title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: In 1967, Joanna Drayton, a 23-year-old white woman, returns from her Hawaiian vacation to her parents' home in San Francisco with Dr. John Prentice, a 37-year-old black widower. The couple became engaged after a 10-day whirlwind romance. Joanna's parents are Matt Drayton, a successful newspaper editor, and his wife, Christina, who owns an art gallery. Though both of the Draytons are liberal-minded, they are initially shocked their daughter is engaged to a man of a different race. Christina gradually accepts the situation, but Matt objects because of the likely unhappiness and seemingly insurmountable problems the couple will face in American culture.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: Without telling Joanna, John tells the Draytons he will withdraw from the relationship unless both Draytons give the couple their blessing. To complicate matters, John is scheduled to fly to New York later that night, and then to Geneva, Switzerland for three months in his work with the World Health Organization. His answer from the Draytons, therefore, will determine whether Joanna will follow him. Tillie, the Draytons' black housekeeper, suspicious of John's motives and protective of Joanna, privately corners John and speaks her mind. To John's surprise, Joanna invites John's parents to fly up from Los Angeles to join them for dinner that evening. John has not told them his fiancée is white. Monsignor Ryan, Matt's golf buddy, arrives after Matt cancelled their game. He tells both Matt and the couple he is supportive of the engagement. But Matt will not yield. Christina tells Matt she, too, is supportive of Joanna, even if it means fighting Matt. Christina fires her bigoted art gallery manager, Hilary St. George, who nosily intrudes and voices her sympathy for Christina's situation. On the way to the airport to meet John's parents, the couple stops for a drink with an old friend of Joanna's and her husband; they are also completely supportive.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: John's parents, the Prentices, arrive. They, too, are shocked when discovering Joanna is white. At the Drayton home, various private conversations occur among the two families. All agree more time is needed to absorb the situation. The two mothers meet and agree this was an unexpected event, but support their children. The two fathers meet, both expressing disapproval at this unhappy occasion. The Monsignor advises John not to withdraw, despite Matt's objections. John's mother tells him she and Christina both approve. John and his father discuss their generational differences. John's mother tells Matt that he and her husband have forgotten what it was like to fall in love, and their failure to remember true romance has clouded their thinking. John chides Matt for not having the "guts" to tell him face to face he disapproved of the marriage. Finally, Matt reveals his decision about the engagement to the entire group. In his speech, Joanna learns for the first time that John made their marriage conditional on the Draytons' approval. Matt ultimately concludes, after having listened to John's mother, that he does remember what true romance is. He says although the pair face enormous problems ahead due to their racial differences, they must find a way to overcome them, and he will approve the marriage, knowing all along he had no right to stop it. The families and the Monsignor then adjourn to the dining room for dinner.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: It has been suggested that a pair of contemporary cases of interracial marriage influenced Rose when he was writing the film's script.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: Peggy Cripps, an aristocratic debutante whose father had been a British cabinet minister and whose grandfather had been leader of the House of Lords, married the African anti-colonialist Nana Joe Appiah. They would establish their home in the Nana's native Ghana, where he would subsequently hold office as a minister and ambassador.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: At around the same time, Lloyd's underwriter Ruth Williams and her husband, African aristocrat Kgosi Seretse Khama, were engaged in a struggle of their own. Their union, which also occurred in the immediate aftermath of World War II, led to a storm of comment that snowballed into an international incident which saw them stripped of their chiefly titles in his homeland and exiled to Britain. They would ultimately return to the Kgosi's native Botswana as its inaugural president and first lady.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: According to Kramer, he and Rose intentionally structured the film to debunk ethnic stereotypes. The young doctor, a typical role for the young Sidney Poitier, was created idealistically perfect, so that the only possible objections to his marrying Joanna would be his race, or the fact she had only known him for 10 days; the character has thus graduated from a top school, begun innovative medical initiatives in Africa, refused to have premarital sex with his fiancée despite her willingness, and leaves money in an open container on his future father-in-law's desk in payment for a long-distance phone call he has made. Kramer and Rose completed the film script in five weeks.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: The film premiered in theaters on December 12, 1967. The film falls into the genre of comedy drama. The film was released on VHS on December 12, 1987, on the 20th anniversary of the original release. The film was released on DVD on May 22, 2001. It was released on Blu-Ray on February 7, 2017, to commemorate the film's 50th anniversary.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was a box-office hit in 1968 throughout the United States, including in Southern states where it was traditionally assumed that few white filmgoers would want to see any film with black leads. The success of this film challenged that assumption in film marketing. Despite this success, which included numerous film award nominations, Frank Rich of "The New York Times" wrote in November 2008 that the film was frequently labeled as dated among liberals. Another main point of contention was the fact that Poitier's character, the golden future son-in-law, had no flaws and a résumé of good deeds. Many people felt that the dynamic between the Draytons and Poitier's character would have inevitably resulted in a happily-ever-after film ending because Poitier's character was so perfect, respectable, likable, and proper. Some people went as far as saying Prentice was "too white" not to be accepted by the Draytons. It was also criticized by some for these reasons at the time, with controversial African-American actor Stepin Fetchit saying that the film "did more to stop intermarriage than to help it."


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: The release of the film in the U.S. gave Poitier his third box-office success in six months in 1967, all of which placed the race of Poitier's character at issue. The film grossed a total of $56.7 million.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: The film was first shown on U.S. television on CBS on September 19, 1971, and was the highest-rated film broadcast in the year with a rating of 26.8 and an audience share of 44%.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: In a 1986 review of the film by "The New York Times", Lawrence Van Gelder wrote: "the suspicion arises that were the film made today its makers would come to grips a good deal more bluntly with the problems of intermarriage. Still, this remains a deft comedy and – most of all – a paean to the power of love."


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: The original version of the film that played in theaters in 1968 contained a moment in which Tillie responds to the question "Guess who's coming to dinner now?" with the sarcastic one-liner: "The Reverend Martin Luther King?" After King's assassination on April 4, 1968, this line was removed from the film, so by August 1968, almost all theaters' showings of this film had this line omitted. As early as 1969, the line was restored to many but not all prints, and the line was preserved in the VHS and DVD versions of the film, as well.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: Stanley Kramer produced and directed an unsold 30-minute television pilot for ABC-TV with the same title and premise in 1975.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: In 2003, comedian Daniele Luttazzi published the screenplay "Tabu", an almost verbatim parody of the film. In the variation, the engaged lovers are aged 40 (him) and 12 (her), and are brother and sister.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: The 2005 film "Guess Who" starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac is a loose remake, styled as a comedy rather than a drama, with the racial roles reversed: Black parents are caught off-guard when their daughter brings home the young white man she has chosen to marry. Talking about the film, Bernie Mac told "USA Today" in 2003: "Interracial dating is not that significant any more." Mac said of the script: "They want to make it a comedy, but I won't disrespect Spencer, Katharine or Sidney."


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: A British radio play entitled "That Summer Of '67", written by actress Tracy-Ann Oberman and based on the story of the film's production, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 31 December 2020.


title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

text: A 2011 episode of the American sitcom "Last Man Standing" features an episode with a similar theme, although the couple is lesbian instead of mixed-race.


title: Food processing

text: Food processing is the transformation of agricultural products into food, or of one form of food into other forms. Food processing includes many forms of processing foods, from grinding grain to make raw flour to home cooking to complex industrial methods used to make convenience foods. Some food processing methods play important roles in reducing food waste and improving food preservation, thus reducing the total environmental impact of agriculture and improving food security.


title: Food processing

text: Primary food processing is necessary to make most foods edible, and secondary food processing turns the ingredients into familiar foods, such as bread. Tertiary food processing has been criticized for promoting overnutrition and obesity, containing too much sugar and salt, too little fiber, and otherwise being unhealthful in respect to dietary needs of humans and farm animals.


title: Food processing

text: Primary food processing turns agricultural products, such as raw wheat kernels or livestock, into something that can eventually be eaten. This category includes ingredients that are produced by ancient processes such as drying, threshing, winnowing and milling grain, shelling nuts, and butchering animals for meat. It also includes deboning and cutting meat, freezing and smoking fish and meat, extracting and filtering oils, canning food, preserving food through food irradiation, and candling eggs, as well as homogenizing and pasteurizing milk.


title: Food processing

text: Contamination and spoilage problems in primary food processing can lead to significant public health threats, as the resulting foods are used so widely. However, many forms of processing contribute to improved food safety and longer shelf life before the food spoils. Commercial food processing uses control systems such as hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to reduce the risk of harm.


