Gravity Bomb

inertial deployment of ball-bombs. 

At the maximum achievable velocity (given the available time of acceleration) a small squadron of budget-class heavy bombers will attempt to deploy ordinance onto a technologically sophisticated capital ship. This attack run would never normally have a chance of success.

The bombers were built by a poverty stricken planetary republic during a civil war to be used against pirate rebels intent on destroying the republic and instituting a despotist style anarchy for the purpose of housing a galactic trafficking organization. Both sides of the war were fighting with tools far below the technology available to most stable governmental and trade organizations due to the remote nature of the planet, and the bombers would prove to be effective for several last-ditch offensives on militant junkyard fleets, but after the war ended up filling junkyard fleets as they were so unlikely to work in any setting where combat was waged with mainstream weapons. 

The bombs are balls. They are housed in rails in large cargo holds "below" the crew deck. In order to deploy the bombs, the doors are opened, the gates at the end of the rails are opened, and the ship gently vectors "up". The balls are now loose, and so the vector change does not transfer to the balls, and they gently roll off the rails and out of the bottom of the ship, forming a spread that correlates to the rate of vector change. A ship roll will see the balls deploy in a portion of a ring shape, or if the roll is completed before all of the bombs are deployed, a complete ring shape, and the more rapid the rolling motion, the greater the spread of the bombs. A vector change up will see the bombs move mostly in a straight line along the original vector, with a gradual spread depending on the rate of vector change. A change in vector along a lateral axis while accompanied by an upward vertical change will result in a spread at this angle. Depending on the range to target and the intended tactical requirement for the deployment, a tighter or wider spread can be achieved. 

The bombers must first move at an orbital velocity that allows them to be hidden from sensor range behind the planet until the attack is commenced, and then are able to accelerate at maximum burn from the first moment of possible detection until the deployment zone. The target ship is enormous and heavily armored, so only a very tight bomb deployment will see enough ordinance on target to destroy it. The strategy is to use multiple bombers in a tight formation to ensure that enough ordinance from the spread overlap reaches the target. 

During the attack run, however, all but one of the bombers were destroyed in an accident that occurs during the battle where a ship crashed into one of the bombers just after the bombs are armed, but just before they are deployed. Somehow, the final remaining bomber's pilot had died before the bombing sequence was initiated, meaning the ship did not begin a vector change (and was therefore no longer in tight formation with the other bombers), the doors had not opened, and the bombs were not yet armed. The ships gunner was able to open the bay doors, reach the cockpit to initiate the vector change, and then finally to deploy the bombs, and by stroke of impossible luck all of this happens with enough delay that the entire compliment of bombs was able to be deployed exactly onto target, which was the only possible way to destroy the capital ship with a single bomber. The ships late vector change, however, meant that it wass impossible to escape the blast of the detonating bombs and capital ship, and the very last crewmember of the bomber squadron was killed knowing that she was the last one to remain alive until that point, but also knowing that the capital ship had been destroyed. 

Some notes: 
-the velocity achieved during the attack run would mean that only one pass would be possible. The amount of time that would be required to burn back into an intercept orbit, and then back onto an attack vector would be enough time for the capital ships fleet to form up into an effective defensive posture which would see them able to easily destroy the entire attack squadron at long range. Only the element of surprise and the minimal time from detection to bomb deployment would offer a nearly guaranteed victory. 
-under normal circumstances, the attack run should have a nearly 100% chance of success. It was not known that such bombers existed in operable use, and no strategic planners could have expected their use. The capital ship fleet was not in a strategic posture for intercepting an attack, as the strategic objective was shock and awe. It was expected that there would be an engagement, but the existence of such basic heavy bombers able to carry such ordinance in such a rudimentary package was not known. The bomber squadron knew of this advantage, and expected to survive. Although losses are always a risk, it was expected that the attack run would go off in such short time as to be a single rapid pass and deployment with virtually no incoming fire. Only the freak accident of a ship crashing into the bombs just after they had been armed could have caused the detonation of the bombs while still in the bombers. Only by impossible luck had one of the pilots died before the bombing sequence had been initiated, meaning that this one bomber had not begun changing vector, and was no longer in close formation with the other bombers, and so was not destroyed in the blast which destroyed the rest of them.