Thermite Bomb, why not make it bigger?

[Lukedanieljames]

Here is a question, they used Napalm bombs in Vietnam, but why not just upscale the Thermite grenade to a 2000 pounder,

if one of those detonated over an area what sort of damage could we expect?

Maybe more than a 2000bomb with just a conventional warehead because of the concussion force being stopped by thick armour or fortified shelters???

There would also be a long lasting fire depending on what was hit,

thoughts?

is there something like this in production, or am i really really missing the big picture

[Lukedanieljames]

http://users.tkk.fi/~andres/m44/m44bombs.htm

Here is a great site that details some information regarding burning agents at the bottom,

look at the "Electron" munition, when mixed with napalm as it says on the bottom, the flame would go up to 3000C and burn up to 14 MINUTES!

that's hot enough to melt the tracks off a tank

[weemadando]

Thats hot enough to put many parts of the tank in a gaseous state IIRC...

[Darth Wong]

I haven't studied this in detail, but IIRC, thermite is actually quite difficult to ignite. It may be that if you tried to make a really big bomb out of it, large portions of the thermite might be hurled away without being ignited.

[weemadando]

Well, you could always make the entire bomb casing out of magnesium with multiple ignition fuses...

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't think that'd be worth it, to be honest. From what my grandfather told me of the firebombings of Liverpool when he was on duty, the Nazis always used more, smaller bombs to hit numerous targets and try and cause a firestorm rather than one big bomb. The same reason we only use something like the Grand Slam or new MOAB rarely would discredit the use of extraordinarily large incendiary munitions. If you want to cover a large area, napalm bombs explodes the oil all over the place. If you want a building levelled, then use HE.

[tharkûn]

I haven't studied this in detail, but IIRC, thermite is actually quite difficult to ignite.

Pure yes. Mixed with a small amount of potassium nitrate and sulfer, no. That can be lit with standard fuse and rapidly causes the thermite to ignite and burn its way through an old VW engine.

It may be that if you tried to make a really big bomb out of it, large portions of the thermite might be hurled away without being ignited.

It is. Thermite has two major problems first the aluminium and ferric oxide melt at different temperatures - the alimunium melts and flows away from the ferric oxide prohibiting reaction to completion. Obviously this problem will get worse with scaling. To some degree you can use binders to overcome this problem. Second because the reaction proceeds through conductive heating, rather than shockwave, long before you ignite all of the thermite you will develop pockets of vapor at extremely high pressures. Those will eventually blow your mixture apart with lots of unreacted material. If you had some type of sheilding, really fine machining, etc.; you could scale thermite up far further than is normally done; however you quickly reach the point where you should be looking are more reactive metals and better oxygen sources in terms of cost.

Thats hot enough to put many parts of the tank in a gaseous state IIRC...

Or ignite them. However the thickness of modern armor means that the amount of heat transferred tends not to be enough to endanger the tank. Burning through even the rear armor is a hideously slow process. Now destroying radios, sights, etc. is a distinct possibility. But even that is easier done with less exotice munitions.

if one of those detonated over an area what sort of damage could we expect?

A relatively small crater, everything flammable ignited, and a small shockwave.

Maybe more than a 2000bomb with just a conventional warehead because of the concussion force being stopped by thick armour or fortified shelters???

Thermite gives poor shockwaves unless you use binders and precision machining. There are far superior shockwave generators, and not suprisingly those see use.

There would also be a long lasting fire depending on what was hit,

thoughts?

Not really thermite burns quite hot and spews liquid iron, however it also reaches a point where the internal pressure gets too high and it blows apart. It has a high turnover rate which makes it inferior to more persistant flammables. Most things thermite ignites will be ignited by other bombs, and if you want the ultimate matchstick bomb there are far better candidates than thermite.

[Gil Hamilton]

When I mixed thermite, I had to use a magnesium strip to ignite it... and I had to use a hot torch to ignite magnesium. Conventional fire doesn't do it. The butane torch did the trick though.

[HemlockGrey]

This sounds like it would run into the same general problems as my "500 ton molotov cocktail" idea.

[Zero]

Me and my friends are making some arrangements to do a thermite reaction soon... that'll be so cool...

[Lukedanieljames]

Not really thermite burns quite hot and spews liquid iron, however it also reaches a point where the internal pressure gets too high and it blows apart. It has a high turnover rate which makes it inferior to more persistant flammables. Most things thermite ignites will be ignited by other bombs, and if you want the ultimate matchstick bomb there are far better candidates than thermite.

how about a mark 77 with Napalm B inside it?

is napalm B generally seen as the best bomb for causing massive damage? They said in WWII, pound for pound an incendary bomb caused 4 to 5 times more damage than a standard HE bomb.

Only thing I don't get about napalm B is that it only burns at about 900 C from what I have read, thats not hot enough to melt a lot of metals used on military aircraft and applications, so it wouldn't melt the tracks off a tank where as others might,

or no.?

