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Is TNT even widely used anymore? There's far more stable/safer to handle explosives. I'd have assumed TNT was largely abandoned in the developed world.
by ryanmercer 8y ago
Is TNT even widely used anymore? There's far more stable/safer to handle explosives. I'd have assumed TNT was largely abandoned in the developed world.
- mannykannot 8y agoI believe TNT is pretty stable. In his memoir "Target Ploesti", Leroy Newby tells of an incident where B24s dropped their bombs if they were running out of runway on takeoff - something they would not have got away with if the bombs contained RDX rather than TNT. It was a hot day, the planes were heavily loaded, and the first to go ran off the runway and burst into flames. Newby's was next, and his pilot refused to go; this was the compromise they worked out.
- ryanmercer 8y agoThanks for the book mention, I love stuff like that!
- dogma1138 8y agoTNT is still used for military explosives primarily because it's A) pretty darn powerful and B) one of the few explosives that works well with molten casting, the latter is especially important for ease of manufacturing and more importantly when you need a very specific explosive geometry for things like shape charges, fragmenting munitions and nuclear warheads. But it depends on the application, RDX and PETN are often uses for demolition, mines and such applications because they can be easily stabilized in a polymer, however that also makes their end PBX form much less powerful.