TESTS IN PACIFIC

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21853, 25 October 1945, Page 5

TESTS IN PACIFIC

EFFECTS OT BOMBS EX-ENEMY WARSHIPS AMERICAN NAVY'S PROJECT (!0 a.m.) WASHINGTON. Oct. 24. The American Navy plans to conduct two atomic bomb tests, using sizeable target fleets, comprising unwanted German and Japanese warships, says the New York Sun’s correspondent in Washington. The first experiment will be undertaken in some large lagoon in a Pacific atoll where ships will be spaced to determine the exact radius of the bomb’s lethal effect. The second experiment, to ascertain the effect of an atomic bomb explosion under water will be far more difficult. Naval experts want to know whether the force of an under-water explosion will be largely upward, tending to lift vessels from the water and allowing them to settle back with relatively minor damage, or exerted laterally, thus tending to crush the hulls. Water, being incompressible, magnifies the concussion of ordinary explosives and transmits the force rapidly over a wide area. The atomic bomb, however, caused relatively slight concussion compared with T.N.T., its devastating force being exerted chiefly by the instantaneous generation of terrific heat. Whether this heat would immediately transform the water into steam, dissipating the explosion's lethal effect, or whether the tremendous molecular motion generated by heat would exert a more deadly crushing force than an ordinary explosion, at present is a matter for conjecture.