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British Town Worried About WWII Ammo Ship Wreck
Radical Rad writes "For 60 years, 1.4 kilotons of unstable world war II bombs have lain in the rusting wreck of a US cargo ship half-submerged on a sandbank in the river Thames. If it explodes it will be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud, water, and metal fragments causing devastation to the nearby town of Sheerness in Kent." The BBC has more.
After all this time that something is going to happen? Would some of the explosives now be inert?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Who allowed this to happen? I mean, okay, the ship sank there, but why wasn't it cleaned up along with the millions of tons of other war junk from WWII that was disposed of?
This is a perfect example of the insurance dictum that 'claims do not go away'. You need to settle them (ie, fix the problem).
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
From the article, they worried about more on building/windows getting damaged, not injury. Could they take some time and figure out how to control an explosion to help get rid of the danger?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
#text#
In 1970, government tests on the site showed a
blast would hurl a 1,000ft wide column of water,
mud, metal and munitions almost 10,000ft into
the air.
The shock of the blast would shatter almost
every window in Sheerness and damage buildings.
The explosion would also generate a 16ft high
wave that could sink a small craft.
#/text#
where did poster get the "with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud"????
Funny you should mention that, because it's exactly what they did in Canberra when the Government decided to implode the old Canberra Hospital. They touted it as a big tourist event... you know, come out and see us blow shit up.
Something went wrong. I think some twit decided to put some barrels of diesel in there for a bigger spectacle. Maybe someone else got the calculations wrong, but debris rained down on the crowd, some of it very big. Unbelievably, only one person was killed - which is a tragedy, but it had the potential to be a lot more.
-- james
Shameless lifted from Some random page about the Port of Chicago explosion.
On the evening of 17 July 1944, the empty merchant ship SS Quinault Victory was prepared for loading on her maiden voyage. The SS E.A. Bryan, another merchant ship, had just returned from her first voyage and was loading across the platform from Quinault Victory. The holds were packed with high explosive and incendiary bombs, depth charges, and ammunition - 4,606 tons of ammunition in all. There were sixteen rail cars on the pier with another 429 tons. Working in the area were 320 cargo handlers, crewmen and sailors.
At 10:18 p.m., a hollow ring and the sound of splintering wood erupted from the pier, followed by an explosion that ripped apart the night sky. Witnesses said that a brilliant white flash shot into the air, accompanied by a loud, sharp report. A column of smoke billowed from the pier, and fire glowed orange and yellow. Flashing like fireworks, smaller explosions went off in the cloud as it rose. Within six seconds, a deeper explosion erupted as the contents of the E.A. Bryan detonated in one massive explosion. The seismic shock wave was felt as far away as Boulder City, Nevada. The E.A. Bryan and the structures around the pier were completely disintegrated. A pillar of fire and smoke stretched over two miles into the sky above Port Chicago. The largest remaining pieces of the 7,200-ton ship were the size of a suitcase. A plane flying at 9,000 feet reported seeing chunks of white hot metal "as big as a house" flying past. The shattered Quinault Victory was spun into the air. Witnesses reported seeing a 200-foot column on which rode the bow of the ship, its mast still attached. Its remains crashed back into the bay 500 feet away.
All 320 men on duty that night were killed instantly. The blast smashed buildings and rail cars near the pier and damaged every building in Port Chicago. People on the base and in town were sent flying or were sprayed with splinters of glass and other debris. The air filled with the sharp cracks and dull thuds of smouldering metal and unexploded shells as they showered back to earth as far as two miles away. The blast caused damage 48 miles across the Bay in San Francisco.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
I recommend freezing the ship, and then moving it.
However, in France, the incidence of UXO is sufficiently high that local farmers plow up "items" on a regular basis. If they are small enough to be moved by an individual, they are taken out by hand and put in drop boxes by the road for ordnance techs to deal with. That's how common they are- farmers turned ordnance technicians.
While working on a test program with some British ordnance people, a story was related to me regarding buried UXO from WWII. Pipes were filled with nitroglycerin (NG), and buried perpendicular to landing strips in the UK. The idea was that they could be detonated in the event of invasion, rendering the landing strips useless. They were forgotten after WWII, and during construction some decades later, were re-discovered when a pipe containing NG was struck with a backhoe; I believe it killed the operator.
Making things worse during the remediation effort was that apartments had been built over part of the old runway. The Brits paid to bus the residents to the beach each day, and then bring them back in the afternoon after work for the day had halted. Evidently, they became quite cross when the work was finished a day early and everyone lined up for the buses, and the buses didn't come that day.
Anyway- the only thing worse than UXO is unexploded, toxic ordnance. Chemical warfare just hasn't been the same since the Chinese invented burning pepper upwind of the enemy, I'll tell ya.
Approaching insane levels of bad taste, a new condo development which overlooks the area is called "Mont Blanc":
http://www.livingatmontblanc.com/
I don't suppose Hiroshima is planning an Enola Gay Heights set of condos to match?
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
scroll down to lost nukes... many in the USA
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
It seems to me it would be good thing to develop a nano or microbial solution (don't they have mushrooms that eat High Explosives or was that diesel?).
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
In the US in 197x (no, I don't remember exactly) a munitions train loaded with bombs destined for Vietnam exploded in the railyard (in Roseville, CA). Bombs went off for hours, devastating the surrounding areas. I was a young kid in the area at the time. All I remember was, "Mommy, is that thunder?" Followed by "Get in the house!"
