Think Gizmodo is off by a couple of zeroes, and I'm not even referring to the "50 decades" part but the number of detonations. That dozens number is surely in

Think Gizmodo is off by a couple of zeroes, and I'm not even referring to the "50 decades" part but the number of detonations. That dozens number is surely in hundreds, if not thousands. The report (PDF) describes my lower bound clearly, but is otherwise full of fascinating operational details and related horrors. The higher bound is reported by retired chief petty officer Michael Gonzales Jr, who was a mineman. Having worked the reseeding operation, he puts the count at 4,000. This is generally corroborated by declassified memo 2217-73, which states this in the timeline, "4 Aug - Solar storms deplete DST fields." Using two types of planes, the Navy planted 11,711 sea mines in the area over eight months, nearly the entire majority of them being the Mk-52 (magnetic) type weighing at 1,000 lbs a piece. Each plane could carry four bombs at a time and not all could be capped so they were an annoying aerodynamic drag to pilots. Some early mines detonated prematurely due to a configuration flaw, and the arming mechanisms were adjusted accordingly. On August 4, nearly fifty mines were visually observed detonating spontaneously (half the explosions were seen, other half were seen as craters.) Elsewhere, "numerous" underwater shocks were felt by destroyers. So that puts it a terrifying notch over "dozens." Within weeks, sympathetic detonations and self-destruct mechanisms were ruled out. While I find the cause of the detonations - even if it was just dozens - eerily fascinating, more importantly I find the whole idea of tossing 11,000 sea mines somewhere harrowing, and obviously dangerous under even the most controlled conditions. No one is documented to have died during the solar storm detonations, but there were other losses due to the mining operation. Two U.S. aircraft crashed, an A-7E Corsair II (pilot missing), and a Sikorsky SH-3 helicopter (pilots and crew survived due to training, rear admiral Robinson and two aides drowned), rare flag officer to die in combat until 9/11. Five U.S. warships struck misplaced mines; four took light damage but USS Warrington (DD-843) had to be scrapped due to a high repair cost of $4M. The mine was estimated at $720. But if the cost estimates were accurate, it took about $6,250 to lay a single one ($37k today). Mining waters around Vietnam was apparently in contravention of the Geneva accord, but they used the 1972 Easter Offensive as a "justification for a retaliatory move," which explained why they didn't lay sea mines the first seven years of the war.