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WWII Allies Tested Tidal Wave Bomb
Bent Udder writes "According to todays' Independent, the US, Britain and New Zealand worked on plans for a bomb that could cause tsunamis during the latter part of the Second World War.
The war ended before the device be put to use, but an Australian professor tested several small versions of the bombs in New Zealand in 1944.
Weird, non? " I have visions of "Deep Impact" running thru my head right now.
See the text: "Water Waves Generated by Underwater Explosions" by LeMehaute and Wang (1996) published by World Scientific. During the period 1950-1990 much theretical and experimental work was conducted regarding tactical uses of nukes to inundate harbors and capsize submarines. The theory and capability to predict with reasonable accuracy the effects of near surface and subsurface explosions is well established (and overviewed in the above cited text). The bottom line is that it is rarely practical because the energy transferred into wave motion decreases very rapidly as the wave propagates outward in all directions from the blast center. The exception might be when the bathymetry is such that the wave front is diffracted toward a convergence point. Steve Hughes, PhD Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory Waterways Experiment Station
Exactly two (2) of the ships sunk that morning did not see action during the war, the Arizona, which remains down, and another whose name I don't recall that was floated but used only for artillery practice.
Two major mistakes by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor:
1) You can't sink big ships in shallow water. They're easy to recover.
2) They *grossly* underestimated our reaction. The point was to keep us *out* of the war by smashing our pacific presence. But it's in our nature that we get *really* steamed about being dragged into things. Only very few of the Japanese comprehended what our reaction would be (such as Yakimoto (sp?) and the "I fear we've awakened a sleeping giant).
I have a hard time seeing either working out well. Underwater nukes make a big ol' cloud of radioactive steam, and even the atol tests back in the 50s barely made a wave large enough to wiggle those battleships around... woe unto the coral or anything in a fragile underwater ecosystem. One o' these would put a serious crimp in the lifestyle of your typical lobster.
Hmmm... Maybe these were some of the guys who took Teller's idea to nuke-to-order a deep water harbour for Alaska completely to heart. ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
A conventional depth chage just vaporizes water, too. But both a nuke and a conventional charge generate pressure waves -- and they're far more efficent at it than explosions in air. Pressure waves against surface and submerged hulls are a Bad Thing(tm).
As an example, a Mk 48 torpedo doesn't kill surface ships by actually hitting them like in WW II submarine movies. Instead, it detonates directly beneath them at a shallow depth. The resulting pressure bubble hoists the ship and breaks its keel.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
By the short 'n' curlies, definitely. How does > 2100 ft depth grab YOU? That's what a titanium-hulled Alfa could do (still can, if there are any left). If you're citing Popular Mechanics as a source on submarine performance data, you may awe some Penguinheads around here, but I remain unimpressed. Tell ya what: Why don't you try a Jane's All the World's Ships annual review and see what it says? (Although to be fair, I bet Jane's doesn't have cool articles on how to wire your house for a home network.)
BTW: Concrete submarines my @$$. That article got laughed to death on sci.military.naval. I know because I posted it there to watch the fun. Steel doesn't have a "crush depth" (more properly, a test depth); submarine hulls do. Submarines, like balloons, tend to compress at greater depths. A concrete hull is less compressible, but that's precisely because it's also less plastic. Would you like to be in one when rapidly changing depths or when getting hammered by a shock wave, even at relatively shallow depths? You bet you wouldn't.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Did I miss something? The 'why' of it seems obvious.
Japan. We were at war, but taking obvious credit for nuking Japan would haunt us after the fact.. It has. If there had been a way to send tactical 'natural' disasters at Japan, we would have jumped on it.
I'd be curious to learn how the gov wanted to cover up the evidence of the detonation though.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
My thoughts on the tidal nukes were that:
Why do it in the first place, if not to make the itdal wave appear natural in origin? If a nuke could create a tidal wave (or it was seen a worthy of study) then it itself would be devastating.
We had no problem dropping the bamb on Hiroshima. But, if we didn't want to be blatant, or wanted to appear able to control/influence the weather.. A tidal wave or earthquake induced by a nuclear weapon would probably be a good way to achieve the goal.
In retrospect, I suppose the 'tell-tale' signs of a nuke were not well known, and difficult to test for - so covering up our handiwork would not have been a high priority.
