I attended Lansing Community College after graduating from high school.
My chemistry instructor was Tom Loomis. He had served with the Marines in the South Pacific in the later half of WWII.
One of the stories he shared was that the Marines improvised a method of clearing caves of Japanese soldiers (who rarely surrendered).
An empty oil drum had a sharpened, steel stake welded to the top. A can of calcium carbide was placed at the bottom of the barrel and then the barrel was filled with water. Before the lid was secured (which pinned the can of carbide to the bottom of the barrel), a few lumps of Willie-Pete the armorer scavenged from ordinance were placed beneath the water.
The Marines "requisitioned" a depth-charge launcher from the Navy. They might have even had permission. Or maybe not. That was not part of the story.
The Marines pushed the loaded depth-charge launcher to the mouth of the cave and then lobbed the barrel as deeply inside of the cave as possible.
The sharpened stake ruptured the calcium carbide can and ruptured the barrel. There was enough water to react with the calcium carbide and create acetylene. Once enough water had drained away to expose the WP, it ignited the impromptu air-fuel bomb.
If it failed to detonate, they lobbed in another. Eventually, she-go-BOOM!
Eventually, Loomis got a Ph.D. in Chemistry. I don't know if the "magic" of the Rube Goldberg contraption inspired him or not.
For what it is worth, 2.5%-to-81% acetylene in air is considered explosive.
We could buy calcium carbide off the shelf when I was a teenager. That, and the toy cannons for children came with some to use for the propellent. I haven't bought it in years, but found it was a great way to take care of the crawfish that made mounds in the yard.
ReplyDeleteI remember it smelled gawd-awful. Triple bond on the two carbons makes it VERY reactive.
ReplyDeleteHad an old country store where we could buy that stuff
ReplyDeleteHad a carbide cannon as a kid AND had an old-style carbide-fueled miners lamp for mine explorations.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yet? I did NOT know this story.
Thanks!
I've still got my dad's "old-style carbide-fueled miners lamp" on my mantle.
ReplyDeleteIt's still available from Amazon. I just checked.
ReplyDeleteThe wider the range between a gases Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Upper Explosive Limit (UEL), the greater the risk of explosion
ReplyDeleteAcetylene (the gas evolved by calcium carbide), has the widest EL range of all common gases, forming an explosive mixture with air between concentrations of 2.5% and 82%
We used calcium carbide in our kid cannons, that were made with taped together pop cans, with a tennis ball for the cannon ball. Drop in a stone of two of the calcium carbide, add a little squirt of water through the bottom hole, cover the bottom hole, put in the tennis ball and wait. After the gas built up, a strike-anywhere match set the whole thing off.
ReplyDeleteThe explosions were tremendous. Sometimes the cans blew apart. There were rarely any seagulls that hung out on our swimming raft, which was within pop-can-cannon range.
Good times!
Milton