Bombing raids during WWII sent out shockwaves powerful enough to alter the Earth's ionosphere The volume of bombs dropped by the Allied Forces in the Second World War were powerful enough to send shockwaves that rippled throughout the skies, weakening the Earth’s ionosphere. Earth’s ionosphere extends about 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles) above its surface and is made up of a shell of ions and electrons that reflect …
At least it wasn't captioned "jets"
That reminds me of a story in the "Metro" (a free rag distributed on weekdays in Tube and London-bound stations) in about 2007. The story was about a German pilot whose aircraft had been shot down in 1942 and had damaged a church tower or something somewhere in East Anglia, and his subsequent visit there in the days before the story was printed. They attributed this shoot-down to "British jets."
According to Wiki, the RAF dropped nearly a million tons of bombs during WW2. The americans "contributing" a further 600kT.
Another source puts the total WW2 amount, dropped everywhere. at well over 3 million tons.
But it doesn't end there! If the researchers wanted to investigate more instances they could look at Vietnam. During operation Rolling Thunder the americans dropped 864,000 tons on the north.
Amounts so huge, that I simply can't process them.
3 million tons being approximately 1/17 the yield of the Soviet Tsar Bomba, as tested in 1961, at 50% of selectable yield.
Think on that; six years of industrial warfare on a global scale, including the first three fission bombs, being a tiny fraction of the yield of a single weapon 20 years later
EMP, ionospheric disruption, fallout, comms disruption, Van Allen detonated a nuke in what was the soon to be discovered Van Allen Belt and disrupted HF comms in the Pacific for days. Get a copy of "Nukes In Space: The Rainbow Bombs Movie" (edit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ2B8vrqdFw on Youcat. The special effects in Damnation Alley were remarkably close istr - not the giant scorpions but the atmospheric ones!
El Reg has touched upon this before too: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/18/atmospheric_nuclear_weapons_tests_caused_space_weather/
A nuke detonation is at the atomic level (it's a geometric space time device with the elements fissioning, fusing or both to create mindboggling amounts of energy) whilst TNT, Torpex, C4, ANFO, what have you just creates huge amounts of gas very quickly in its bang.
In an old Top Gear (?) Richard Hammond fried a VW Golf's electronics under that old lightning generator that the CEGB used to run.
The name of the Van Allen exoatmospheric nuke test was Starfish Prime fortunately all the equipment at the time was still mostly valve (vacuum tube) else Hawaii would have had all of its electronics fried if Uncle Sam tried a stunt like that today. An airburst high over the North Sea would hose electronics in the UK and a big chunk of Europe.
High energy physics is a fascinating subject especially the effort in getting more bang for your pound.... the Tsar Bomba had more explosive power than all the high explosive used in WW2.
Damnation Alley is also available on the grumpy cat channel. Complete with gigantic scorps.
It shouldn't have the same level of effect.
With an explosion, you set the entire lot off at once, and there is a huge bang and a shockwave. Individually, the largest weapons dropped apparently caused damage to the aircraft dropping these weapons, which would have been >25,000 feet above the point of detonation. Lest it be forgotten, that these were being dropped as part of air raids numbering in excess of a thousand bombers, so Christ only knows how many bombs were being dropped at a time.
With rockets, first there is only a single rocket being fired at a time, and not a thousand bombers dropping their payloads. Secondly, it's being lit one end and burned relatively slowly compared to the entire lot exploding in a millisecond so you don't get a shockwave.
Individually, the largest weapons dropped apparently caused damage to the aircraft dropping these weapons, which would have been >25,000 feet above the point of detonation.
We were flying at 6,000 feet which was the minimum height to drop the 4,000 pounder. We dropped it in the middle of town [Koblenz], which gave the aircraft a hell of a belt, lifted it up and blew an escape hatch from out of the top.
— Jack Murray, pilot of "G for George", reporting on G for George's mission on 17th April 1943.
The 8klb and 12klb ones would have had a greater minimum safety height, but more like sqrt(2) (8 klb) or sqrt(3) (12 klb) times those 6000ft, if that, because of blast front area. And with a single plane dropping a large explosive load you get to add horizontal speed against time for the bomb dropping to the height where it should explode
It looks really weird using SI notation with imperial units.
On a separate note, the 22000lb grand slam was dropped from a great height in order to penetrate deep underground (up to 130ft of earth or 20ft of concreate) before exploding, creating earthquake like effects.
With rockets, first there is only a single rocket being fired at a time, and not a thousand bombers dropping their payloads.
Those (bombing raid) explosions would occur over several minutes, maybe even several tens of minutes, roughly the same time that a rocket would need to reach the upper atmosphere. Where it would then actually punch through the ionosphere, although the disturbance caused by that would be over a much smaller area than the cumulative blast front from a bombing raid once that reached the ionosphere.
Secondly, it's being lit one end and burned relatively slowly compared to the entire lot exploding in a millisecond so you don't get a shockwave.
Not always.
Which also makes me wonder how large an effect Buncefield, Pepcon or Enschede would have had, compared to the average bombing raid
Which also makes me wonder how large an effect Buncefield, Pepcon or Enschede would have had, compared to the average bombing raid
A Lancaster could drop a total of 14,000 pounds, although in practice when bombing cities they tended to be mostly one big (4000lbs) bomb to blow the roofs off and then 10,000 pounds of incendiaries. There were quite a few thousand bomber raids, to a lazy calculation of every aircraft being a lancaster would give you 14000000 pounds, which is ~6.3 kilotons. Pepcon was about 1 kiloton.
But this is very large numbers of smallish explosions compared to one bigish one. I suspect the propagation on the blast waves of a bigger explosion has more of an effect.
Firstly :
https://media.juiceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/11141254/144fb-britishbombs.jpg
Typical "Area" load
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Lancaster_area_bombing_load_IWM_CH_18371.jpg
The really big stuff Tallboy and Grand Slam were only carried by two squadrons 617 and 9 and used on particular targets not as an area raid.
Optimal dropping height for a Tallboy was 18000 feet but 15000 was more typical and Grand Slam drops went as low as 12000
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
