Many years ago, I read a story about a Union soldier who was blown for a mile through the air, when an ammunition dump he was gaurding exploded. I don’t remember where I read this; it sounds like a myth. Anyone know more?
Without knowing any more than what ralph124 posted, I would say that this is certainly not true.
- an explosion with enough power to blow a human for a mile would be powerful enough to just destroy the body right at the site of the explosion.
- if it had blown him a mile through the air, the chances of him surviving are effectively zero.
- ammunition dump? They didn’t even have ammunition in the Civil War, in the form of shells containing explosive. They used solid lead minie balls in their guns, and iron cannonballs in cannons. Neither of those would explode. Gunpowder explodes behind them, and throws them out of the barrel. A dump of iron cannonballs might fall on you and break your foot, but they wouldn’t explode and throw you for a mile.
- There were magazines storing the gunpowder. But these were generally inside buildings, under shelter. (You need to keep your powder dry!) So how did this soldier not hit the walls of the building when this exploded and blew him for a mile through the air?
Might make a memorable story, but common sense tells us it’s unlikely to be true.
There certainly were exploding shells in the Civil War, of fairly large sizes at that. List of most common ammo types.
From soldiers’ memoirs which I’ve read, and not necessarily from the Civil War, the experience with truly large explosions was, as they said, more that you would be lucky to find identifiable parts than anything else… So on account of explosions seeming to blow a body apart rather than propel it as an intact object, I really doubt it.