:).
Anyway. That's not the best part. A few years ago they were doing some construction in the area when a backhoe hit something... something metal.
Oops.
Well, they called out the bomb squad, who said 'fsck it!' and called the military, who decided to blow the thing in place. Many windows in the area gave their lives.
After that they used ground penetrating radar in the area and declared the area "cleared".
End of story? Nope.
A week later "tink"... a backhoe hit something... something metal. It seems that, and this is just priceless, when they did the ground penetrating radar passes, they only went for POSITIVE matches, i.e.: it had to look like a bomb on radar. Well, come on, the area is littered with shrapnel and train debris even 30 years later.
After much flogging, they did more radar and found not 1... not 2... but EIGHT 250-lbs bombs in the immediate area.
Anyway, I hear houses in the area can be had cheap
While building on an old piece of Poole (Dorset, England) harbour they found a load of phosphorour barrels from WWII. Not sure if they were for grenades or flares, but storing Phosphorous next to the shore? Great idea!
Savannah Warhead
Perhaps that's part of why the US _isn't_ one of the 152 countries that have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty...
No. The reason is that the US uses landmines to defend the border between North Korea and South Korea. Its easy for those 152 countries to claim that landmines are unecessary when they don't have 30,000 men and women standing in the way of 1,000,000 mental communists.
In Soviet Army huge amounts of TNT were used to emulate nuclear explosion. Eyewitness of one such explosion told me that they exploded entire cargo train of TNT. It was cheaper and less dangerous than atomic bomb, but very realistic.
There are still severalcitier in Germany that have to be evacuated entirely or in parts every few months because soem construction worker found some 250kg or 500kg bomb again. That's just part of life and a small note int tha traffic radio.
now having a 1400t bomb in the middle of Berlin, that would be something. But actually we had that around 60 years ago in several German towns, sort of, so no big news either.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
A huge cache of munitions originally intended to be used as a giant army-stopping mine that had been left undisturbed since WW2 recently detonated without human intervention in France. Thankfully there were no witnesses particularly close at the time (Though this could only be determined by going door to door asking "Anyone missing?".
Just because it hasn't gone boom _yet_ doesn't mean that it's not going to tomorrow.
On the other hand, I really, really, really want to see a 3km tall wall of mud. (From a safe height and distance obviously.)
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Only drawback I can think of is the inevitable construction vibrations may be enough to set the bombs off. That and getting rid of the caisson after the bombs were set off.
The idea's based on the old railroad dynamite cars. They were made with heavily reinforced floors and walls but the ceilings had just enough tin to keep the rain out. If the load blew, the blast took the path of least resistance and blew the tin roof sky high leaving the rest of the car intact.
Althought the BBC article just stipulates 'TNT' as the explosive compound, if the bombs were for use by British forces, the chances are they would be Amatol.
Amatol is an increased yield mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate which can range from an 80/20 to a 50/50 mix.
In its manufactured for it is supposedly relatively stable but severe impact can be a trigger.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
From my following of the coronial inquiry into the blast:
The contractor found that the structural columns were not as described on the blueprints, but in fact contained a lot more steel. The cuting charges required for this type of steel were not available in the country and would need to be specially imported (you can't just stick HE on a ship or airplane). Since the contractor was working to a contract that included fairly strong late penalties, he improvised something that was quite a bit faster than the proper cutting charges. Unfortunately the sandbags that were placed around the charges did not prevent large chunks of shrapnel from being launched. A young girl (12 or so) was struck by a piece and killed.
I went to watch the blast, but from a much longer distance than most other folk (and I made sure there was a large hill between me and the base of the hospital). I was surprised at how close people were, and I was also surprised that more people were not injured.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I guess everyone here in the US has forgotten about the 2 "lost" nuclear bombs that are "somewhere" lost in the mud in a marsh off the coast of savanna georgia!?!?!?!?!i n615978.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/tech/ma
It's better to be hated for who you are, than be loved for who you're not.
The Baker Shot which was 20 kilotons only produced a "wall" of water about 60 meters high at ground zero.
This is a really stupid, and over exaggerated article.
TNT 226,797 kg
... 544 Tons
e .p hp?p9
t ml
Wet picric acid 1,602,519 kg
Dry picric acid 544,311 kg
Guncotton[?] 56,301 kg
Benzol 223,188 kg
Since 1000 KG is about 1 ton
TNT 226 Tons
Wet Picric Acid 1602 Tons
Dry
Guncotton (nitrate of cellulose) 56 Tons
Benzol 223 Tons
Or 2651 Tons of explosives, very approx.
Of course TNT is not as powerful then the others listed but it was one hell of a blast. They did a survey of the harbour that proved that the long standing story that a crater existed in the harbour was not true.
http://gsca.nrcan.gc.ca/pubprod/of3154/showimg_
Other Links
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mma/AtoZ/halexpl.h
Well not to brag but a quick web search tells me that Alaska is 586,400 square miles and my state of Queensland in Australia is 666,800 square miles.
;-)
No winner here as Queensland is only the second largest state in Australia, the biggest is Western Australia.
Todays geography lesson has been brought to you by the letters O & Z
Searching Google Images, I found this photo of the wreck:
e ry.html
http://www.gnometech.freeserve.co.uk/html/montgom
Not the greatest in quality (taken in 1990), but still, it's nice to see. The BBC article should have included a photo of it. Grrr!