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Naval History Quiz

Novascotian said:
In the pre-Atomic era, what 325,000 ton ship was blown 1,000 feet into the air and was partially atomized?
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When you say ship are you referring to the noun described in the Merriam Webster dictionary et al? Are you saying 325,000 gross tonnage, which is dimensionless, or weight? (I thought the largest ship about 1945 was around 90,000 GT) Are you referring to pre-Atomic BOMB explosions (1945)? Are you talking about international feet, survey feet or something else? When you say air, do you mean up into the atmosphere from the ground? When you say partially atomized what percentage? When you say atomized do you mean broken into mist size particles, individual atoms, or parts of an atom including neutrons, electrons and protons? The term is often used just referring to tiny particles not atomic sizes.
Allan
 
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fourseas said:
Was it the French vessel Mont-Blanc which collided with the Belgian Relief ship causing the great Halifax explosion on December 6, 1917? The Mont-Blanc was loaded with 2.9 kilotons of explosives destined for WW1 in Europe.
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fourseas said:
Was it the French vessel Mont-Blanc which collided with the Belgian Relief ship causing the great Halifax explosion on December 6, 1917? The Mont-Blanc was loaded with 2.9 kilotons of explosives destined for WW1 in Europe.
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fourseas said:
Was it the French vessel Mont-Blanc which collided with the Belgian Relief ship causing the great Halifax explosion on December 6, 1917? The Mont-Blanc was loaded with 2.9 kilotons of explosives destined for WW1 in Europe.
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You are correct......her anchor was found three miles inland and one of her guns 2.5 miles away!
Sorry! 325tons, Yes, Altitude, From the surface, not ascertainable.
 
fourseas said:
Anyone interested in a truly remarkable and tragic story about the Halifax explosion can do a web search for it. There is a fascinating documentary about this event.\
Jim
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A very well written book on the Halifax Explosion is "The Curse of the Narrows". By the way, Halifax had another big munitions explosion, but inland, at the end of WW II.
 
Novascotian said:
A very well written book on the Halifax Explosion is "The Curse of the Narrows". By the way, Escape Road, Halifax had another big munitions explosion, but inland, at the end of WW II.
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Yeah, you’re right, the lesser-known Bedford Magazine Explosion is often overlooked, even though it was also significant. It’s interesting how one event became globally known while the other remains more obscure despite occurring in the same region.
 
The Port Chicago (California) explosion obliterated a Liberty ship being loaded with depth charges and tore a nearby Navy Ammunition ship into three pieces. Over 200 men, mostly African American troops working as stevedores were killed and over 200 injured.

I don’t know enough about the Halifax explosion to know if this was worse but both were certainly very bad.

Roger
 
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This is part of my family lore. This occrred in July 1944. I was born in Port Chicago the following November. My grandparents raised 8 kids in town and some of my aunts, uncles and cousins lived in town at the time of the explosion. After the war, my parents built a new home next to my grandparents house. Sometime in the early '50s, the navy bought out the and flattened it.
 
During operation ten-go the explosion of Yamatos magazine caused a significant explosion as well. However, there is no recorded information about how many kilotons it was. But it sent a plume of flame over 2,000 meters high and a mushroom cloud to over 6,000 meters. The blast could be heard moe than 124 miles away on the mainland of Japan. More than 2,500 men were killed, but some of them before the final blast. Several attacking American planes were also obliterated in the shock wave of the blast.

Of course, this explosion was no accident. But it also happened as a result of one of the world wars.

Probably not as spectacular as the blast in Nova Scotia, since it was kind of expected. But a spectacular blast that might compete if the TNT equivalent of the blast was known.
 
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