title: Food processing

text: Secondary food processing is the everyday process of creating food from ingredients that are ready to use. Baking bread, regardless of whether it is made at home, in a small bakery, or in a large factory, is an example of secondary food processing. Fermenting fish and making wine, beer, and other alcoholic products are traditional forms of secondary food processing. Sausages are a common form of secondary processed meat, formed by comminution (grinding) of meat that has already undergone primary processing. Most of the secondary food processing methods known to human kind are commonly described as cooking methods.


title: Food processing

text: Tertiary food processing is the commercial production of what is commonly called processed food. These are ready-to-eat or heat-and-serve foods, such as TV dinners and re-heated airline meals.


title: Food processing

text: Food processing dates back to the prehistoric ages when crude processing incorporated fermenting, sun drying, preserving with salt, and various types of cooking (such as roasting, smoking, steaming, and oven baking), Such basic food processing involved chemical enzymatic changes to the basic structure of food in its natural form, as well served to build a barrier against surface microbial activity that caused rapid decay. Salt-preservation was especially common for foods that constituted warrior and sailors' diets until the introduction of canning methods. Evidence for the existence of these methods can be found in the writings of the ancient Greek, Chaldean, Egyptian and Roman civilizations as well as archaeological evidence from Europe, North and South America and Asia. These tried and tested processing techniques remained essentially the same until the advent of the industrial revolution. Examples of ready-meals also date back to before the preindustrial revolution, and include dishes such as Cornish pasty and Haggis. Both during ancient times and today in modern society these are considered processed foods.


title: Food processing

text: Modern food processing technology developed in the 19th and 20th centuries was developed in a large part to serve military needs. In 1809, Nicolas Appert invented a hermetic bottling technique that would preserve food for French troops which ultimately contributed to the development of tinning, and subsequently canning by Peter Durand in 1810. Although initially expensive and somewhat hazardous due to the lead used in cans, canned goods would later become a staple around the world. Pasteurization, discovered by Louis Pasteur in 1864, improved the quality and safety of preserved foods and introduced the wine, beer, and milk preservation.


title: Food processing

text: In the 20th century, World War II, the space race and the rising consumer society in developed countries contributed to the growth of food processing with such advances as spray drying, evaporation, juice concentrates, freeze drying and the introduction of artificial sweeteners, colouring agents, and such preservatives as sodium benzoate. In the late 20th century, products such as dried instant soups, reconstituted fruits and juices, and self cooking meals such as MRE food ration were developed. By the 20th century, automatic appliances like microwave oven, blender, and rotimatic paved way for convenience cooking.


title: Food processing

text: In western Europe and North America, the second half of the 20th century witnessed a rise in the pursuit of convenience. Food processing companies marketed their products especially towards middle-class working wives and mothers. Frozen foods (often credited to Clarence Birdseye) found their success in sales of juice concentrates and "TV dinners". Processors utilised the perceived value of time to appeal to the postwar population, and this same appeal contributes to the success of convenience foods today.


title: Food processing

text: Benefits of food processing include toxin removal, preservation, easing marketing and distribution tasks, and increasing food consistency. In addition, it increases yearly availability of many foods, enables transportation of delicate perishable foods across long distances and makes many kinds of foods safe to eat by de-activating spoilage and pathogenic micro-organisms. Modern supermarkets would not exist without modern food processing techniques, and long voyages would not be possible.


title: Food processing

text: Processed foods are usually less susceptible to early spoilage than fresh foods and are better suited for long-distance transportation from the source to the consumer. When they were first introduced, some processed foods helped to alleviate food shortages and improved the overall nutrition of populations as it made many new foods available to the masses.


title: Food processing

text: Processing can also reduce the incidence of food-borne disease. Fresh materials, such as fresh produce and raw meats, are more likely to harbour pathogenic micro-organisms (e.g. Salmonella) capable of causing serious illnesses.


title: Food processing

text: The extremely varied modern diet is only truly possible on a wide scale because of food processing. Transportation of more exotic foods, as well as the elimination of much hard labor gives the modern eater easy access to a wide variety of food unimaginable to their ancestors.


title: Food processing

text: Mass production of food is much cheaper overall than individual production of meals from raw ingredients. Therefore, a large profit potential exists for the manufacturers and suppliers of processed food products. Individuals may see a benefit in convenience, but rarely see any direct financial cost benefit in using processed food as compared to home preparation.


title: Food processing

text: Processed food freed people from the large amount of time involved in preparing and cooking "natural" unprocessed foods. The increase in free time allows people much more choice in life style than previously allowed. In many families the adults are working away from home and therefore there is little time for the preparation of food based on fresh ingredients. The food industry offers products that fulfill many different needs: e.g. fully prepared ready meals that can be heated up in the microwave oven within a few minutes.


title: Food processing

text: Modern food processing also improves the quality of life for people with allergies, diabetics, and other people who cannot consume some common food elements. Food processing can also add extra nutrients such as vitamins.


title: Food processing

text: Processing of food can decrease its nutritional density. The amount of nutrients lost depends on the food and processing method. For example, heat destroys vitamin C. Therefore, canned fruits possess less vitamin C than their fresh alternatives. The USDA conducted a study of nutrient retention in 2004, creating a table of foods, levels of preparation, and nutrition.


title: Food processing

text: New research highlighting the importance to human health of a rich microbial environment in the intestine indicates that abundant food processing (not fermentation of foods) endangers that environment.


title: Food processing

text: Using some food additives represents another safety concern. The health risks of any given additive vary greatly from person to person; for example using sugar as an additive endangers diabetics. In the European Union, only European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) approved food additives (e.g., sweeteners, preservatives, stabilizers) are permitted at specified levels for use in food products. Approved additives receive an E number (E for Europe), simplifying communication about food additives included in the ingredients list for all the different languages spoken in the EU. As the effects of chemical additives are learned, changes to laws and regulatory practices are made to make such processed foods more safe.


title: Food processing

text: Food processing is typically a mechanical process that utilizes extrusion, large mixing, grinding, chopping and emulsifying equipment in the production process. These processes introduce a number of contamination risks. Such contaminants are left over material from a previous operation, animal or human bodily fluids, microorganisms, nonmetallic and metallic fragments. Further processing of these contaminants will result in downstream equipment failure and the risk of ingestion by the consumer. Example: A mixing bowl or grinder is used over time, metal parts in contact with food will tend to fail and fracture. This type of failure will introduce into the product stream small to large metal contaminants. Further processing of these metal fragments will result in downstream equipment failure and the risk of ingestion by the consumer. Food manufacturers utilize industrial metal detectors to detect and reject automatically any metal fragment. Large food processors will utilize many metal detectors within the processing stream to reduce both damage to processing machinery as well as risk to consumer health.


title: Food processing

text: Food processing does have some benefits, such as making food last longer and making products more convenient. However, heavily processed foods also have drawbacks. Whole foods and those that are only minimally processed, like frozen vegetables without any sauce, tend to be more healthy. An unhealthy diet high in fat, added sugar and salt, such as one containing much highly processed food, can increase the risk for cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, according to the World Health Organization.


title: Food processing

text: One of the main sources for sodium in the diet is processed foods. Sodium, mostly in the form of sodium chloride, i.e. salt, is added to prevent spoilage, add flavor and enhance the texture of these foods. Some processed food may contain over 2% salt. Americans consume an average of 3436 milligrams of sodium per day, which is higher than the recommended limit of 2300 milligrams per day for healthy people, and more than twice the limit of 1500 milligrams per day for those at increased risk for heart disease.


title: Food processing

text: While it is not necessary to limit the sugars found naturally in whole, unprocessed foods like fresh fruit, eating too much added sugar found in many processed foods increases the risk of heart disease, obesity, cavities and Type 2 diabetes. The American Heart Association recommends women limit added sugars to no more than , or 25 grams, and men limit added sugars to no more than , or about 38.75 grams, per day. Currently, Americans consume an average of from added sugars each day.


title: Food processing

text: Processing foods often involves nutrient losses, which can make it harder to meet the body's needs if these nutrients aren't added back through fortification or enrichment. For example, using high heat during processing can cause vitamin C losses. Another example is refined grains, which have less fiber, vitamins and minerals than whole grains. Eating refined grains, such as those found in many processed foods, instead of whole grains may increase the risk for high cholesterol, diabetes and obesity, according to a study published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in December 2007.


