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Wikipedia's page of the largest non-nuclear explosions [1] was already updated and states "It generated a shock-waves equivalent to 13 tonnes TNT". Not sure who

Wikipedia's page of the largest non-nuclear explosions [1] was already updated and states "It generated a shock-waves equivalent to 13 tonnes TNT". Not sure who made this estimation and how, but various photos on that page can give you an idea what a large explosion looks like. For example take a look at the Yamato explosion [2]. Yamato was a 70000 ton Japanese battleship; the large explosion was due to its magazines being hit by bombs (this happened quite frequently when battleships were hit as they were fundamentally stacks and stacks of gun ammunition surrounded by a hull); it's likely that Yamato was carrying a few thousand tons of explosives, so that's how you get a few kt TNT non-nuclear explosion. Now in that photo you can see for reference another ship in the lower left. It looks quite puny. So, it appears to me the Yamato mushroom cloud was much, much bigger than today's mushroom cloud in Beirut. Edit: The wikipedia page was updated and now states 1kt TNT. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions#/media/File:Explosion_of_the_Japanese_battleship_Yamato,_on_7_April_1945_(NH_62582).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear...

Aerroon 6y ago
The ship you can see in the bottom left of the Yamato's explosion (link [2]) is a Japanese destroyer. I'm not sure which ship it is specifically, but she is likely 100-130 meters in length (those were the only ones around at the time Yamato sank). And she's closer than the actual cloud.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Another fun note about Yamato's explosion is that it appears to have been responsible for more plane losses than all of the AA fire during the battle. For a battleship with well over 100 AA guns, that's a pretty damning indictment of their quality.
  - forgot_account 6y ago
    One of my favorite YT naval historians, Drachinifel, constantly derides the Japanese 25mm AA gun, which was based on a French design. One of his longer podcasts (in the Drydock series) has a segment explaining the technical details of why.
- justinclift 6y ago
  On that note, I wonder how the ships / watercraft in the area handled it. Overturned/sunk/? :(
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Naval ships are generally spaced at about "I can see the nearest ship to me in my binoculars"-distances. To give a sense of scale, the USS Washington firing on the IJN Kirishima in the Second Battle of Guadalcanal is reckoned as one of the shortest-range engagements in WWII... at about 5km. That said, the remaining ships in the area were the surviving Japanese destroyers, and destroyers closing in closer to ships would not be unusual. Furthermore, the Yamato was in the process of abandoning ship at this point, and the destroyers may have been closing in to help fight fires or rescue survivors. I doubt they'd be closer than about a km from the ship at the time of the explosion, and none of the Japanese ships (so far as I'm aware) reported any effect from the explosion. Some planes (up to 7) were lost in the fireball, though.
    - jwilliamson 6y ago
      Some WW2 battles were fought at significantly shorter ranges than that. Just in the Malta campaign, at Cape Passero the Italians closed to around 1700m before opening fire. In the attack on the Tarigo convoy, the British closed to 1800m before opening fire and approached as close as 50m to the Italian ships.
      - forgot_account 6y ago
        Another good example is the Battle of Cape Matapan where British battleships obliterated Italian cruisers at 3500m, at night, in a few minutes.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      Sorry, bad wording on my part. I was more wondering about ships/watercraft around the port for this current explosion.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
jdkee 6y ago
It has been updated to approx. one kiloton of TNT equivalent now.

Aerroon 6y ago

The ship you can see in the bottom left of the Yamato's explosion (link [2]) is a Japanese destroyer. I'm not sure which ship it is specifically, but she is likely 100-130 meters in length (those were the only ones around at the time Yamato sank). And she's closer than the actual cloud.

jcranmer 6y ago
Another fun note about Yamato's explosion is that it appears to have been responsible for more plane losses than all of the AA fire during the battle. For a battleship with well over 100 AA guns, that's a pretty damning indictment of their quality.
- forgot_account 6y ago
  One of my favorite YT naval historians, Drachinifel, constantly derides the Japanese 25mm AA gun, which was based on a French design. One of his longer podcasts (in the Drydock series) has a segment explaining the technical details of why.
justinclift 6y ago
On that note, I wonder how the ships / watercraft in the area handled it. Overturned/sunk/? :(
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Naval ships are generally spaced at about "I can see the nearest ship to me in my binoculars"-distances. To give a sense of scale, the USS Washington firing on the IJN Kirishima in the Second Battle of Guadalcanal is reckoned as one of the shortest-range engagements in WWII... at about 5km. That said, the remaining ships in the area were the surviving Japanese destroyers, and destroyers closing in closer to ships would not be unusual. Furthermore, the Yamato was in the process of abandoning ship at this point, and the destroyers may have been closing in to help fight fires or rescue survivors. I doubt they'd be closer than about a km from the ship at the time of the explosion, and none of the Japanese ships (so far as I'm aware) reported any effect from the explosion. Some planes (up to 7) were lost in the fireball, though.
  - jwilliamson 6y ago
    Some WW2 battles were fought at significantly shorter ranges than that. Just in the Malta campaign, at Cape Passero the Italians closed to around 1700m before opening fire. In the attack on the Tarigo convoy, the British closed to 1800m before opening fire and approached as close as 50m to the Italian ships.
    - forgot_account 6y ago
      Another good example is the Battle of Cape Matapan where British battleships obliterated Italian cruisers at 3500m, at night, in a few minutes.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    Sorry, bad wording on my part. I was more wondering about ships/watercraft around the port for this current explosion.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago

jdkee 6y ago

It has been updated to approx. one kiloton of TNT equivalent now.