That seems impressive, but isn’t really useful without knowing what each shell contains in terms of TNT explosive potential. The weight of a “shell” includes the casing and the projectile, too.
The blast wave spread up to 200 mi (320 km) and was estimated to have a TNT equivalent of either 200 to 240 tons or 1.3 to 1.8 kilotons of high-explosives.
So shy of a nuclear explosion by nearly 2 orders of magnitude.
I have no idea where to look for information about Russian artillery shells, but wikipedia has info on a few American 105 mm and 155 mm ones. They all have about 15% of the weight accounted for by explosive. 15% of 160,000 is 24,000
uhhh most of that just burned down and there were multiple blasts, biggest of which was either 1.5kt-ish or 0.2kt-ish depending who you believe with measuring. and there’s a lot of metal there too, not everything is explosive
170 000 tons of shells : this blast
15 000 tons of TNT : Little Boy *
21 000 tons of TNT : Fat Man *
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
(* nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
That seems impressive, but isn’t really useful without knowing what each shell contains in terms of TNT explosive potential. The weight of a “shell” includes the casing and the projectile, too.
I wonder what the potential really is - even at 10% explosive power, that’s still in nuclear range! Wild.
Edit: Ah, I found it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toropets_depot_explosions
So shy of a nuclear explosion by nearly 2 orders of magnitude.
smallest nukes are smaller than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) 20t backpack nuke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition 10-1000t
I have no idea where to look for information about Russian artillery shells, but wikipedia has info on a few American 105 mm and 155 mm ones. They all have about 15% of the weight accounted for by explosive. 15% of 160,000 is 24,000
uhhh most of that just burned down and there were multiple blasts, biggest of which was either 1.5kt-ish or 0.2kt-ish depending who you believe with measuring. and there’s a lot of metal there too, not everything is explosive