title: Food processing

text: Foods that have undergone processing, including some commercial baked goods, desserts, margarine, frozen pizza, microwave popcorn and coffee creamers, sometimes contain trans fats. This is the most unhealthy type of fat, and may increase risk for high cholesterol, heart disease and stroke. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends keeping trans fat intake as low as possible.


title: Food processing

text: Processed foods may actually take less energy to digest than whole foods, according to a study published in "Food & Nutrition Research" in 2010, meaning more of their food energy content is retained within the body. Processed foods also tend to be more allergenic than whole foods, according to a June 2004 "Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology" article. Although the preservatives and other food additives used in many processed foods are generally recognized as safe, a few may cause problems for some individuals, including sulfites, artificial sweeteners, artificial colors and flavors, sodium nitrate, BHA and BHT, olestra, caffeine and monosodium glutamate — a flavor enhancer.


title: Food processing

text: When designing processes for the food industry the following performance parameters may be taken into account:


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published on 14 May 1925, that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: The working title of "Mrs Dalloway" was "The Hours". The novel began as two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time, to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: In October 2005, "Mrs Dalloway" was included on "TIME Magazine"s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since its first issue in 1923.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she had married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she "had not the option" to be with a female romantic interest, Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where Peter Walsh observes them. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. Later that day, after he is prescribed involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he commits suicide by jumping out of a window.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Clarissa's party in the evening is a slow success. It is attended by most of the characters she has met throughout the book, including people from her past. She hears about Septimus' suicide at the party and gradually comes to admire this stranger's act, which she considers an effort to preserve the purity of his happiness.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: In "Mrs Dalloway", all of the action, aside from the flashbacks, takes place on a day in "the middle of June" of 1923. It is an example of stream of consciousness storytelling: every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, freely alternating her mode of narration between omniscient description, indirect interior monologue, and soliloquy. The narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Septimus Smith.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Woolf laid out some of her literary goals with the characters of "Mrs Dalloway" while still working on the novel. A year before its publication, she gave a talk at Cambridge University called "Character in Fiction", revised and retitled later that year as "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown".


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Because of structural and stylistic similarities, "Mrs Dalloway" is commonly thought to be a response to James Joyce's "Ulysses", a text that is often considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century (though Woolf herself, writing in 1928, denied any deliberate "method" to the book, saying instead that the structure came about "without any conscious direction"). In her essay "Modern Fiction", Woolf praised "Ulysses", saying of the scene in the cemetery, "on a first reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece." At the same time, Woolf's personal writings throughout her reading of "Ulysses" are abundant in criticisms. While in the initial reading process, she recorded the following response to the aforementioned passages,


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: I ... have been amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the Cemetery scene; & then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom, thinks this on a par with "War & Peace"! An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating. When one can have cooked flesh, why have the raw? But I think if you are anaemic, as Tom is, there is glory in blood. Being fairly normal myself I am soon ready for the classics again. I may revise this later. I do not compromise my critical sagacity. I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Woolf's distaste for Joyce's work only solidified after she finished reading it. She summed up her thoughts on the work as a whole:


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: I finished "Ulysses", & think it is a mis-fire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I’m reminded all the time of some callow board schoolboy, say like Henry Lamb, full of wits & powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him, & stern ones merely annoyed; & one hopes he’ll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely. I have not read it carefully; & only once; & it is very obscure; so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair. I feel that myriads of tiny bullets pepper one & spatter one; but one does not get one deadly wound straight in the face—as from Tolstoy, for instance; but it is entirely absurd to compare him with Tolstoy


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: The Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband Leonard, had to turn down the chance to publish the novel in 1919 because of the obscenity law in England, as well as the practical issues regarding publishing such a substantial text.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: The novel has two main narrative lines involving two separate characters (Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith); within each narrative there is a particular time and place in the past that the main characters keep returning to in their minds. For Clarissa, the "continuous present" (Gertrude Stein's phrase) of her charmed youth at Bourton keeps intruding into her thoughts on this day in London. For Septimus, the "continuous present" of his time as a soldier during the "Great War" keeps intruding, especially in the form of Evans, his fallen comrade.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Time plays an integral role in the theme of faith and doubt in Mrs Dalloway. The overwhelming presence of the passing of time and the impending fate of death for each of the characters is felt throughout the novel. As Big Ben towers over the city of London and rings for each half-hour, characters cannot help but stop and notice the loss of life to time in regular intervals throughout the story. For Septimus, who has experienced the vicious war, the notion of death constantly floats in his mind as he continues to see his friend Evans talking of such things. The constant stream of consciousness perspective of the characters, especially Clarissa, serves as a distraction from this passing of time and the ultimate march towards death, but each character is constantly reminded of the inevitability of these facts. Further emphasizing the passage of time is the time-frame of the novel, which takes place in the course of a single day, like Joyce's "Ulysses".


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: The idea that there can be meaning in every detail of life, and a deeper appreciation of life as a result, is emphasized by the constant connection of characters to memories and to simple ideas and things. Clarissa even feels that her job (throwing her parties) is to offer "the gift" of connectedness to the inhabitants of London. Woolf's writing style crosses the boundaries of the past, present and future, emphasizing her idea of time as a constant flow, connected only by some force (or divinity) within each person. An evident contrast can be found between the constant passing of time—symbolized by Big Ben—and the seemingly random crossings of time-lines in Woolf's writing. Yet, although these crossings seem random, they only demonstrate the infinite possibilities that the world can offer once it is interconnected by the individual character of each person.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of mental illness and depression. Woolf criticises medical discourse through Septimus' decline and suicide; his doctors make snap judgments about his condition, talk to him mainly through his wife, and dismiss his urgent confessions before he can make them. Rezia remarks that Septimus "was not ill. Dr Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him."


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Woolf goes beyond commenting on the treatment of mental illness. Using the characters of Clarissa and Rezia, she makes the argument that people can only interpret Septimus' shell shock according to their cultural norms. Throughout the course of the novel Clarissa does not meet Septimus. Clarissa's reality is vastly different from that of Septimus; his presence in London is unknown to Clarissa until his death becomes the subject of idle chatter at her party. By never having these characters meet, Woolf is suggesting that mental illness can be contained to the individuals who suffer from it without others, who remain unaffected, ever having to witness it. This allows Woolf to weave her criticism of the treatment of the mentally ill with her larger argument, which is the criticism of society's class structure. Her use of Septimus as the stereotypically traumatised veteran is her way of showing that there were still reminders of the First World War in London in 1923. These ripples affect Mrs. Dalloway and readers spanning generations. Shell shock, or post traumatic stress disorder, is an important addition to the early 20th century canon of post-war British literature.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: There are similarities in Septimus' condition to Woolf's struggles with bipolar disorder. Both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek, and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out of a window as Septimus does. Woolf had also been treated for her condition at various asylums, from which her antipathy towards doctors developed. Woolf committed suicide by drowning, sixteen years after the publication of "Mrs Dalloway".


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Woolf's original plan for her novel called for Clarissa to kill herself during her party. In this original version, Septimus (whom Woolf called Mrs. Dalloway's "double") did not appear at all.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: When Peter Walsh sees a girl on the street and stalks her for half an hour, he notes that his relationship to the girl was "made up, as one makes up the better part of life." By focusing on characters' thoughts and perceptions, Woolf emphasizes the significance of private thoughts on existential crisis rather than concrete events in a person's life. Most of the plot in "Mrs Dalloway" consists of realizations that the characters subjectively make.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Clarissa Dalloway is depicted as a woman who appreciates life. Her love of party-throwing comes from a desire to bring people together and create happy moments. Her charm, according to Peter Walsh, who loves her, is a sense of "joie de vivre", always summarized by the sentence: "There she was." She interprets Septimus Smith's death as an act of embracing life and her mood remains light, even though she hears about it in the midst of the party.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: As a commentary on inter-war society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women as the proverbial "Angel in the House" and embodies sexual and economic repression and the narcissism of bourgeois women who have never known the hunger and insecurity of working women. She keeps up with and even embraces the social expectations of the wife of a patrician politician, but she is still able to express herself and find distinction in the parties she throws.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Her old friend Sally Seton, whom Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered as a great independent woman – she smoked cigars, once ran down a corridor naked to fetch her sponge-bag, and made bold, unladylike statements to get a reaction from people. When Clarissa meets her in the present day, Sally turns out to be a perfect housewife, having accepted her lot as a rich woman ("Yes, I have ten thousand a year"-whether before the tax was paid, or after, she couldn't remember...), married, and given birth to five sons.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Clarissa Dalloway feels a strong friendship bond to Sally Seton at Bourton. Thirty-four years later, Clarissa still considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about Sally "as men feel," but she does not regard these feelings as signs of same-sex attraction, rather as a very strong friendship.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Similarly, Septimus is haunted by the image of his dear friend Evans. Evans, his commanding officer, is described as being "undemonstrative in the company of women." The narrator describes Septimus and Evans behaving together like "two dogs playing on a hearth-rug" who, inseparable, "had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other..." Jean E. Kennard notes that the word "share" could easily be read in a Forsteran manner, perhaps as in Forster's "Maurice". Kennard is one to note Septimus' "increasing revulsion at the idea of heterosexual sex," abstaining from sex with Rezia and feeling that "the business of copulation was filth to him before the end."