The whole concept stinks of Lex Luthor.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
First of all, not all the French nuke tests were underground; you may want to ask the residents of certain Polynesian islands about that one.
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Second, France was hardly alone in conducting underground nuke tests. The US and USSR moved to underground testing in the sixties; the decision to end atmospheric tests was one of the first agreements between the two countries. France never signed (claiming they wanted a disarmament treaty).
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/nukes/ctbt/rea
As for testing on fault lines, no, the Kerguelen islands (where the drill-bore tests were conducted) aren't really on fault lines; they're actually well within the Indian plate.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The tide had turned in the Pacific War, and the Japanese were demonstrating that they would fight to the last man to hold any island. The first Kamikaze units were deployed in 1944. The plans were being drawn up for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and everyone expected massive Allied casualties in the process. The Atomic Bomb was a secret project whose outcome was uncertain (the first test would not be until April 1945).
... certainly the "asteroid drop" will be a weapon of choice in any interplanetary wars!
World War II saw unprecedented technological innovation in the means of war; some of these ideas were crazy, some of them were impractical, some of them were unethical.
What is more important to remember is that this was never used. Although a future society may not be so prissy
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I'm not positive that the earth is flat ;-)
Seriously, salt is BAD for crops. If anyone even considers the idea of "Tsunami Irrigation" then I hope for their sake they are simply extremely ignorant. Besides the obvious saftey risk, structural damage and, or course, massive erosion, salt is BAD for most plants. Certainly for crops. A high concentration of salt in the soil around the roots of a plant prevent the root from absorbing water - the low concentrations of salt in the cells would force the water back into the soil to balance salt concentraions.
As for Florida, the "non-military" reason is that the Everglades are one huge Estuary (area where fresh river water and salty seawater are mixed) and most of the state is just a couple feet above sea level.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
And then, one must ask, how would the French use this technology? Well, all the conspiracy theorists out there are glancing at Taiwan ... 35% of the world's silicon. That's as close to a weak link that you can get, now isn't it!
We'll omit, of course, the whole Pacific ring of fire status.
Detonating a Nuke would not have the same effect. A tsunami needs a line of disturbances to become cumulative and reach destructive size. Keep in mind any attempt to use this device would probably kill as many whales as people. The explosive sound would a) jam their prefered communication and navigation frequencies b) sound like that destructive noise used on Star Trek to knock out the crew, c) create a concussion wave that would be all they could sense for quite awhile.
Of course, a string of nuclear detonations would work. But then again, the cumulative affect on sealife.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I had a wrestling coach in college who asked his class who the three participants in a match are.
Three?! There's only two, dangit -- the two wrestlers. But there are three he insist. Ok, I guess, the two wrestlers and the referee? No, the ref is just a scorekeeper.
Finally, we all give up. The answer...the two wrestlers and the MAT. The mat can be friend or foe depending upon which wrestler is smart enough to use it to their advantage.
I've taken that lesson to heart in recent years. In any battle there are three participants, one being the environment in which the battle occurs. Native americans fought invading settlers much more effectively than their numbers because they used the environment to their advantage. The settlers did the same against the English in the Revolutionary war.
These experiments were nothing more than an attempt to turn the sea into a destructive force to use against the Japanese. Nothing really spectacular.
For the people all concerned about giving whales headaches, BWHAHAAAHAAA... Think about it. We were at war. The intent in war is to KILL the enemy (or at least severly wound them so that they are a burden and help demoralize their compatriats (sp?)), so that you don't get killed yourself. If a few whales (hell, a lot of whales) must be sacrificed in that goal, then so be it.
"Let the other guy [and his whale] die for his country." General George F. Patton.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Actually, Dazzle paint was from the first world war, not the second. Here is an example of the Olympic, Titanic's sister, in Dazzle paint. The reason was nothing to do with psyching out the enemy, but to make it hard for the U boats to count the number of ships in a conviy, or identify the the individual ships.
As far as I can tell, it was quite an effective technique in the pre-radar times, both the above picture, and the ones referenced on this page do make it hard to tell how many ships are in the picture. I can certainly imagine that with primative optics through a WW1 periscope it made a difference.
Although my memory's a bit vague on this, I think I remember reading that Barnes-Wallis (inventor of the bouncing bomb) had a not-dissimilar idea that he eventually abandoned in favour of the bouncing bomb.
