Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2009
- Messages
- 9,560
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About as dumb as the German rail artillery in WWII. If there was sufficient air superiority to protect it from easy air attack, being a maximum of a mere 20 miles from its target, why not drop a similar bomb from an aircraft?
An important contribution it made besides the development of artillery shell nuke tech which was later miniaturized making them much more practical:
Upshot-Knothole Grable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upshot-Knothole_Grable
An anomalous feature of the blast was the formation of a precursor, a second shock front ahead of the incident wave. This precursor was formed when the shock wave reflected off the ground and surpassed the incident wave and Mach stem due to a heated ground air layer and the low burst height. It resulted in a lower overpressure, but higher overall dynamic pressure, which inflicted much more damage on drag sensitive targets such as jeeps and personnel carriers. This led strategists to rethink the importance of low air bursts in tactical nuclear warfare.
An important contribution it made besides the development of artillery shell nuke tech which was later miniaturized making them much more practical:
Upshot-Knothole Grable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upshot-Knothole_Grable
An anomalous feature of the blast was the formation of a precursor, a second shock front ahead of the incident wave. This precursor was formed when the shock wave reflected off the ground and surpassed the incident wave and Mach stem due to a heated ground air layer and the low burst height. It resulted in a lower overpressure, but higher overall dynamic pressure, which inflicted much more damage on drag sensitive targets such as jeeps and personnel carriers. This led strategists to rethink the importance of low air bursts in tactical nuclear warfare.