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Dutch film director Marleen Gorris made a film version of "Mrs Dalloway" in 1997. It was adapted from Woolf's novel by British actress Eileen Atkins and starred Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. The cast included Natascha McElhone, Lena Headey, Rupert Graves, Michael Kitchen, Alan Cox, Sarah Badel, and Katie Carr.


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: A related 2002 film, "The Hours" depicts a single day in the lives of three women across generations affected by "Mrs Dalloway": Woolf writing it in 1923, a Los Angeles housewife reading it in 1951, and a New York literary editor living it in 2001. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham, the cast features Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, Julianne Moore as housewife Laura, and Meryl Streep as editor Clarissa. Cunningham titled his novel "The Hours" after Woolf's working title for "Mrs Dalloway".


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: Mrs Dalloway also appears in Virginia Woolf's first novel, "The Voyage Out", as well as five of her short stories, in which she hosts dinner parties to which the main subject of the narrative is invited:


title: Mrs Dalloway

text: The stories (except for "The Introduction") all appear in the 1944 collection "A Haunted House and Other Short Stories", and in the 1973 collection "Mrs Dalloway's Party".


title: Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions

text: There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline, and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.


text: The weight of an explosive does not directly correlate with the energy or destructive impact of an explosion, as these can depend upon many other factors such as containment, proximity, purity, preheating, and external oxygenation (in the case of thermobaric weapons, gas leaks and BLEVEs).


text: In this article, explosion means "the sudden conversion of potential energy (chemical or mechanical) into kinetic energy", as defined by the US National Fire Protection Association, or the common dictionary meaning, "a violent and destructive shattering or blowing apart of something". No distinction is made as to whether it is a deflagration with subsonic propagation or a detonation with supersonic propagation.


text: On 4 April 1585, during the Spanish siege of Antwerp, a fortified bridge named "Puente Farnesio" had been built by the Spanish on the River Scheldt. The Dutch launched four large hellburners (explosive fire ships filled with gunpowder and rocks) to destroy the bridge and thereby isolate the city from reinforcement. Three of the hellburners failed to reach the target, but one containing four tons of explosive struck the bridge. It did not explode immediately, which gave time for some curious Spaniards to board it. There was then a devastating blast that killed 800 Spaniards on the bridge, throwing bodies, rocks and pieces of metal a distance of several kilometres. A small tsunami arose in the river, the ground shook for kilometres around and a large, dark cloud covered the area. The blast was felt as far as away in Ghent, where windows vibrated.


text: Around nine in the morning of 30 May 1626, an explosion at the Wanggongchang Armory in Ming-era Beijing, China, destroyed almost everything within an area of surrounding the site. The estimated death toll was 20,000. About half of Beijing, from Xuanwumen Gate in the South to today's West Chang'an Boulevard in the North, was affected. Guard units stationed as far away as Tongzhou, nearly away, reported hearing the blast and feeling the earth tremble.


text: On 16 February 1646, 80 barrels (5.72 tons) of gunpowder were accidentally ignited by a stray spark during the Battle of Torrington in the English Civil War, destroying the church in which the magazine was located and killing several Royalist guards and a large number of Parliamentarian prisoners who were being held there. The explosion effectively ended the battle, bringing victory to the Parliamentarians. It narrowly missed killing the Parliamentarian commander, Sir Thomas Fairfax. Great damage was caused.


text: About 30 tonnes of gunpowder exploded on 12 October 1654, destroying much of the city of Delft in the Netherlands. Over a hundred people were killed and thousands were injured.


text: On 26 September 1687, the Parthenon, hitherto intact, was partially destroyed when an Ottoman ammunition bunker inside was struck by a Venetian mortar. 300 Turkish soldiers were killed in the explosion.


text: On 18 August 1769, the Bastion of San Nazaro in Brescia, Italy was struck by lightning. The resulting fire ignited 90 tonnes of gunpowder being stored, and the subsequent explosion destroyed one-sixth of the city and killed 3,000 people.


text: On 12 January 1807, a ship carrying hundreds of barrels of black powder exploded in the city of Leiden in the Kingdom of Holland. The disaster killed 151 people and destroyed over 200 buildings in the city.


text: On 26 August 1810, in Almeida, Portugal, during the Peninsular War phase of the Napoleonic Wars, French Grande Armée forces commanded by Marshal André Masséna laid siege to the garrison; the garrison was commanded by British Brigadier General William Cox. A shell made a chance hit on the medieval castle, within the star fortress, which was being used as the powder magazine. It ignited 4,000 prepared charges, which in turn ignited 68 tonnes of black powder and 1,000,000 musket cartridges. The ensuing explosions killed 600 defenders and wounded 300. The medieval castle was razed to the ground and sections of the defences were damaged. Unable to reply to the French cannonade without gunpowder, Cox was forced to capitulate the following day with the survivors of the blast and 100 cannons. The French losses during the operation were 58 killed and 320 wounded.


text: On 27 April 1813, the magazine of Fort York in York, Ontario (now Toronto) was fired by retreating British troops during an American invasion. 13.6 tonnes of gunpowder and thirty thousand cartridges exploded sending debris, cannon and musket balls over the American troops. Thirty-eight soldiers, including General Zebulon Pike, the American commander, were killed and 222 were wounded.


text: On 27 July 1816, a fort built in the War of 1812 by the British Army at Prospect Bluff in Spanish West Florida, and occupied by about 330 Maroons, Seminole, and Choctaw, was attacked by Andrew Jackson's navy as part of the First Seminole War. There was an exchange of cannon fire; the first red-hot cannonball fired by the navy entered the fort's powder magazine, which exploded. The explosion, heard more than away, destroyed the entire post which was initially supplied with "three thousand stand of arms, from five to six hundred barrels of powders and a great quantity of fixed ammunition, shot[s], shells". About 270 men, women and children lay dead. General Edmund P. Gaines later said that the "explosion was awful and the scene horrible beyond description." Reports mention no American military casualties.


text: On 30 December 1848, in Multan during the Second Anglo-Sikh War, a British mortar shell hit 180 tonnes of gunpowder stored in a mosque, causing an explosion and many casualties.


text: The 6 October 1854 great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead, UK, was occasioned by an explosion of a bond warehouse on the quayside, which rained masonry and flaming timbers across wide areas of both cities, and left a crater with a depth of and in diameter. The explosion was heard at locations up to away. 53 people died, and 400 to 500 were injured.


text: On 6 November 1856 lightning struck 3,000 to 6,000 hundredweight (roughly 150-300 tonnes) of gunpowder stored by the Ottoman Empire in the bell tower of the Agios Ioannis church near the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes in Rhodes, triggering a blast that destroyed large parts of the city and killed 4,000 people.


text: During the American Civil War at 4:44 a.m. on July 30, 1864, the Union Army of the Potomac besieging the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg, Virginia detonated a mine containing 320 kegs of gunpowder, totalling 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) under the Confederate entrenchments. The explosion killed 278 Confederate soldiers of the 18th and 22nd South Carolina regiments and created a crater 170 feet (52 m) long, 100 to 120 feet (30 to 37 m) wide, and at least 30 feet (9 m) deep. After the explosion, attacking Union forces charged into the crater instead of around its lip. Trapped in the crater of their own making, the Union forces were easy targets for the Confederate soldiers once they recovered from the shock of the explosion. Union forces suffered 3798 casualties (killed, wounded, or captured) vs 1491 total losses for the Confederates. The Union forces failed to break through the Confederate defences despite the success of the mine. The Battle of the Crater (as it came to be called) was thus a victory for the Confederacy. However, the siege continued.


text: In 1865 after the Union Army captured Fort Fisher, North Carolina, the accidental explosion of the fort magazine resulted in an estimated 200 deaths.


