Tsunami Bomb

Wait, we were trying to create a Tusnami bomb at the end of WWII????

Well thankfully, the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made such a diabolical weapon unnecessary.  And don’t worry, I’m certain that the plans for the tsunami bomb were dropped immediately and never picked up again.Ever.

Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.

An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945.

Professor Thomas Leech’s work was considered so significant that United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.

Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Papers stamped “top secret” show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. They even considered sending Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they had any application to his work.

He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.

“Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech’s deductions on the Seal project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech,” said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.

Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university’s dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.

News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.

Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.

A former colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami.

Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa, which at the time was controlled by the Army.

It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.

The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders would have noticed the trials.

“Whether it could ever be resurrected … Under some circumstances I think it could be

Damage Nuclear Bomb Can Cause

Nuclear weapons cause catastrophic damage but have yo

u ever wondered what would be the actual extent of destruction if atomic bombs of various intensity were

dropped on some city?

For instance, the map of the left illustrates the damage radius if a B61 gravity bomb exploded in some part of Delhi while the right aerial map illustrates damage that can be caused by Russia’s Tsar Bomba – the largest and most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated.

To calculate the devastating effect of nuclear bombs on any city, go to Ground Zero – this is a Google Maps mashup that gives an idea of the damage radius that can be caused by various nuclear bombs.

You search for a location on the Google Map and then se

lect the type of bomb ranging from Little Boy to a massive Asteroid that possibly eliminated dinos

aurs from our planet.

While the “Ground Zero” program does not take into account real-life factors like the terrain, mountains or height of the explosion, it does give you a good idea of the kind of da

mage these nuclear weapons are capable of.ccordin

g to Encarta, the damage radius increases with the power of the nuclear bomb, approximately in proportio

n to its cube root. If exploded at the optimum height, therefore, a 10-megaton weapon, which is 1,000 times as powerful as a 10-kiloton w

eapon, will increase the distance tenfold, that is, out to 17.7 km (11 mi) for severe damage and 24 km (15 mi) for moderate damage of a frame house.

Bajaj Pulsar 250 CC Will Have Single Cylinder Engine

Bajaj has been doing great with its Bajaj Pulsar range of bikes in India. It’s one of the high selling bikes in India and is quite popular especially with youth in India. We brought you a story about Bajaj Pulsar 250 CC back in March 2010. Eventually it has come out to be a different bike. As per some ancillary sources, Bajaj was about to sell a 2 cylinder 250 CC bike in India, which was mistakenly identified to be a Pulsar. The truth is that the two-cylinder engine pulsar has not been on Pulsar product range so far. Kawasaki Ninja 250R however seems to be the bike which matches the specifications which were suspected to be of Pulsar 250 back then.

As per the recent information, Bajaj will soon be launching a 250 CC single cylinder variant of Bajaj pulsar to compete with the Honda CBR250R and other 250 CC performance bikes scheduled for launch in the year 2011. One such expected launch is Yamaha FZ250 which may come around mid 2011.