Mmmmmmm....
No.
In a wide sense it seems to be accurate enough.
Agreed. With the
enormous pressure differential (remember, from a relative point of view, the sub contained an absolute vacuum), the sheer violence of that implosion could have, and probably did have, the effects noted. Note the same thing happened with the USS Thresher implosion incident at a lesser depth and its hard metal fragments were scattered over a wide area. Remember my picture tube implosion video, and the pressure differential there was only one atmosphere, 14.7 psi.
When you look at it from a ballistic or explosion viewpoint, every square inch of surface of the sub was propelled inward under, to repeat myself, an
enormous force.
To review for the rest of the class, here's how pressure versus area works. Consider the 230 grain .45 ACP bullet, which has a rear surface area of .16 square inches by pi x radius
2. Assuming a nominal 25,000 psi of powder pressure, it is propelled out the barrel under nominally ~4000 pounds of force (.16 X 25000) from the burning powder, resulting in a velocity of nominally 850 feet per second. That's how pressure versus area works.
Not that you personally don't understand that, but I think the extraordinary far-fetched
magnitude of those submarine events can escape attention.
It's like when it is said that there is no tensile strength involved when a meteoroid hits the moon.
"Huh, say whut?"
The sheer enormity of the collision at those velocities essentially leaves tensile strength out of the picture. It doesn't matter whether the meteoroid is a hard diamond or squishy silly putty. Both will make a brilliant flash from the sudden conversion of kinetic energy to heat energy and make lookalike craters.
Terry, 230RN