text: On 25 May 1865, in Mobile, Alabama, in the United States, an ordnance depot (magazine) exploded, killing 300 people. This event occurred six weeks after the end of the American Civil War, during the occupation of the city by victorious Federal troops.


text: On 10 October 1885 in New York City, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers detonated 300,000 pounds (150 t) of explosives on Flood Rock, annihilating the island, in order to clear the Hell Gate tidal strait for the benefit of East River shipping traffic. The explosion sent a geyser of water in the air; the blast was felt as far away as Princeton, New Jersey. The explosion has been described as "the largest planned explosion before testing began for the atomic bomb". Rubble from the detonation was used in 1890 to fill the gap between Great Mill Rock and Little Mill Rock, merging the two into a single island, Mill Rock.


text: On 3 November 1893, in Santander, Spain, the steamship caught fire when she was docked. She was laden with 51 tons of dynamite and 12 tons of sulfuric acid from Galdácano, Basque Country, but authorities were unaware of this. Municipal firefighters and crew from other ships boarded "Cabo Machichaco" to help fight the fire, while local dignitaries and a large crowd of people watched from the shore. At 4:45 pm a huge explosion destroyed the ship and nearby buildings and created a huge wave that washed over the seafront. Pieces of iron and débris were thrown as far as Peñacastillo, away, where a person was killed by the falling debris. 590 people were killed, and between 500 and 2,000 were injured.


text: On 19 February 1896, an explosives train at Braamfontein station in Johannesburg, loaded with between 56 and 60 tons of blasting gelatine for the gold mines of the Witwatersrand and having been standing for three and a half days in searing heat, was struck by a shunting train. The load exploded, leaving a crater in the Braamfontein rail yard long, wide and deep. The explosion was heard up to away. 75 people were killed, and more than 200 injured. Surrounding suburbs were destroyed, and roughly 3,000 people lost their homes. Almost every window in Johannesburg was broken.


text: On 15 February 1898, more than 5 tons of gunpowder exploded on the USS "Maine" in the Havana Harbor, Spanish Cuba, killing 266 on board. Spanish investigations found that it was likely started by spontaneous combustion of the adjacent coal bunker or accidental ignition of volatile gases. The 1898 US Navy investigation laid the blame on a mine, which led to public outrage in the United States and support for the Spanish–American War.


text: On 15 October 1907, approximately 40,000 kegs of powder exploded in Fontanet, Indiana, killing between 50 and 80 people, and destroying the town. The sound of the explosion was heard over away, with damage occurring to buildings away.


text: On 9 March 1911, the village of Pleasant Prairie and neighbouring town of Bristol, away, were levelled by the explosion of five magazines holding 300 tons of dynamite, 105,000 kegs of black blasting powder, and five rail wagons filled with dynamite housed at a DuPont blasting powder plant. A crater deep was left where the plant stood. Several hundred people were injured. The plant was closed at the time, so deaths were light, with only three plant employees being killed, E. S. "Old Man" Thompson, Clarence Brady and Joseph Flynt, and Elgin, Illinois resident Alice Finch, who died of shock. Most buildings in a radius were rendered flat or uninhabitable. The explosion was felt within a radius of , and largely thought to be an earthquake. Residents in nearby Lake County, Illinois saw the fireball and remembering the Peshtigo fire fled their houses, jumping into Lake Michigan. Police in Chicago scoured the streets, looking for the site of a bombing. Windows were shattered in Madison, Wisconsin, away, and the explosion was heard up to away. A DuPont spokesman was reported as being perplexed by the coverage of the blast, quoted as saying "explosions occur every day in steel mills, flouring mills and grain elevators with hardly a line in the paper."


text: "Alum Chine" was a Welsh freighter (out of Cardiff) carrying 343 tons of dynamite for use during construction of the Panama Canal. She was anchored off Hawkins Point, near the entrance to Baltimore Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. She exploded on 7 March 1913, killing over 30, injuring about 60, and destroying a tugboat and two barges. Most accounts describe two distinct explosions.


text: On 27 May 1915, the converted minelayer suffered a blast. Wreckage was thrown up to , a collier ship away had its crane blown off and a crew member killed by a fragment weighing . A child ashore was killed by another fragment. A case of butter was found away. A total of 352 people were killed but one crew member survived, with severe burns. The ship had been loaded with 300 naval mines containing more than 150 tons of high explosive. An inquiry blamed faulty priming, possibly by untrained personnel.


text: On 2 April 1916, an explosion ripped through the gunpowder mill at Uplees, near Faversham, Kent, when 200 tons of TNT ignited. 105 people died in the explosion. The munitions factory was next to the Thames estuary, and the explosion was heard across the estuary as far away as Norwich, Great Yarmouth, and Southend-on-Sea, where domestic windows were blown out and two large plate-glass shop windows shattered.


text: On 31 May 1916, three British Grand Fleet battlecruisers were destroyed by cordite deflagrations initiated by armour-piercing shells fired by the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet. At 16:02 was cut in two by deflagration of the forward magazine and sank immediately with all but two of her crew of 1,019. German eyewitness reports and the testimony of modern divers suggest all her magazines exploded. The wreck is now a debris field. At 16:25 was cut in two by detonation of the forward magazine and sank with all but 21 of her crew of 1,283. As the rear section capsized it also exploded. At 18:30 was cut in two by detonation of the midships magazine and sank in 90 seconds with all but six of her crew. 1,026 men died, including Rear Admiral Hood. An armoured cruiser, , was a fourth ship to suffer an explosive deflagration at Jutland with at least 893 men killed. The rear magazine was seen to detonate followed by more explosions as the cordite flash travelled along an ammunition passage beneath her broadside guns. Eyewitness reports suggest that may also have suffered an explosion as she was lost during the night action with all hands — 857 men. British reports say she was seen to blow up. German reports speak of the ship being overwhelmed at close range and sinking. Finally, during the confused night actions in the early hours of 1 June, the German pre-dreadnought was hit by one, or possibly two, torpedoes from the British destroyer , which detonated one of "Pommern"s gun magazines. The resulting explosion broke the ship in half and killed the entire crew of 839 men.


text: On the morning of 1 July 1916, a series of 19 mines of varying sizes was blown to start the Battle of the Somme. The explosions constituted what was then the loudest human-made sound in history, and could be heard in London. The largest single charge was the Lochnagar mine south of La Boisselle with of ammonal explosive. The mine created a crater across and deep, with a lip high. The crater is known as "Lochnagar Crater" after the trench from where the main tunnel was started.


text: On 30 July 1916, sabotage by German agents caused of explosives bound for Europe, along with another on "Johnson Barge No. 17", to explode in Jersey City, New Jersey, a major dock in New York Harbor. There were few deaths, but about 100 injuries. Damage included buildings on Ellis Island, parts of the Statue of Liberty, and much of Jersey City.


text: On 19 January 1917, parts of Silvertown in East London were devastated by a TNT explosion at the Brunner-Mond munitions factory. 73 people died and hundreds were injured. The blast was felt across London and Essex and was heard over away, with the resulting fires visible for .


text: On 10 February 1917, a chain reaction in an ammunition plant "Explosivstoffwerk Thorn" in Quickborn-Heide (northern Germany) killed at least 115 people (some sources say over 200 people), mostly young female workers.


text: Škoda Works in Bolevec, Plzeň, was the biggest ammunition plant in Austria-Hungary. A series of explosions on 25 May 1917 killed 300 workers. This event inspired Karel Čapek to write the novel "Krakatit" (1922).


text: On 7 June 1917, a series of large British mines, containing a total of over of ammonal explosive, was detonated beneath German lines on the Messines-Wytschaete ridge. The explosions created 19 large craters, killed about 10,000 German soldiers, and were heard as far away as London and Dublin. Determining the power of explosions is difficult, but this was probably the largest planned explosion in history until the 1945 Trinity atomic weapon test, and the largest non-nuclear planned explosion until the 1947 British Heligoland detonation (below). The Messines mines detonation killed more people than any other non-nuclear man-made explosion in history.


text: On 6 December 1917, and collided in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia. "Mont-Blanc" carried 2,653 tonnes of various explosives, mostly picric acid. After the collision the ship caught fire, drifted into town, and exploded. 1,950 people were killed and much of Halifax was destroyed. An evaluation of the explosion's force puts it at . Halifax historian Jay White in 1994 concluded "Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed."


