Talk:Upshot-Knothole Grable

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The figures don't add up[edit]

The article says the gun had a muzzle veleocity of 625 m/s... that the explosion occurred within 5 seconds of firing... and that the distance between the gun and the explosion was about 10 km.

This doesn't add up... the muzzle velozity is said to be much less than one km per second, yet the projectile is supposed to have traveled at least two km per second before detonation. Which number is wrong?--J-Star 11:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]


If you watch the DOD film Operation Upshot-Knothole, you can see the full clip of the gun firing and the weapon detonating. If you time it, you'll find it takes nineteen and a half seconds. The erroneous 5 second figure may have come from the movie Trinity and Beyond, where Pete Kuran cut the clip in the middle, making it appear to only take 5 seconds.Ops101ex 05:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect... that issue is closed then. :) --J-Star 08:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture[edit]

What are/causes those small strokes of smoke next to the mushroom in the picture? thanks Mallerd 12:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to some sources, they are the traces/tracks left by marker rockets to show evidence of shockwave effect for tracking purposes.--Vidkun 14:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your explanation :D Mallerd 15:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Name[edit]

The article states that "The codename Grable was chosen because the letter Grable is phonetic for, G, stands for "gun", since the warhead was a gun-type fission weapon." What does this mean? What language is grable a letter? Tommyborsh (talk) 04:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't a letter in a language. It's a variation of the concept of a military phonetic alphabet. Many of the test names have things like this. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And "gun" refers to a "gun-type" assembly. A kind of nuclear weapon design. Adding the link now. --BjKa (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]