Another Armament Laboratory program was coded LAZY DOG, which involved Delco Products Corporation, F&F Mold and Die Works, Inc., Haines Designed Products, and Master Vibrator Company of Dayton. The project objective was to design and test free-fall missiles and their dispensing units for use in bombers and fighters. LAZY DOG anti-personnel missiles were designed to spray enemy troops with small projectiles with three times the force of standard air-burst bombs. The Armament Laboratory in conjunction with the Flight Test Laboratory conducted wind tunnel tests of a number of bomb shapes, which design studies indicated to be the most efficient for stowage and release from high performance aircraft.
LAZY DOG projectiles of various shapes and sizes were tested at Air Proving Ground, Eglin AFB, Florida, in late 1951 and early 1952. An F-84, flying at 400 knots and 75 feet above the ground, served as the test bed while a jeep and a B-24 were the targets. The result was eight hits per square yard. Tests revealed Shapes 2 and 5 to be the most effective. Shape 5, an improved basic LAZY DOG slug, had the force of a .50 caliber bullet and could penetrate 24 inches of packed sand. Shape 2 could penetrate 12 inches of sand, as opposed to the six-inch penetration of a .45 caliber slug fired point blank.
The Shape 2 projectile was sent to FEAF for combat use by mid-1952. FEAF immediately ordered 16,000 of the 500-pound bombs. Lieutenant Colonel Haile with the Armament Laboratory spent 90 days in Japan to set up local manufacture of the bombs and to train crewmembers in their use. Project LAZY DOG continued throughout 1952 to determine the optimum characteristics for stable dispersion containers and the feasibility of substituting a LAZY DOG warhead for the explosive nose of the Matador. The LAZY DOG program was still ongoing in the late 1950s.35
