SBU: Russians lost 50% of 120-mm mortar shell reserves after strike on Toropets arsenal last fall
SBU: Russians lost 50% of 120-mm mortar shell reserves after strike on Toropets arsenal last fall
Ukraine struck the 107th GRAU ammo depot in Russia's Toropets last September. SBU says the attack destroyed 160,000 tons of ammunition.
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170 000 tons of shells : this blast
15 000 tons of TNT : Little Boy *
21 000 tons of TNT : Fat Man *
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
(* nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki)That seems impressive, but isn't really useful without knowing what each shell contains in terms of TNT explosive potential. The weight of a "shell" includes the casing and the projectile, too.
I wonder what the potential really is - even at 10% explosive power, that’s still in nuclear range! Wild.
Edit: Ah, I found it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toropets_depot_explosions
The blast wave spread up to 200 mi (320 km) and was estimated to have a TNT equivalent of either 200 to 240 tons or 1.3 to 1.8 kilotons of high-explosives.
So shy of a nuclear explosion by nearly 2 orders of magnitude.
smallest nukes are smaller than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) 20t backpack nuke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition 10-1000t
I have no idea where to look for information about Russian artillery shells, but wikipedia has info on a few American 105 mm and 155 mm ones. They all have about 15% of the weight accounted for by explosive. 15% of 160,000 is 24,000
uhhh most of that just burned down and there were multiple blasts, biggest of which was either 1.5kt-ish or 0.2kt-ish depending who you believe with measuring. and there's a lot of metal there too, not everything is explosive