic - what were cannonballs filled with?

And then there was canister shot, which was a thin metal canister filled with musket balls and sawdust. It effectively turned cannon into giant fucking shotguns.

[krisolov]

canister is still used today in tanks as a round with a lot of uses in modern warfare.