the USS New Jersey battle ship.

Back in 78 I worked for the range division (Range Control) at the Yakima Training Center in central Washington State. The Navy scheduled a controlled detonation of surplus 16” HE and armor piercing rounds. It was common throughout the year to have the other services destroy outdated munitions. We would have the AF EOD destroy 500 pound bombs left over from WWII and Korea. The range time was scheduled during a period where there were minimal units training. Navy EOD was in charge of the operation.

The plan was to dig trenches using D8 cats and lay the rounds side by side in the trenchs. This was to minimize the amount of frag being scattered in the area. EOD would daisy chain the explosive (C4) and double prime each round. The change would be electrically detonated. It took a good two days for them to accomplish this.

On the day of the shot all of us drove out to a vantage point a safe distance from the shot. When they detonated the charge you could see the blast wave heading toward us and rolling south over the ridge toward the town of Moxee, WA. Almost knocked us down.

Anyway, the installation MPs phones were ringing off the hook. Some people called saying the nails were coming through their walls. People on I-82 called into the State Patrol reporting that we were dropping nukes. I could see that happening due to the mushroom cloud.

Needless to say a big pow wow took place the next day and it was decided to limit the shot to a maximum of 10 rounds. Apparently the shale subsurface maximized the blast wave both above and below the ground. Basically creating a mini earthquake. The local media was also informed that large explosions would be heard through the two weeks of Scheduled detonations. The Navy ended up footing the bill to make any repairs from damages caused by that first shot.

Fun times