text: On 1 July 1918, the National Shell Filling Factory No 6 (Chilwell, near Nottingham, England) was partly destroyed when 8 tons of TNT exploded in the dry mix part of the factory. Approximately 140 workers – mainly young women, known as the 'Chilwell Canaries' because contact with TNT turned their skin yellow – were killed, though the true number has never been established. An unknown number of people were injured, though estimates place the figure around 250. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, reports of the explosion were censored until after the Armistice. The cause of the explosion was never officially established, though present-day authorities on explosives consider it was due to a combination of factors: an exceptionally hot day, high production demands and lax safety precautions.


text: On 2 July 1918, a munitions factory near Syracuse, New York, exploded after a mixing motor in the main TNT building overheated. The fire rapidly spread through the wooden structure of the main factory. Approximately 1–3 tons of TNT were involved in the blast, which levelled the structure and killed 50 workers (conflicting reports mention 52 deaths).


text: On 4 October 1918, an ammunition plant — operated by the T. A. Gillespie Company and located in the Morgan area of Sayreville in Middlesex County, New Jersey — exploded and triggered a fire. The subsequent series of explosions continued for three days. The facility, said to be one of the largest in the world at the time, was destroyed, along with more than 300 buildings forcing reconstruction of South Amboy and Sayreville. Over 100 people died in this accident. Over a three-day period, a total of of explosives were destroyed.


text: On 21 September 1921, a BASF silo filled with 4,500 tonnes of fertilizer exploded, killing around 560, largely destroying Oppau, Germany, and causing damage more than away.


text: On 1 March 1924, an explosion destroyed a building in Nixon, New Jersey, used for processing ammonium nitrate. The explosion touched off fires in surrounding buildings in the Nixon Nitration Works that contained other highly flammable materials. The disaster killed 20 and destroyed 40 buildings.


text: On 17 July 1932, a train carrying 320 to 330 tons of dynamite from the De Beers factory at Somerset West to the Witwatersrand exploded and flattened the small town of Leeudoringstad in South Africa. Five people were killed and 11 injured in the sparsely-populated area.


text: On 10 February 1933, a gas storage in Neunkirchen, Territory of the Saar Basin, detonated during maintenance work. The detonation could be heard at distance. The death toll was 68, and 160 were injured.


text: On 18 March 1937, a natural gas leak caused an explosion, destroying the London School of New London, Texas. The disaster killed more than 295 students and teachers, making it the deadliest school disaster in American history. Letters of support were sent from around the world, including a telegram from Adolf Hitler.


text: On 1 March 1939, Warehouse No. 15 of the Imperial Japanese Army's Kinya ammunition dump in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, suffered a catastrophic explosion, the sound of which could be heard throughout the Keihan area. Additional explosions followed over the next few days as the depot burned, for a total of 29 explosions by 3 March. Japanese officials reported that 94 people died, 604 were injured, and 821 houses were damaged, with 4,425 households in all suffering the effects of the explosions.


text: On 13 September 1939, the exploded and sank while offloading naval mines in Casablanca, in French Morocco. The explosion killed 186 men, destroyed three nearby armed trawlers, and damaged nine more.


text: On 12 September 1940, nearly of gunpowder exploded at the Hercules Company in the Kenvil area of Roxbury, New Jersey. At least 51 people were killed, over 100 injured, and twenty buildings flattened. It remains unclear if this was an industrial accident, or sabotage by pro-IRA or pro-Nazi factions.


text: On 6 April 1941, was moored in Piraeus Harbour, Greece. Three German Luftwaffe bombs struck her, igniting 350 tonnes of TNT; a nearby barge carried a further 100 tonnes which also detonated. Royal Navy ships and attempted to tow her out of harbour and succeeded in getting beyond the breakwater, after the tow line had broken three times. She then exploded, levelling large areas of the port. This was witnessed by post-war author Roald Dahl, who was piloting a Hawker Hurricane fighter plane for the Royal Air Force.


text: On 24 May 1941, sank in three minutes after the stern magazine detonated during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The wreck has been located in three pieces, suggesting additional detonation of a forward magazine. There were only three survivors from the crew of 1,418.


text: On 25 November 1941, was sunk by the ; 862 crew lost. The main magazines explosion was captured on film by a Pathé News cameraman on board the nearby HMS "Valiant".


text: During World War II, German invading forces in Serbia used Smederevo Fortress for ammunition storage. On 5 June 1941 it exploded, blasting through the entirety of Smederevo and reaching settlements as far as away. Much of the southern wall of the fortress was destroyed, the nearby railway station, packed with people, was blown away, and most of the buildings in the city were turned into debris. Around 2,500 people died in the explosion, and half of the inhabitants were injured (approximately 5,500).


text: On the night of 10 June 1942, the torpedoed the 8,600-ton British freighter "Surrey" in the Caribbean Sea. Five thousand tons of dynamite in the cargo detonated after the ship sank. The shock wave lifted "U-68" out of the water as if she had suffered a torpedo hit, and both diesel engines and the gyrocompass were disabled.


text: On the night of 3 November 1942, torpedoes detonated the ammunition cargo of the 6,690-ton British freighter "Hatimura". Both the freighter and attacking submarine were destroyed by the explosion.


text: On 28 March 1943, in the port of Naples, a fire broke out on "Caterina Costa", an 8,060-ton motor ship with arms and supplies (1,000 tons of gas, 900 tons of explosives, tanks and others); the fire became uncontrollable, causing a devastating explosion. A large number of buildings around were destroyed or badly damaged. Some ships nearby caught fire and sank, and hot parts of the ship and tanks were thrown great distances. More than 600 dead and over 3000 wounded.


text: On 14 April 1944, , carrying around of explosives (among other goods), caught fire and exploded, killing around 800 people. Debris fell across the city landing miles away from the site of the explosion. The bales of cotton on board the ship caught fire and fell from the sky causing fires in other parts of the city. The explosion was strong enough to be detected on seismographs in Shimla, a city more than 1700 km from the site of the explosion.


text: On 20 April 1944, the Dutch steam trawler , loaded with of explosives, caught fire and exploded at the quay in the centre of Bergen. The air pressure from the explosion and the tsunami that followed flattened whole neighbourhoods near the harbour. Fires broke out in the aftermath, leaving 5,000 people homeless. 160 people were killed, and 5,000 wounded.


text: On 20 April 1944, the Liberty ship was attacked off Cape Bengut near Algiers by Luftwaffe bombers. The ship and 580 personnel aboard were destroyed within 30 seconds when the cargo of bombs and explosives detonated.


text: On 21 May 1944, an ammunition handling accident in Pearl Harbor destroyed six LSTs and three LCTs. Four more LSTs, ten tugs, and a net tender were damaged. Eleven buildings were destroyed ashore and nine more damaged. Between 132 and nearly 400 military personnel were killed.


text: On 4 July 1944, a huge explosion in the city of Aarhus, Denmark occurred when a barge loaded with ammunition exploded in the harbour, killing 39 people and injuring another 250.


text: On 17 July 1944, in Port Chicago, California, SS "E. A. Bryan" exploded while loading ammunition bound for the Pacific, with an estimated of high explosive (HE), incendiary bombs, depth charges, and other ammunition. Another waiting on nearby rail cars also exploded. The total explosive content is described as between 1,600 and 2,136 tons of TNT. 320 were killed instantly, another 390 wounded. Most of the killed and wounded were African American enlisted men. Following the explosion, 258 fellow sailors refused to load ordnance; 50 of these, called the "Port Chicago 50", were convicted of mutiny even though they were willing to carry out any order that did not involve loading ordnance under unsafe conditions.


text: On 20 October 1944, a liquefied natural gas storage tank in Cleveland, Ohio, split and leaked its contents, which spread, caught fire, and exploded. A half hour later, another tank exploded as well. The explosions destroyed , killed 130, and left 600 homeless.


text: On 10 November 1944, exploded in Seeadler Harbor at Manus Island in Australian New Guinea, with an estimated 3,800 tons of ordnance material on board. Mushrooming smoke rose to , obscuring the surrounding area for a radius of approximately . "Mount Hood"s former position was revealed by a trench in the ocean floor long, wide, and deep. The largest remaining piece of the hull was found in the trench and measured . All 296 men aboard the ship were killed. was away and suffered extensive damage, with 23 crew killed, and 174 injured. Several other nearby ships were also damaged or destroyed. Altogether 372 were killed and 371 injured in the blast.


