Comments by "Phillip Ellis" (@phil20_20) on "Plainly Difficult" channel.

  1. The old Navy brass being itself. Go look at the Battle of Jutland. Do you think the admiralty accepted the blame for losing so many ships to open magazines?
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  2. Old Cordite had a lot to do with it. There are buffers to control the rate of burn in propellents, and when the propellants are in storage for too long, the buffers no longer slow the ignition down enough to prevent a rapid burn. This alone can cause an overpressure leading to the destruction of the gun. They do have "GUN" stamped into the end of some of the barrels BTW.
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  3. One of my drill sergeants had just been in an incident the class before mine where an ordnance blew up and killed or wounded most of the other instructors. I had just read about it in the papers before I got there, so we had a lot to talk about. Of course there's not much you can really say in those circumstances though, but he had our sympathies. He was there helping out the wounded right after going through it all.
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  4. Yep, it's like lighting an old firecracker. The fuse just goes all at once, and if you don't have fast reflexes, you can get a finger blown of. That's why you're not supposed to hold them in your hand. It was Cordite, BTW. I know someone who was there.
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  5. You sure as hell don't play with propellents around crew. That's what Aberdeen and other places like that are for. Egos and stupidity don't mix well.
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