Among the strangest WWII ideas I've heard of is the iceberg-carrier. (An article on which appeared in a UK paper about 6 months ago) Designed to provide air cover to the Atlantic Convoys it was a chunk of iceberg with a flattened top for use as an airbase (can't remember how it was going to be powered sadly).
The thinking behind it was that it would be almost unsinkable as a couple of torpedos are not going to make much difference to a couple of million tons of ice. Apparently some small prototypes were built by a scientist working in London, but the project never got any further.
A covert Tsunami weapon is useless.
The use, or threat of use, of a weapon of mass destruction is used primarily for its political impact, not its wanton ability to destroy. Observe the United States bringing imperial Japan to its knees with 2 nuclear devices, or India and Pakistan more recently seeking greater respect on the world stage with nuclear testing. The idea of a covert WMD is pointless, even for terrorist organizations, which would require state backing (and a consequent static target for reprisals) for such a large undertaking.
The US, or its allies, would never use one.
The United States (and the West in general), as the current leader atop the world economy and international politics, has the most to lose from the use of an indiscriminate weapon such as a Tsunami-causing weapon, even covertly, as global trade would be curtailed, not to mention the loss of international backing and support if the culprit was known.
Given the alternative of a much less costly set of precision airstrikes, which could achieve the same effect to a given infrastructure in a short period of time, it's easy to see why there's zero interest in the Tsunami weapon currently.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
...during a war in which many, MANY military research projects ranging from the odd (siege engines), the truly bizarre (incendiary-carrying bats), to the occasionally practical (computers, radar, rockets, etc) were conducted.
Presumably the target would have been the Japanese archipelago?
That's gotta take a lot of energy, 'tho, to move that much water. And, if you only want the wave to go one way, say, rather than as an ever-growing circular wall of water...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Sounds 'bout right. I had thought about the possibility of using it against the Imperial Navy's carrier groups, but given the distances versus the speed of the waves it doesn't seem as much of an anti-fleet weapon as anti-coastline. 'sides, that late in the war, IIRC (could easily be wrong 'bout this; dates were never my strong point) the Imperial Navy had already sustained severe losses and forced on the defensive...
I'd suspect WWII Japan had a significant part of its population at near sea-level on exposed coastlines. In addition, it was rather dependent upon its navy and associated facilities... They've also had losses due to tsunamis before, so the exact nature of an artificial tsunami might not have been immediately obvious.
...and in their history, legend has it that a large invasion fleet (don't recall whose; pity) sent against them was swept away by divine intervention through the weather. The "divine wind", or Kamikaze, had the (failed) purpose of keeping away a more modern invasion fleet; yes, were that to turn against them might have caused a shock...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Unfortunatly, with a nuclear device you have power to spare. The explosive power of even a smallish device quickly makes the argument of efficiency moot. Even if 90% of the energy from the explosion was wasted, you still have a HUGE amount going into the water. Assuming 90% loss, a 1M nuke would look like 100,000 tons of conventional explosive with 0% loss. That is far more explosive than could ever be practically placed.
As for the 'wall of water' I mentioned; it was an actual test performed in the early days after WWII. They anchored a few captured Japanese ships and a pair of stipped Allied destroyers off Bikini Atoll, loaded with domestic animals as test subjects. The plane dropping the A-bomb missed its target by a huge margin, and only one of the ships was sunk because of the wave. (Another sank days later because of damage incurred).
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This is not really news. In the 1950's, the US tested both submerged A-bombs and surface detonated H-bombs for efficacy against ships and submarines. If a small A-bomb detonated on the oceans surface can produce a thirty foot wall of water five miles from zero, imagine the devastating effect of a H-bomb several powers of magnitude larger. Thankfully, the experiments in New Zealand appear to have been conducted with conventional munition, and were just a 'proof-of-concept'.
Just an observation: The world would be much safer if all nuclear weapons were required to run Win 95. If they even make it off the pad, they'll bluescreen before the target.
