That would be the explosion of the "Grandcamp" and a bit later of the "High
Flyer" in 1947 their explosive load was 2300 tons on the GC and 1000 tons
on the HF. There are several claims of explosions being "the largest
non-nuclear explosions in history". I remember one that took place where
10,000 tons of AN was loaded into a covered location, primed with 1,000
pounds of TNT, and then exploded to test several new instruments. Sailor Hat
was 500 tons of TNT stacked in a spherical configuration. The "Pepcon"
explosion in Nevada was a big one. One in Nova Scotia in WWI of a French
munitions ship killed a lot of people and is considered in the running.

--


Don Thompson

Ex ROMAD


"John Flanagan" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:44:47 -0600, "Don Thompson"
wrote:

Most folks can't "relate" to 10 million pounds of TNT exploding but they
have seen films of the 15,000 pound "Daisy Cutter" going off. A picture
and
film of a conventional explosive test of an enormous stack of TNT done in
Hawaii under the code name "Sailor Hat" can be found using google. The
after
blast description of the results might surprise some folks. Impressive
blast
but not the largest known explosion of conventional explosives. These
large
scale test shots were done in the attempt to understand what happens in
Nuclear explosions.

Wasn't the largest chemical explosion the ammonium nitrate explosion
in Galveston, TX I believe it was? Either that or the one that
occured in NJ. Both were during WWII while loading ships I think.

John

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