Gunwool 36
Gunwool 36 was the German name for an explosives mixture that was introduced by the Wehrmacht in 1936. The name suggests a connection with gun cotton , but it actually has nothing to do with it. It is a pourable mixture of 67% trinitrotoluene (TNT), 8% hexanitrodiphenylamine and 25% aluminum , the mixing ratio being subject to slight variations over time. It was mainly used in torpedoes and sea mines during the Second World War . Gunwool 36 was so slow to ignite that even hits from the warhead with a 2 cm projectile only burned it down, but did not cause it to explode. A torpedo warhead was therefore ignited in three stages by an initial charge to a transfer charge , which only then ignited the gunwool 36.
Other mixtures known as gunwool were
- Gunwool 18: Composition: 60% TNT, 24% hexanitrodiphenylamine, 16% aluminum powder
- Gunwool 39: Composition: 45% TNT, 5% hexanitrodiphenylamine, 20% aluminum powder, 30% ammonium nitrate
Gun wool as flotsam
Although gun wool does not float, chunks of gun wool are occasionally washed up as flotsam on the North and Baltic Sea coasts . This comes from rusting sea mines or remnants that were sunk after the war. There are considerable dangers for tourists who consider the stone-like objects, which sometimes glisten due to the aluminum shavings, to be a natural mineral or do not recognize them as explosives, collect them and take them with them.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eberhard Rössler : The torpedoes of the German submarines. Mittler Verlag Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-8132-0842-7 , p. 79.
- ↑ Dangerous finds on the beach - Muntion: the uncanny legacy of the world wars. NABU Schleswig-Holstein, February 19, 2015, accessed on August 27, 2019 .