text: On 27 November 1944, the RAF Ammunition Depot at Fauld, Staffordshire, became the site of the largest explosion in the UK, when 3,700 tonnes of bombs stored in underground bunkers covering exploded en masse. The explosion was caused by bombs being taken out of store, primed for use, and replaced with the detonators still installed when unused. The crater was deep and covered 5 hectares. The death toll was approximately 78, including RAF personnel, six Italian prisoners of war, civilian employees, and local people. In the similar Port Chicago disaster (above), about half the weight of bombs was high explosive. If the same is true of the Fauld Explosion, it would have been equivalent to about 2 kilotons of TNT.


text: On December 28, 1944, while transporting ammunition to Mindoro, Philippines, the Liberty ship SS "John Burke" was hit by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft, and disintegrated in a tremendous explosion with the loss of all hands.


text: On 7 April 1945, after six hours of battle, 's magazine exploded as she sank, resulting in a mushroom cloud rising above the wreck, and which could be seen from Kyushu, away. 3,055 crewmen were killed.


text: On 7 May 1945, 100 tons of TNT were stacked on a wooden tower and exploded to test the instrumentation prior to the test of the first atomic bomb.


text: On 12 November 1945, when the occupation troops were trying to dispose of 530 tons of ammunition, there was an explosion in a tunnel in Soeda, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu Island. According to a confirmed official report, 147 local residents were killed and 149 people injured.


text: On 16 April 1947, SS "Grandcamp", loaded with about 2,300 tons ammonium nitrate, exploded in port at Texas City, Texas. 581 died and over 5,000 were injured. This is generally considered the worst industrial accident in United States history.


text: On 18 April 1947, British engineers attempted to destroy the abandoned German fortifications on the evacuated island of Heligoland in what became known as the "British Bang". The island had been fortified during the war with a submarine base and airfield. Roughly 4000 tons of surplus World War II ammunition were placed in various locations around the island and set off. A significant portion of the fortifications were destroyed, although some survived. According to Willmore, the energy released was 1.3×10 J, or about 3.2 kilotons of TNT equivalent. The blast is listed in the "Guinness Book of World Records" under "largest single explosive detonation", although Minor Scale in 1985 was larger (see below).


text: On 28 July 1947, the Norwegian cargo ship "Ocean Liberty" exploded in the French port of Brest. The cargo consisted of 3,300 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in addition to paraffin and petrol. The explosion killed 22 people, hundreds were injured, 4,000–5,000 buildings were damaged.


text: On 18 August 1947, a naval ammunition warehouse containing mostly mines and torpedoes exploded in Cádiz, in southern Spain, for unknown reasons. The explosion of 200 tons of TNT destroyed a large portion of the city. Officially, the explosion killed 150 people; the real death toll is suspected to be higher.


text: On 19 December 1947, the Liberty class cargo ship "General Vatutin" exploded in the Soviet port of Magadan at Nagayeva Bay on the Russian Far East. The ship transported 3,313 tonnes of ammonal and TNT for the mining industry. Another cargo ship "Vyborg", carrying 193 tonnes of chemical substances including detonators and fuse cords, also detonated from the explosion. More than 90 people were killed, more than 500 were injured. The explosion caused a tsunami with broken ice, damaging and destroying many buildings.


text: In December 1947, a Swiss Army ammunition dump exploded at Mitholz, Switzerland. The explosion of 3,000 tonnes of ammunition killed nine people and destroyed every house in the village.


text: On 15 July 1949 in the German town of Prüm, an underground bunker inside the hill of "Kalvarienberg" and used previously by the German Army to store ammunition, but now filled with French Army munitions, caught fire. After a mostly successful evacuation, the 500 tonnes of ammunition in the bunker exploded and destroyed large parts of the town. 12 people died and 15 were severely injured.


text: On 7 August 1956, seven trucks from the Colombian National Army, carrying more than 40 tons of dynamite, exploded. The explosion killed more than 1,000 people, and left a crater deep and in diameter.


text: On 5 April 1958, an underwater mountain at Ripple Rock, British Columbia, Canada was levelled by the explosion of 1,375 tonnes of Nitramex 2H, an ammonium nitrate-based explosive. This was one of the largest non-nuclear planned explosions on record, and the subject of the first CBC live broadcast coast-to-coast.


text: On 18 July 1963, a test blast of 50 tons of TNT in the Iron Range area of Queensland, Australia, tested the effects of nuclear weapons on tropical rainforest, military targets and ability of troops to transit through the resulting debris field.


text: On 17 September 1964, the offshore disposal of the ship "Village", containing of obsolete munitions, caused unexpected detonations five minutes after sinking off New Jersey. The detonations were detected on seismic instruments around the world; the incident encouraged intentional detonation of subsequent disposal operations to determine detectability of underwater nuclear testing.


text: A series of tests, Operation Sailor Hat, was performed off Kaho'olawe Island, Hawaii, in 1965, using conventional explosives to simulate the shock effects of nuclear blasts on naval vessels. Each test saw the detonation of of high explosives.


text: On 14 July 1965, "Coastal Mariner" was loaded with of obsolete munitions containing of high explosives. The cargo was detonated at a depth of and created a 600-foot (200 m) water spout, but was not deep enough to be recorded on seismic instruments. On 16 September 1965, "Santiago Iglesias" was similarly detonated with of obsolete munitions.


text: On 4 January 1966, an LPG spill occurred near Lyon, France, and resulted in a cloud of propane vapour which persisted until it was ignited by a bypassing car. Several tanks erupted in a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion, causing the deaths of 18 people, the injury of 81 and extensive damage to the site.


text: On 21 October 1966, a mud flow protection dam near Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan was created by a series of four preliminary explosions of 1,800 tonnes total and a final explosion of 3,600 tonnes of ammonium nitrate-based explosive. On 14 April 1967, the dam was reinforced by an explosion of 3,900 tonnes of ammonium nitrate-based explosive.


text: On 23 May 1966, "Izaac Van Zandt" was loaded with of obsolete munitions containing of high explosives. The cargo was detonated off Puget Sound at a depth of .


text: On 28 July 1966, "Horace Greeley" was loaded with obsolete munitions and detonated off New Jersey at a depth of .


text: On 3 July 1969, an N1 rocket in the Soviet Union exploded on the launch pad of Baikonur Cosmodrome, after a turbopump exploded in one of the engines. The entire rocket contained about of kerosene and of liquid oxygen. Using a standard energy release of 43 MJ/kg of kerosene gives about 29 TJ for the energy of the explosion (about 6.93 kt TNT equivalent). Investigators later determined that up to 85% of the fuel in the rocket did not detonate, meaning that the blast yield was likely no more than 1 kt TNT equivalent. Comparing explosions of initially unmixed fuels is difficult (being part detonation and part deflagration).


text: On 9 March 1972, 2,000 tons (4 million pounds) of explosive were detonated inside three levels of tunnels in the Old Reliable Mine near Mammoth, Arizona. The blast was an experimental attempt to break up the ore body so that metals (primarily copper) could be extracted using sulfuric acid in a heap-leach process. The benefits of increased production were short-lived while the costs of managing acid mine drainage due to the sulfide ore body being exposed to oxygen continue to the present day.


text: On 1 June 1974, a pipe failure at the Nypro chemical plant in Flixborough, England, caused a large release of flammable cyclohexane vapour. This ignited and the resulting fuel-air explosion destroyed the plant, killing 28 people and injuring 36 more. Beyond the plant 1,821 houses and 167 shops and factories had suffered to a greater or lesser degree. Fires burned for 16 days. The explosion occurred at a weekend otherwise the casualties would have been much heavier. This explosion caused a significant strengthening of safety regulations for chemical plants in the United Kingdom.


text: On 11 November 1977, a freight train carrying 40 tons of dynamite from Gwangju suddenly exploded at Iri station (present-day Iksan), Jeollabuk-do province, South Korea. The cause of the explosion was accidental ignition by a drunk guard. 59 people lost their lives, and 185 others seriously wounded; altogether, over 1,300 people were injured or killed.


text: On 11 July 1978, an overloaded tanker truck carrying 23 tons of liquefied propylene crashed and ruptured in Spain, emitting a white cloud of ground-hugging fumes which spread into a nearby campground and discothèque before reaching an ignition source and exploding. 217 people were killed and 200 more severely burned.


text: In 1983 near Murdock, Illinois, at least two tanker cars of a burning derailed train exploded into BLEVEs; one of them was thrown nearly .


text: On 27 May 1983, an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory near Benton, Tennessee, killed eleven, injured one, and caused damage within a radius of several miles. The blast created a mushroom cloud tall and was heard as far as away.