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So a BIG tsunami could be created with just a modest amount of high explosives? And at a distance? The only way this could be done is for that small explosion to be placed at such a spot to create a secondary, much larger shock, which then creates the tsunami wave. Otherwise there is simply not enough energy. Also, the distance is crucial. A shock that creates a 20 m tsunami at 10 km from null will be only (at most) 1 dm high at 1000 km. If you set off the biggest hydrogen bomb there is (100 Mt) some kms below the sea you would get a substantial tsunami out to, say 1000 km, but coasts further away would hardly notice it. Only earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (and impacts) with energies far larger than the biggest nuke (100x - 1000x) produce tsunamis that are devastating across oceans. Of course lesser events, including nukes, can cause much destruction, albeit on a regional scale. There are two types of spots where you could, conceivably, produce substantial tsunamis with non-nukes. 1) Detonate in a submarine fault near the victim, precipitating an earthquake - and tsunami. Pro: Explosion signature may be cloaked by earthquake, avoiding suspicion of agression. Con: Unpredictable, level of stress in fault must be high to begin with. 2) Detonate in submarine scarp to create submarine landslide - and tsunami. Pro: Slopes are already unstable at many places. Con: Unpredictable, explosion signature harder to conceal. To sum it up, tsunamis could possibly be created using non-nuclear methods. They would however have to be effected relatively near the target, and are very unpredictable. /Dervak
Or is it stuff that matters?
Oh, wait, this calls for something new:
Strikehot
News for mercs. Stuff that shatters.
It would be extremely difficult to target such a thing since they are basically created by the equivalent of impulse or point sources and propagate in a circle around the point of origin. Those who think that shape charges could be used to target tsunamis should sit in a bathtub and attempt to target a surface gravity wave by poking their finger or dropping their rubber ducky in the water. You can push a whole lot of water in one direction, but that would be an advective process that would propagate not nearly as far as a wave.
The damage done by tsunamis is due to their kinetic energy being transformed into potential energy when they near land. After generation, they travel at tremendous speeds through the ocean. The speed of propagation is basically SQRT(G*H) where G is the gravitational constant and H the depth of the water, i.e. hundreds of miles an hour in the deep ocean. Their surface signature, on the other hand, is lost in the noise of the other waves on the ocean surface.
When they near land and the seafloor shallows, the hundreds of miles an hour worth of kinetic energy is transformed into a huge wall of water that, while moving much more slowly than before, still packs a hell of a wallop. Another key factor is the general variation of the seafloor topography as it shallows. Refraction and reflection processes can focus energy such that what would be a 5-10 foot wave on a flatly sloping beach could be several times higher. This is basically the same process that makes some beaches much better for surfing since the offshore topography focuses the wave energy.
You could probably use an explosion to effectively generate a tsunami if the situation were just right, i.e. you have a seafloor configuration near your target favorable for refraction processes significantly increasing the size of your generated wave. Otherwise it would take one hell of a huge explosion to impart the same sort of energy you get from a massive seafloor shift or a large bolide impact, and that could end up doing as much damage to you as to your target.
As to the suggestion that additional waves can be generated to cancel out a tsunami, ponder (for just a second, Pinky) how you can cancel out a tsunami that has reached the shore and become a huge wall of water. At that point it's no longer a wave since nonlinear processes have turned turned the tsunami into an advective process. And if you attempt to cancel it out while its still a wave in the deep sea the counter-wave and the original will certainly sum to zero at some point, and then continue on in opposite directions to wreak havoc.
I'd recommend checking out the University of Washington's Tsunami site for further theoretical and historical information. On a side note, many of the foundations of modern oceanography were laid by the research performed by Walter Munk and others during WWII. Most of the work involved wave forecasting such that the wave environment during certain invasions could be predicted sufficiently accurately to avoid overly large surf conditions.
Check out the
A "tidal wave bomb", whether conventional or nuclear, could be used to devastate harbors. Why Harbors ??? Naval vessels, cargo vessels, warehouses, and trans-shipment points to road and rail routes. Often, as a bonus, you also get Petroleum refineries and/or Storage areas (known in the military as POL: Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricants) All your big logistical targets, covieniently placed in one large area. Until the advent of nuclear weapons, you couldn't take out an entire harbor area in one blow. Whereas a Tidal Wave COULD devastate an entire harbor area.
Furthermore, if deployed by submarine, it could even be done covertly: after all, who's to say it wasn't a natural tsumami ??? AND, if used against the Japanese in WWII, could have been used for psychological operations as well: i.e. the ALLIES controlling the "Divine Wind". . .