One hundred and fifty years later, an American commander would be far less fortunate. While the Royalists bore the brunt of the calamity, a piece of debris narrowly missed killing the Roundhead general, Sir Thomas Fairfax. Amid the chaos, a stray spark in the defenders’ powder magazine (located in a stone church) caused the eruption of more than 80 barrels of gunpowder. 16, 1646, a force of 10,000 Parliamentarians tried to wrest control of the small Devon township from the hands of a Royalist army less than half that size. Magazine MishapsĪ powder magazine explosion during the English Civil War, possibly the largest in history up to that point, brought the Battle of Torrington to an end in one deafening instant.
The American general Zebulon Pike was killed by debris following the explosion of a British powder magazine during the War of 1812. Here are a few of military history’s biggest bangs. While the RAF Fauld blast has been called by some ( including the BBC) the “world’s largest non-nuclear explosion in history “, other conventional wartime explosions, both intentional and accidental, have caused far more casualties and have been much more destructive. More than 70 personnel lost their lives in the incident. Buildings more than a kilometer from the blast zone were utterly destroyed. A cloud of smoke and debris was hurled several thousand feet into the air. The blast tore open a crater more than 1,000 meters across and nearly 120 meters deep. The Fauld bomb depot exploded during World War Two. In an instant, the entire cache of HE bombs, along with 500 million rounds of ammunition, went up. A wayward spark likely ignited off the explosives, which created a split second chain reaction in the bunker. The resulting blast touched off the entire 3,700-ton stockpile of ordnance.Īccording to an official report of the accident, the disaster was the result of a lone airman trying to remove the bomb’s detonator with a metal hammer instead of the regulation wooden mallet. underground munitions bunker accidentally detonated.
27, 1944, the relative quiet of RAF Fauld near Staffordshire, England was shattered when a 4,000-lb. (Image source: WikiCommons)ĪT PRECISELY 11:11 a.m. We’re checking out some of the largest non-nuclear explosions in military history.
0 kommentar(er)
