1946 munitions disposal - GIF

[Altair]

1946 munitions disposal.




Previously:

100 tons of ammunition being disposed of - GIF
Artillery ammunition comparison - video
WWII kamikaze attack on ammunition ship - GIF
1941 explosion of HMS Barham battleship - GIF and photo
Ammunition depot explosion - GIF

[Frank S]

Never made any sense to me. spend a lot of taxpayer money expend the country's natural resources, then as soon as a war is over blow up all the excess left over.

[WmRMeyers]

Never made any sense to me. spend a lot of taxpayer money expend the country's natural resources, then as soon as a war is over blow up all the excess left over.

A lot of that stuff got "touchy" as it aged. Safer to blow it while it was still stable. Hung out with a bunch of EOD guys back in the late 70's, so learned a few things. Like, "When the EOD guys are running, try to keep up!" We'd throw a 2000# bomb down the sled track at 1600fps, through a 13' cube of steel-reinforced concrete, and chase it down range. Find it, pick it up, bring it back, and section it in a giant bandsaw for examination. Cool stuff back when I was young and immortal.

Bill

[tlnixon]

I had a friend who was a WWII veteran. He was always the curious one. A few years before he died he had a sinus x-ray. They came back and wanted to know how he got all the shrapnel in his face. He said they captured a bunch of Germans with hardware and he was disassembling the fuse for one of their hand grenades and it went off. He wanted to compare it to the U.S. ones that he had been highly trained on.

[BuffaloJohn]

Never made any sense to me. spend a lot of taxpayer money expend the country's natural resources, then as soon as a war is over blow up all the excess left over.

Better than one alternative - start another war to use it up...

[Frank S]

Better than one alternative - start another war to use it up...

How about finish the war at hand, or fight a war to win, or use it for training, sell the surplus to our allies. It is not just munitions either. the destruction extends to every type of tactical equipment and weapons platforms. When I first arrived in Kuwait there were ships waiting in the gulf filled with US Military equipment shipped over from National guard units of every state and deployed units from Europe. Much of it was unloaded and driven or hauled directly to the several square kilometers of scrap yards to be cut up. Not all but significant percentage of the equipment wound up that way.

[BuffaloJohn]

Or it could be like that withdrawal most recently where they just abandoned in place - how many 10s of billions of dollars was that stuff worth...

Supply channels are for buying stuff, not for managing...

[odd one]

Hey....it's only our tax dollars....not like it is real money! At least that is what they want you to believe.