The attached study was performed in 1984 during the reactivation of the Iowa Class battleships. The study was to determine if closely spaced 16"/50 HC projectiles could maintain an explosion chain. I found the results to be interesting as they clearly show just how insensitive Explosive D was to shock and heat.

One note: In the cutaway sketch of the 16"/50 projectile in this report it is shown that the overall length was 64.00". This is incorrect, it should be 60.18" (152.86 cm). 64.00" (162.56 cm) was the length including the nose fuze.

19 September 2007 - Benchmark
28 February 2018 - Converted to HTML 5 format