On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:29:20 -0600, "Don Thompson"
wrote:

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.

Perhaps it was the one in Halifax that I was thinking of. There was
one in NJ during WWII that took out a large chunk of the docks IIRC,
it was at first thought to be sabotage.

John

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