[Lukedanieljames]

correction (I meant to say military vehicles not aircraft, maybe a mod could fix that for me and delete this uneeded post)

[Sea Skimmer]

What would be the point of such a thing? Until you can answer that question, you’ve got nothing essentially. But anyway, such a bomb would be highly unsafe in storage (napalm bombs are stored empty and only filled at the last minute), more expensive then napalm and is quite unlikely to be any more effective. You spoke of it burning the tracks of a tank, but why bother doing that? Drop a 2,000 pound iron bomb by the tank and you’ll blow the whole thing to pieces. Napalm is primary a weapon for dealing with exposed soft targets like infantry in trenches. For those sorts of jobs you just don’t need anything more complex.

is napalm B generally seen as the best bomb for causing massive damage?

Against certain but not most types of targets, napalm is about the best possibul weapon.

They said in WWII, pound for pound an incendary bomb caused 4 to 5 times more damage than a standard HE bomb.

That was in the context of destroying cities, they burn down much easier then you can flatten them with explosives. This was especially true of Japanese cities where built almost entirely out of wood and paper.

Only thing I don't get about napalm B is that it only burns at about 900 C from what I have read, thats not hot enough to melt a lot of metals used on military aircraft and applications, so it wouldn't melt the tracks off a tank where as others might,

or no.?

Using an incendiary weapon against tanks makes little sense. A cluster bomb or iron bombs will be much more effective. Melting the tracks off a tank is a rather stupid standard even ignoring that, if you can melt the tracks then you ought to be able to melt through the engine deck too and fuck that area up, and perhaps even the top turret armor. In any case, modern tanks use rubber pads on there tracks which are rather important and could be damaged by any form of napalm.

[FOG3]

Don't these things actually already exist/did exist?

On Napalm
On the Combustion Bombs like you're talking about

Magnesium bomb 3,500 degrees Celcius and 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celcius on the Thermite bombs. Medical reports don't exist due to victims basically being incenerated. Of course, that site may be apocryphal. I was under the impression thermobarics were gaining favor over these sort of things for doing incendiary stuff, or am I just completely out of the loop here?

[Sea Skimmer]

Don't these things actually already exist/did exist?

On Napalm
On the Combustion Bombs like you're talking about

Magnesium bomb 3,500 degrees Celcius and 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celcius on the Thermite bombs. Medical reports don't exist due to victims basically being incenerated. Of course, that site may be apocryphal. I was under the impression thermobarics were gaining favor over these sort of things for doing incendiary stuff, or am I just completely out of the loop here?

Thermobaric is another (Russian) name for a Fuel Air Explosive, and those are primary blast rather the incendiary weapons. All the fuel is suppose to mix with air and explode with a huge overpressure very quickly, unlike napalm, which was specifically developed to burn for a considerable length of time. Magnesium was used in many WW2 incendiary bombs, which predated napalm, I’ve never heard of a pure Thermite bomb though that compound is used as an igniter for Napalm B.

Anyone actually incinerated by napalm, a quite unlikely event as human bodies take a long time to burn away, would have had to be engulfed inside the initial hit and would have died more or less instantly. So there really is no reason to give a damn about that issue, any other weapon would have killed them just as dead.

[tharkûn]

is napalm B generally seen as the best bomb for causing massive damage? They said in WWII, pound for pound an incendary bomb caused 4 to 5 times more damage than a standard HE bomb.

In WWII they were also burning down wooden/paper cities. It really depends on the target what bomb is best. When you have piss for accuracy, the target is wooden construction with using paper and tar you can't be much more destructive than sparking a massive conflaguration.

Only thing I don't get about napalm B is that it only burns at about 900 C from what I have read, thats not hot enough to melt a lot of metals used on military aircraft and applications, so it wouldn't melt the tracks off a tank where as others might,

Who the hell cares? If you want to blow tank tracks you use track busters. Melting through that quantity of metal is going to take a friggen long time, particularly as the tracks are going to be continiually ground into the dirt transferring thermite and smothering their own combustion.

Magnesium bomb 3,500 degrees Celcius and 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celcius on the Thermite bombs. Medical reports don't exist due to victims basically being incenerated. Of course, that site may be apocryphal. I was under the impression thermobarics were gaining favor over these sort of things for doing incendiary stuff, or am I just completely out of the loop here?

Magnesium is a good candidate for burning hotter, but you run into the problem of it going gaseous and dispersing. The best fire starter I've heard of are some chelated oxy ethynyl compounds. These burn ridiciously hot, but can be worked not to create the overpressure which actually quenches many fires. The bad part is they autoignite at abysmally low temperatures, are shock sensitive, etc. Actually weaponizing them (which to my knowledge has not been done) would cost far too much to be worthwhile.

[wilfulton]

When I was in basic training some years ago, I got to watch two thermite grenades in operation (although not directly, because they light they give off is supposed to be enough to blind you, so we had to close our eyes). They burn at about 4000 degrees (F), but they only burn, there is no shock wave, and no blast wave, they only catch fire and burn extremely hot (I forget exactly how long, but I'm pretty certain it was less than 30 seconds). If you want to cause mayhem, a better bet would simply be to use napalm, which flows, sticks, and while it doesn't burn as hot, is probably easier to come by, and probably easier to dispense en masse. Most incendiary shells and bombs were either napalm or white phosphorus. THermite is used largely for demolitions, either to disable a vehicle or weapon system to prevent the enemy from capturing it. That or, naturally, to start a fire.