Thunderflashes, American or British or Canadian in origin?

I worked in the research labs of CIL, ammunition division. In about 1964 the compnay decided to bid on the military contract to supply artie sims and thunderflashes.

One of my buddies had the job of making a hundred of each. A time and motion guy was watching, to calcualte how much labour was involved.

We had the machiery that made railroad flares, so the rolling of the paper and stuffing of the tubes and making the striker were all quite similar to what we did.

His desk was about 20 feet from mine. We each had a big sturdy oak desk in a large concrete floored room full of ammunition, explosives and kegs of various powders we used to make experimental ammo and detonators.

I head a loud "SH$^%%$@T!!!" and looked over to see buddy diving away from his desk. He shouted "Look out! It's going to blow!"

Not something you want to hear in an explovies plant. I knew who shouted and I knew what he had been working on. Some of the others in the room did not. I got under my desk, opened my mouth and covered my ears.

I expected to hear one big bang.

What had happened was that he was installing the striker heads (like big match heads) and as he dropped one thunderflash into the case, it struck on another thunderflash and ignited.

The whole case went off.

Those in the room that did not know what was involved thought they would die.
 
bdtyre said:
I always liked paraflares, especially when they not only fail to fire, but after a few seconds, when they do fire, they fire 3 feet out and 3 feet up and land in the grass not far from your feet.

But nothing beat end-ex when we had to dispose of cases of paraflares. We started firing down the platoon line by individual, and when that took to long we did section and when that took too long, all members of the platoon fired them at once.
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People have no idea how wasteful it is to do the "mad minute". Truth to tell, once certain things are issued, decanted from containers, unpackaged for use - they are useless for proper re-issue and must be used. Odd amounts of blank, pyro, fuel etc all had to be expended as it could not be returned. Makes for terrific fun all the same.
 
Oh, my. Memories of field pyro silliness.

Apart from launching T flashes from FN C1s and the usual terrorizing of unit lines with Arty Sims, I recall a bunch of guys using a .30 or .50 cal ammo box and filling it 1/2 with petrol and 1/2 with diesel, then tossing in an Arty Sim, closing the lid and running like Hell!

Mini nuke it was called. Scary, now to think of it.
 
I too recall the pyro silliness. I also recall burying countless blank rnds in the field rather than firing them off and having to clean our weapons later.
 
You know I was reading an article on gunwriters on the web, about 7.62X54 marking rounds the Soviets had back in the early 20th century, they used flash powder for the explosive filler, they noted in the article that it's power was almost on par with TNT with that sort of confinement. :eek:

I sort of felt bad about the bogus story, so here's another one (also next to impossible to verify or disprove) that seems a bit more probable and funnier to boot. :D

http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/thunderflash-t33267.html
 
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One ex, we were using up stuff that couldn't be reissued. Our platoon warrant fired off a para flare but the chute never opened. It launched, and in the background we could hear someone on a dirt bike. We saw the flare fall very fast and heard a big bang, and no more dirt bike. :) The warrant sent out a party in a milcot to check it out - nothing. We figure the flare spooked the guy on the bike and he decided to remain quiet.

That same day we had someone short throw an arty sim and nearly send a piece of tree into the platoon warrant's head.
 
Fat Tony asked : "Hey Ganderite, what did they use for the pyrotechnic composition, was it flash powder, or EC blank powder, you would think not flash powder due to it's hygroscopic nature?"

I don't know what was in them. All the match heads were exposed in the box so when the first one went, it ignited the others. The thunderflashes blew the artie simms all over the room. It was quite noisy for awhile.

After, it was very quiet. Deafness wil do that.....
 
I get it :D, I did something stupid while on maneuovers once or twice, one was firing a long burst out of my C-2 without any hearing protection, (ouch), I think the next time someone tossed a grenade or I might have been #2 on an 84 mm recoilless rifle without hearing protection again, it was good for several hours of peace & quiet. :D
 
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