On the 26th of August 1995, I was driving to UNPROFOR HQ, when the Serbs attacked Sarajevo with a weapon I had never heard or seen before – “pig bombs”.
Pig bombs were improvised airstrikes, made with aircraft bombs and rockets, but launched from a truck up on the hills. The precision of those bombs was practically zero, but they were a tremendous psychological operations (PSYOPS) warfare tool.
There were two types of pig bombs; the ones that were built from a 160 liters fuel drum, and the ones that were made using aircraft deliverable weapons.
In the case of the fuel drums, the Serbs used to a cylindrical container with fuel and added a chemical product to turn the liquid into an inflammable gelatin. The VRS soldiers would bring the drum to the mountain edge above Sarajevo, light it on fire, and release the drum downhill. As the drums were bumping into stones or dwellings, they would open cracks and pulverize the burning gelatin fuel, like a “napalm” bomb, setting everything on fire. That was the concept; but it was seldom used and it rarely worked as planned.
The pig bombs made out of aircraft striking weapons were more spectacular and feared. They were basically constituted by one aircraft bomb, attached to four rockets which, after ignited, would provide the initial takeoff booster propulsion. After that initial push, gravity would take over and the bomb would dive straight into Sarajevo. The locals called it “Krme”, and there were two types of them: krme 1 a lighter version and krme 2 a heavier version. Allegedly, the sound that each “krme” would make was different, and Sarajevo people knew how to distinguish each version.
The VRS had a considerable arsenal of air bombs and aircraft rockets, which they couldn’t use due to the No Fly Zone restrictions. Therefore, they solve the problem of not having an aircraft, by constructing launching platforms over military trucks, capable of launching a bomb with the help of four rockets. The truck would go up, to the top of a hill facing Sarajevo, and fire the bomb over the City.
The heavier version – krme 2 – would use a 250 kilogram bomb and four larger rockets. It would fly upwards only for some dozens of meters, but that would be enough to do a parabolic pattern diving into the town, spreading panic among the targeted population.
Pig bombs were a PSYOPS terror, but they did little harm. Some of they didn’t even explode and others exploded right after ignition of the rockets.
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