몇년전 탱넷스레에서 냉전 유럽에 계셨던 전직 미 전투공병 "thekirk" 씨의 글
(다리 폭파에 관한 이야기 도중)
thekirk:
You could probably come up with an equation, one where your two variables were time to prepare, and the amount of explosives required. More time, less explosives. Less time, more explosives. About the only way you're going to perform an impromptu demolition on a major bridge structure is via a nuclear blast, and/or something damn close, in terms of energies released.
We did a little "challenge" station during an ARTEP, one year: You were supposed to figure out how to take down a fairly major bridge over a German river, using the minimum amount of explosives. The Major running the site would then grade you on how likely your demolition plan was to work, and so forth. Most guys played it straight, and wound up using job-lots of explosives to take out the bridge. Me? I did a quick recon around the site, and turned in a demo recon calling for less than a hundred pounds of explosives. The Major in question just laughed, looking at the bill of materials, and told me I'd failed the station. At that point, I invited him to look at my target worksheet, and actually look at what I was planning to do with the stuff. After he did, his eyes got a little huge, and he did some rapid calculations, said "Oh, shit...", and then gave me the points for my plan. He also told me to please stop by his office when we got back from the exercise. When I finally got the chance to do so, he took the time to explain to me that A.) use of civilian assets was perfectly permissible, but there were limits, and that B.) those limits included vaporizing a significant chunk of the surrounding city.
Apparently, my utilization of the nearby LNG tank farm to create the mother of all BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) events was a tad... Mmmmm... What was the word he used? Extreme?
Anyway, he told me that he'd done the calculations, and if I'd successfully achieved the BLEVE, I'd have done the job on the bridge. Along with wiping out a significant chunk of urban Germany, and probably starting the nuclear phase of the war a bit early--The blast might have been big enough to trigger seismographs in Soviet headquarters, and make them think we'd started using nukes.
Shortly after, someone higher in the chain of command made it a policy that we had to have our demo plans reviewed, before actually putting them into effect.
Chris Werb:
Although you may not have access to one at the time there are ships carrying thousands of tons of LPG and ammonium nitrate going up and down the major rivers and canals all the time. I've sailed on my in law's ship, the Anita, Brugge, carrying 440 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
thekirk:
LOL... Chris, as a matter of fact, I did. There were three barges tied up on the docks within about 150-200 meters from the LNG tank farm. One with ammonia tanks, and two with ammonium nitrate. I didn't mention those out of desire not to put any ideas into people's heads, but since you let the cat out of the bag, kinda...
Let's just put it this way: Had everything gone the way I wanted it to, with the blast I had planned, the yield would have been in the low megaton range. Which was what, I think, scared the hell out the Major.
My going to him later with a plan to take some of those bridges on the Rhein down via the mechanism of appropriated barges with massive charges of ANFO on board didn't help. I figured that if we had to take the bridges out, and they didn't want to use the nukes, well... Borrow a couple of river barges filled with ammonium nitrate, dump a few thousand gallons of fuel into them, and then float the little darlings under the near-shore span and detonate 'em. Again, that foundered on the collateral damage issue, and our inability to plan for taking over civilian assets. I still don't understand the thought process: We were going to do more damage over the long haul if we had to use the nukes to take those bridges down, and nobody cared about getting the civilians out of the way, for those, but using the river barge full of ANFO, we did? Still doesn't make sense. Maybe the ROE was different, between the two, and I just wasn't cleared to know that.
My theory was that as a Combat Engineer, it was my job to take advantage of whatever natural resources and/or materials I could find, and if staging what amounted to an industrial accident would get my mission accomplished, then that was better than using Army assets--Those should be reserved for things that needed to be done in locations where you couldn't implement anything else.
Looking back on it, it's probably for the best we never did stage WWIII in the FRG. I think I might have personally set back German-American relations by several decades, if we had. God knows, the best investment you could have made in Central Europe after the war would have been in concrete plants.
번역은 나중에 하긴 할 예정. 언제 글수정할지 미지수 잇힝
...왠지 됴군이 보고 소재로 써먹을까봐 두렵다.
최근 덧글