Munition Ships.

This is coolbert:

Munitions ship disasters were a hazard of both World Wars.

During World War One, the munitions ship Mont Blanc spontaneously exploded while docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia [Canada].

This ship, containing about 4000 tons of black powder, detonated and leveled a good part of the city of Halifax, and destroyed a goodly number of ships at anchor in the same harbor. This detonation had the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon [tactical nuclear weapons would be measured in kilotons [thousands of tons] of TNT that their blast would represent. The Hiroshima bomb was rated at 10 to 20 kilotons of TNT. Since black powder has an explosive index of perhaps only half of dynamite, and dynamite is only half of TNT, the Halifax bomb would probably be equal to a present 1 kiloton nuclear weapon]. Read more about the Halifax disaster by clicking here.

And during World War Two, occured the Port Chicago disaster.

Port Chicago, located on an estuary of San Francisco Bay, was used by the U.S. Navy as the loading depot for munitions bound for the Pacific theatre. Ships would load all manner of munitions and ship out for the Pacific, loaded with ammunition, flares, bombs, etc.

In the latter part of 1944, one of two ships docked and being loaded suffered a detonation that leveled the whole of the small town of Port Chicago. Set off a sympathetic detonation in the adjacent ship that was also being laden with munitions. This only exacerbated the situation. A large number of black stevedores loading the ships, an entire dock complete with munitions train, and the dock itself, all were vaporized. This too resembled the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon.

In the aftermath of the disaster, recovery and cleanup crews were sent into the area. One such crew of black stevedores refused to enter the area on the grounds that it was too dangerous. This even being the case, it being so dangerous, forty of the stevedores were tried and convicted of mutiny, their case being defended by Thurgood Marshall, later to become U.S. Supreme Court Justice. And to be quite honest, these men were guilty. Being in the military means that at some point, you may be required to do something that is dangerous. And in the process of doing this dangerous thing, you may be killed. Danger in the military is not a valid excuse for refusing an order. Should be obvious.

While not being totally germane to this post, another disaster of this magnitude and type occured in 1947.

This was the Texas City disaster.

Illustrates, and that is why I am including this mention of the disaster, of how potent a blast these ships can be, loaded with explosive material.

A ship, while at dock in Texas City, 1947, and loading ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer known to be explosive, detonated from injudicious handling of a fire within the ship. This ship had a cargo of about 500 tons of ammonium nitrate on board at the time of the blast. Everything for a radius of about 1 1/2 miles was leveled. About 500 people were killed, most of them shredded with flying debris to the extent that they could not be identified. Several planes orbiting at 1500 feet above the dock were batted out of the air as if a giant hand had come along and swatted them. A length of propeller shaft from the ship was found two miles away buried something like twelve feet in the ground!

Again, another ship docked close by suffered sympathetic detonation of it's cargo and another tremendous blast occured. This gives you a description of what level of explosive power can be had from one of these cargo ships laden with explosive material, whatever it may be. [the discovery of soaking ammonium nitrate with diesel fuel to make a safely handled explosive was considered to be a breakthrough in explosive safety]. Read more about Texas City by clicking here.

Now, more considering Port Chicago. Some persons, gadflies perhaps, have theorized that the Port Chicago disaster was intentional.

Intentional as a way of testing the uranium atomic bomb [two versions of the atomic bomb were developed in World War Two. One was the plutonium bomb, the implosion device, the other was the uranium bomb, the gun device. This experiment would have been testing the latter]. Cover the experimental detonation of a uranium bomb and disguise it as a munitions explosion.

A whole web site is devoted to this theory and the evidence concerning same. Could this be true? Hard to say. The whole of Port Chicago was never rebuilt, the town and surrounding area being incorporated into what became the Concord Naval Depot. I suppose if someone tested the soil for residual background radiation, and found uniformly high levels, this would indicate that the Port Chicago explosion was a nuke in disguise. [a friend of mine grew up in Martinez, located right next to the present Concord Depot, and he had never heard of this disaster until I brought it to his attention!]. To read about this theory and the good web site with all the background information, click here.

And how is all of this applicable to the current world situation? Well, just imagine that some terrorists get a hold of a ship carrying a cargo of some sort of volatile explosive nature. And unbeknownst to the authorities, sail it into some harbor, say in the U.S. somewhere, and detonate the whole ship, undoubtedly praying fervently just prior to the detonation. Well, you would have wholesale disaster on a scale of 9/11, or greater.

coolbert.