Never saw this clip before...yikes!!

[Schanilec]

Exactly, that's it. Thanks.

[Dili]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_Explosion_(1944)

Or the Bari Air Raid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari with Mustard Gas for added emotion...

[wegman58]

I spent two years on a modern AE (early 80's). Someone said that an analysis was done and if we blew up (just the conventional stuff) in the middle of the ocean it would take eight minutes before the ocean calmed down. The year before I got there someone forgot to put up the canvas guards around one of the elevator shafts. Some guy was on a fork truck with a missile and was headed towards the elevator when he saw it wasn't on that floor. He hit the breaks and while the fork truck stayed on the same deck, the missile not so much. Everyone who saw it KNEW they were dead - nothing like having a missile blow up in the middle of a magazine on an ammo ship. HOWEVER, modern munitions are good at blowing up only when they are supposed to, not when dropped. That said, when I got to the ship (which was based in Norfolk at the time) we were in Earle, New Jersey at the end of a 2.9 mile long pier (since lengthened to 3.1 miles long). Three ammo ships were homeported there as the AEs were moved from the Fleet Concentrations. Nothing like sleeping on top of 6000 tons of munitions for a couple of years.