Dynamite Stories, and Some Interesting Facts About Explosives

by Hudson Maxim

The exact opposite is the truth. When a mass of explosive is detonated, it is converted practically instantly into a ball of incandescent gases and vapors under very high pressure. When confined the gases act to disrupt their container.

When a large steel projectile is charged with a high explosive, like picric acid, and the explosive detonated, the walls of the projectile are not only broken but they are also torn, twisted and shredded, and so quick is the action that the inner surface of the metal is compressed and densified against the outer metal.

For this reason it is easy to tell from the character of the fragments of a projectile whether or not a high explosive or an explosive of inferior power was employed, that is to say, whether or not the explosion was of high order or of low order.

There is one false belief about the action of high explosives that has been about the hardest of any to kill, and the cost of killing it has been very expensive. Furthermore, it possesses more lives than the proverbial nine-lived cat. This belief is that five hundred pounds or so of dynamite exploded upon a warship or upon coast fortifications would destroy ship or fortifications, and that a few of such large bombs of dynamite dropped in a city would lay the city in ruins.

Upon the advent of the aeroplane and the dirigible balloon, it was confidently believed that the aerial bomb would quickly become the most destructive implement of warfare. It was prophesied that should war come between England and Germany, London would soon be reduced to a heap of ruins by bombs dropped from the German Zeppelins.

Several years before the European War broke out, I predicted that Zeppelin bombs would not and could not by any possibility work very wide destruction, and events have since vindicated my prediction. I pointed out the fact that should a hundred Zeppelins visit the city of London, once a day, for a year, returning to their base without mishap, and each Zeppelin succeed in destroying two buildings, the destruction would just about keep up with the growth of that city, for they build in London sixty thousand houses a year.

We all remember the destructive powers that were predicted for the fifteen-inch Zalinski pneumatic dynamite guns that were mounted at Sandy Hook and at San Francisco at enormous Government expense. These guns were capable of throwing with compressed air about six hundred pounds of nitrogelatin to a distance of from a mile-and-a-half to two miles. It was popularly believed that one of these bombs striking upon a huge armorclad warship would utterly destroy it.

Also two of these guns were mounted in a sort of cruiser called the Vesuvius. During the Spanish War the Vesuvius was taken down to Cuba, and in one action several of the huge bombs were thrown upon the earthworks and fortifications of the Spanish. They succeeded merely in mussing up the green, grassy effect. They did no material damage, for the reason that the action of the explosive was nearly all upward into the air.

When the pneumatic dynamite gun was promulgated, it was popularly believed that all high explosives were exceedingly sensitive, and that it was necessary to get them out of the gun very gently if they were to be thrown from ordnance.

The writer was the first to dispel this folly, through the invention of Maximite, a high explosive which will stand not only the shock of being fired from heavy guns at high velocities, but which will also, without exploding, stand the far greater shock of penetrating the heaviest armorplate—armorplate as heavy as the projectile will stand to pass through without breaking up.