"Danger Zone of Bazooka Round Explosion" Topic

Okay, Bazooka-type weapons fire a shaped charge warhead. The idea of the shaped charge is that the majority of the explosive force is directed against the target. I'm curious about how much of the blast effects (and shrapnel) go in other directions? In other words, how close could you be to a bazooka round when it goes off without being in a ridiculous amount of danger?

Not based on anything I have researched but only a similar question I had asked here on TMP several years ago. A few people posted that they treat an exploding Bazooka round similar to a hand grenade. They would get a small blast but not as much shrapnel from the round itself. However, they allowed for splinters and such from whatever object the round hit.

Since the bazooka was used for bunker-busting, there must have been a reasonable anti-personnel effect. For that matter, there was an HE round developed using the 60mm mortar warhead, though I don't know if it was ever fielded.

the bazooka HE round was never produced. There was however a WP round that was used to good effect as a anti-personnel round.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere closer than 25 yards.

Not to be too pendantic, but this IS a bunch of miltary history afficiados, so …

Please guys, it's NOT shrapnel. There is NO shrapnel in a bazooka round. The French still had a shrapnel round for their 75mm, but most armies by WW2 had already dropped shrapnel in favor of fragmentation.

Don't play like the media and use the wrong word until everyone assumes it means something different than what it means. Let the know-nothing TV newscasters get it wrong, but the knowledgeable should get it right. Shrapnel is when you put items INTO an explosive device to injure personnel. Like the terrorists these days putting nails or whatever into their IEDs -- that's shrapnel. But ff it is just the casing getting blown into pieces it is not shrapnel, it is fragmentation. Picture in your mind the US's "pineapple" grenade or the British Mills bomb hand grenades … fragmentation, but NO shrapnel.

[/rant]

Now, as to the bazooka … about 65-70% of the explosive energy from even the best hollow-charge weapons goes into the cone of the blast. That still leaves 30-35% for the rest of the world. And some of the blast against the target also reflected off.

Consider it dangerous out to about the range of a grenade. Less than a 2.36" (or 3.5") HE round, but still substantial.

And on the issue of bunker busting … even MORE dangerous. Because the bunker was on the receiving side of that 65-70% of the energy.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

If we are going to be pedantic Mark then every dictionary that I have seen has this as one of the definitions of shrapnel.

Fragments of a bomb, shell, or other object thrown out by an explosion:

It may have originally meant the musket balls packed into the shell, but definitions of words change just as hoover and biro are now generic names for vacuum cleaners and ball point pens respectively. The newspapers are thus perfectly correct to use shrapnel as it is an accepted definition. To insist on using fragmentation instead makes us look like a bunch of nerds. Similar to insisting on using die for the singular of dice when dice is now the accepted definition for single or multiple numbers.

..makes us look like nerds? We ARE nerds…and proud of it!

Getting a little philosophical about it, isn't a shaped charge (including Bazooka) an odd duck that fits into both categories? Much like a piano is both a stringed instrument and a percussion instrument.

A Bazooka's shaped charge creates a focused blast that sends a stream of force and particles in a forward focused direction (shrapnel) plus the outward projection of the shattered casing and remaining rocket pieces (fragmentation).

So the newspapers used the term wrongly until it became such common usage that even the dictionary adopted it, so now the newspapers can cite the dictionary to back up their usage?

Just reading up out of curiosity th ed weapon had a minimum arming range of 10m stationary target range 220m and 180 moving. So 10m would be a good safe distance.

I doubt it was just the newspapers. Common usage amongst the general population that includes spoken word, books – fiction and non fiction, newspapers and other periodicals, radio, films and now of course the Internet is what the compilers of dictionaries normally use to assess what definitions go in. Language changes all the time, definitions change, new words come in to use, older words fall out of use. Like it or not, because it is an accepted definition by such institutions as the Oxford English Dictionary the papers are perfectly correct to use it. And us TMP'ers too!

Just a few observations based on some work I did with RPGs a few years ago. It is not blast that is focussed forwards but the shaped charge jet (which is the plasma jet formed by the cone of the shaped charge). The blast wave from the detonating warhead tends to spread mainly radially to the sides, slightly less to the rear. Vert little of it goes forwards if the weapon has hit a solid target such as a vehicle or bunker (we observed very little pressure rise on the other side of the impacted surface, due obviously to the relatively small hole formed by the jet). Lethal radius for blast and the lightweight frags that would be generated was (IIRC) in the order of 2-3 metres, with injury (such as ruptured ear drums) out to about 5 metres.

Watched the BBC musketeers series the other week…at one point someone said so-so had been hit by shrapnel…..more than a century before the birth of Mr shrapnel…does it matter? Not really,only to pedants like us, long live the pedants! But also long live the evolution of language…which might, I feel be more important in the great scheme of things, than our pedantry

As a Sargent I ask state, A RPG will blank you up in this room if it went off. (room was 40 by 40 feet)

he had personal experience with them.

In bunker busting, the idea was to fire the rocket through an opening (e.g., the fire slit) so that the round burst inside. This would, of course, provide significant concussion effect in addition to any fragmentation.

Watched the BBC musketeers series the other week…at one point someone said so-so had been hit by shrapnel…..more than a century before the birth of Mr shrapnel…does it matter?

No worse I suppose when archers in some ancient army are ordered to 'fire'.

Still old sounding things sometimes sound strange now. Like in revolutionary war scenes where the men are cheering 'huzzah'.

On mythbusters they set off an RPG7 warhead right next to a dummy rigged with those shock wave sensors, with the "jet" shooting past the dummy.

He survived just fine, though hitting a wall or similar would likely kick up some natural fragmentation.

For gaming purposes, limiting the effect to targets inside the structure seems reasonable.