High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A bouncing bomb is a bomb designed specifically to bounce to a target such as across water to avoid torpedo nets. Unlike skip bombing, which uses conventional bombs as during the March 1943 Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the British, Germans, and Soviets developed World War II bombs specifically for bouncing to targets and then exploding. The inventor of this technique was the British engineer Barnes Wallis. His Upkeep bouncing bomb was used in the May 1943 British Operation Chastise to bounce into dams and explode underwater with similar effect to the underground detonation of the earth quake bomb, which he also invented. Wallis may have known about Mehmed II and his blockade of the Bosporus Straits in 1451, preparatory to besieging Constantinople. Mehmed II constructed the fortress Rumelihisar and positioned cannon just above sea-level. Fired cannonballs skipped across the water at keel level and crashed into ships running the blockade.