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.

Comments

Re:These people are missing the point.

[hype7]

Rather than worry about this they should have a big tourist event around it. Figure out what the safe distance is to view this, fence off two big concentric rings around that, and then sell tickets to watch the show. They could even have different bands playing at different quadrants of the circle before the big blow-off. They could get AC/DC in one quadrant and Judas Priest in another. It would be awesome, and they could make money doing a live PPV event.

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

Does 5,035 tons of ammunition beat that?

[CSG_SurferDude]

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.

Re:What are the odds?

[PhillC]

Firstly, I'd just like to mention that I've seen this wreck. I was sailing on the Medway and out into the Thames estuary. At low tide the towers and wheel house of this vessel are clearly visible above the water. While there is a buoy marked exclusion area around the ship you can still get pretty close, which is perhaps a worry.

Anyway, when I got back from my sailing weekend I did a little research on SS Richard Montgomery. The history is that the ship ran aground at neap tide. Troops were busy unloading the ordnance when the ship started breaking up. Further unloading deemed too dangerous. Incidently in later years an oil refinery was built nearby on the Isle of Grain, probably closer than the town Sheerness.

To quote from one of the articles I found in my research -

Of the three and a half thousand tons of explosives left, most contain TNT and are impervious to seawater. It is highly probable that their fuses have long since deteriorated and would therefore need something else to set them off. Unfortunately on the deck above these are approximately one hundred and seventy five tons of fragmentation cluster bombs fully armed and ready to go. These are considered to be the main danger, because if the decking collapses these bombs could fall on top of the others and set the whole thing off.

So it doesn't seem like the fuses are the problem, but the cluster bombs could possibly set off the TNT.