"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...
In article , Owe Jessen
wrote:

Am Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:15:43 GMT, schrieb Fred J. McCall
:

Owe Jessen wrote:

:Could you give in some applications for the SADM? ISTR from childhood
80s) that there were plans to destroy a lot of bridges and so on with
:atomic bombs. Why was it thought necessary to use those instead of
:conventional explosives? Aside from the fact that using nuclear
:weopons just for the fun in a friendly country might not be overly
opular there.

Because wiring a modern bridge with sufficient explosives to bring it
down is not a quick job. Failure to manage this cost the Germans
dearly in WWII.

Either we wire them up and leave them that way in peacetime (not real
safe) or you take them down fast with nukes in wartime.

I guess the folks living next to the bridges were thrilled. Or was the
plan to use it only, if nuclear weapons were allready being used?

It probably would have been used only after the nuclear threshold had
been crossed, but that might not mean much to the people near the
bridge. The smaller ADMs were definitely in the subkiloton range.
Conventional bombing before precision-guided weapons, even with such
advanced things as Barnes Wallace's earthquake bombs, still needed
substantial subkiloton yields.

The vast majority of bridges were prechambered and would have been dropped
with conventional charges. ADM's would only have been used on the
largest/nastiest of possible targets.


If the high explosive, in the multi-ton range, were prepositioned in the
bridge, even without primers, is that going to comfort the nearby
residents?

Happened all the time, with boosters and primers. Drive through germany and
look at the terrain near large bridges and you'll likely find the old
magazine bunkers where the charges for the prechambers were stored.


The reality is that it takes a substantial explosive force to take down
a major bridge or mountain road cut.

The road cut, yes. As to bridges, with prechambers you can drop anything
built with the possible exception of large suspension structures. Without
prechambers you have to use a bit more demo material, and the prep time
climbs, but you can still drop the vast majority of structures, or a portion
thereof (one span and one set of piers is all it usually required).

Brooks