Word: crater
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...after Tibbets had been decorated for his deed-Hiroshima was covered with a giant, mushrooming cloud of smoke and dust. When reconnaissance photographs were at last obtained, they showed 4.1 square miles-60% of the city's built-up area-destroyed by fire and blast. There was no crater in which the blast effect would have been largely wasted; the bomb had exploded well above ground. How many tens of thousands of Hiroshima's people had perished was not yet and might never be known...
...where the steel tower stood, there was only a crater. The tower had completely vaporized...
While Jap cities blazed, the R.A.F. was dropping on Germany the biggest explosive bomb of all. Called variously "volcano bomb," "townbuster" and "Ten-Ton Tess" (eleven tons, by U.S. measure), it carves an enormous crater (see cut), tossing up divots weighing five tons apiece...
...hour. Near the end of its steep fall, atmospheric resistance slows it down to 1,000 m.p.h. or less, but since that is still faster than the speed of sound, it gives no audible warning. The whoosh of its passage is heard after the explosion. It digs a crater 30 ft. wide by 30 ft. deep...
Like V-1 (the flying bomb), V-2 carries an explosive charge of about one ton, but it penetrates deeper, causing more damage at the crater site, less damage and injury from blast and flying glass in the vicinity. Mr. Churchill implied that this effect was intentional. But the speed of the rocket's fall is so great that the most sensitive impact fuse would probably not be able to explode the warhead above ground...