text: On 7 January 1983, an explosion of the Texaco oil tank farm was felt for 100–130 miles from Newark, New Jersey claiming 1 life and injuring 22–24 people.


text: Many very large detonations have been carried out in order to simulate the effects of nuclear weapons on vehicles and other military material. The largest publicly known test was conducted by the United States Defense Nuclear Agency (now part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency) on 27 June 1985 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. This test, called Minor Scale, used of ANFO, with a yield of about . Misty Picture was another similar test a few years later, slightly smaller at .


text: On 4 May 1988, about of ammonium perchlorate (NHClO) caught fire and set off explosions near Henderson, Nevada. A natural gas pipeline ruptured under the stored ammonium perchlorate and added fuel to the later, larger explosions. There were seven detonations in total, the largest being the last. Two people were killed and hundreds injured. The largest explosion was estimated to be equivalent to . The accident was caught on video by a broadcast engineer servicing a transmitter on Black Mountain, between Henderson and Las Vegas.


text: The Arzamas explosion, known also as Arzamas train disaster, occurred on 4 June 1988, when three goods wagons transporting hexogen to Kazakhstan exploded on a railway crossing in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, Soviet Union. Explosion of 118 tons of hexogen made a deep crater, and caused major damage, killing 91 people and injuring 1,500. 151 buildings were destroyed.


text: On 4 June 1989, a gas explosion destroyed two trains (37 cars and two locomotives) in the Soviet Union. At least 575 people died and more than 800 were injured.


text: On 14 February 1996, a Chinese Long March 3B rocket veered severely off course immediately after clearing the launch tower at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, then crashed into a nearby city and exploded. Following the disaster, foreign media were kept in a bunker for five hours while, some alleged, the Chinese People's Liberation Army attempted to "clean up" the damage. Officials later blamed the failure on an "unexpected gust of wind" although video shows this is not the case. Xinhua News Agency initially reported 6 deaths and 57 injuries.


text: On 13 May 2000, 177 tonnes of fireworks exploded in Enschede, in the Netherlands, in which 23 people were killed and 947 were injured. The first explosion had the order of 800 kg TNT equivalence; the final explosion was in the range of 4,000–5,000 kg TNT.


text: On 21 September 2001, an explosion occurred at a fertilizer factory in Toulouse, France. The disaster caused 31 deaths, 2,500 seriously wounded, and 8,000 light injuries. The blast (estimated yield of 20–40 tons of TNT, comparable in scale to the military test Operation Blowdown) was heard 80 km away (50 miles) and registered 3.4 on the Richter magnitude scale. It damaged about 30,000 buildings over about two-thirds of the city, for an estimated total cost of about €2 billion.


text: A train exploded in North Korea on 22 April 2004. According to official figures, 54 people were killed and 1,249 were injured.


text: On 3 November 2004, about 284 tonnes of fireworks exploded in Kolding, in Denmark. One firefighter was killed, and a mass evacuation of 2,000 people saved many lives. The cost of the damage was estimated at €100 million.


text: On 23 March 2005, there was a hydrocarbon leak due to incorrect operations during a start up which caused a vapour cloud explosion when ignited by a running vehicle engine. There were 15 deaths and more than 170 injured.


text: On 11 December 2005, there was a series of major explosions at the capacity Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. The explosions were heard over away, as far as the Netherlands and France, and the resulting flames were visible for many miles around the depot. A smoke cloud covered Hemel Hempstead and nearby parts of west Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. There were no fatalities, but there were around 43 injuries (2 serious). The British Geological Survey estimated the equivalent yield of the explosion as 29.5 tonnes TNT.


text: On 30 January 2007, a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL space rocket exploded on takeoff. The explosion consumed the roughly of kerosene and liquid oxygen on board. This rocket was launched from an uncrewed ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so there were no casualties; the launch platform was damaged and the NSS-8 satellite was destroyed.


text: On 22 March 2007, a series of explosions over 2.5 hours rocked the Mozambican capital of Maputo. The incident was blamed on high temperatures. Officials confirmed 93 fatalities and more than 300 injuries.


text: On Saturday, 15 March 2008, at an ex-military ammunition depot in the village of Gërdec in the Vorë Municipality, Albania (14 kilometers from Tirana, the nation's capital), US and Albanian munitions experts were preparing to destroy stockpiles of obsolete ammunition. The main explosion, involving more than 400 tons of propellant in containers, destroyed hundreds of houses within a few kilometres from the depot and broke windows in cars on the Tirana-Durrës highway. A large fire caused a series of smaller but powerful explosions that continued until 2 a.m. on Sunday. The explosions could be heard as far away as the Macedonian capital of Skopje, 170 km (110 mi) away.[1] There were 26 killed, 318 houses were destroyed completely, 200 buildings were seriously damaged, and 188 buildings were less seriously damaged.


text: On the morning of 23 October 2009, there was a major explosion at the petrol tanks at the Caribbean Petroleum Corporation oil refinery and oil depot in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The explosion was seen and heard from away and left a smoke plume with tops as high as It caused a 3.0 earthquake and blew glass out of windows around the city. The resulting fire was extinguished on 25 October.


text: On 13 and 23 November 2009, 120 tons of Soviet-era artillery shells blew up in two separate sets of explosions at the 31st Arsenal of the Caspian Sea Flotilla's ammunition depot near Ulyanovsk, killing ten.


text: Around 5:45 am local time on 11 July 2011, a fire at a munitions dump at Evangelos Florakis Naval Base near Zygi, Cyprus, caused the explosion of 98 cargo containers holding various types of munitions. The naval base was destroyed, as was Cyprus's biggest power plant, the "Vassilikos" power plant away. The explosion also caused 13 deaths and over 60 injuries. Injuries were reported up to away and damaged houses were reported as far as away. Seismometers at the Mediterranean region recorded the explosion as a M3.0 seismic event.


text: On 11 March 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake caused natural gas containers in the Cosmo Oil Refinery of Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, Japan to catch fire, destroying storage tanks and injuring six. As it burned, several pressurized liquefied propane gas storage tanks exploded into fireballs. It was extinguished by the Cosmo Oil Company on 21 March 2011.


text: On 8–9 October 2012, a Russian ammunition depot, at the Donguz test site, containing 4,000 tons of shells exploded from Orenburg in Central Russia.


text: On 17 April 2013, a fire culminating in an explosion shortly before 8 p.m. CDT (00:50 UTC, 18 April) destroyed the West Fertilizer Company plant in West, Texas, United States, located north of Waco, Texas. The blast killed 15 people, injured over 160, and destroyed over 150 buildings. The United States Geological Survey recorded the explosion as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake, the equivalent of 7.5 – 10 tons of TNT.


text: On 6 July 2013, a train of 73 tank cars of light crude oil ran away down a slight incline, after being left unattended for the night, when the air brakes failed after the locomotive engines were shut down following a small fire. It derailed twelve kilometres away in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, igniting the Bakken light crude oil from 44 DOT-111 oil cars. Approximately 3–4 minutes after the initial blast, there was a second explosion from 12 oil cars. A series of smaller blasts followed into the early morning hours, igniting the oil of a total 73 oil cars. The disaster is known to have killed 42 people; five more were missing and presumed dead.


text: On 12 August 2015, at 23:30, two explosions occurred in the Chinese port Tianjin at a warehouse operated by Ruihai Logistics. The more powerful explosion was estimated at 336 tons TNT equivalent. 173 people were killed, and 8 remain missing.


text: On 5 June 2016, a fire at the largest military armoury in the island nation of Sri Lanka caused a series of explosions that lasted for about 5 hours. One soldier was killed and several others were injured.


text: On 20 December 2016, a fireworks explosion occurred at the San Pablito Market in the city of Tultepec, north of Mexico City. At least 42 people were killed, and dozens injured.


text: On 14 January 2020, an ethylene oxide tank exploded at the IQOXE (Chemical Industries of Ethylene Oxide) plant in Tarragona (Spain).


text: On 4 August 2020, a warehouse containing of ammonium nitrate exploded following a fire in the Port of Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion generated a pressure wave felt more than away. Following early estimates of the yield of the explosion ranging from hundreds of tons of TNT equivalent to 1.1 kilotons, a study by researchers from the Blast and Impact Research Group at the University of Sheffield estimated the energy of the Beirut explosion to be equivalent to 0.5–1.2 kt of TNT. At least 200 people were killed, more than 6,500 injured, and about 300,000 made homeless. Much of central Beirut was devastated by the blast with property damage estimated at US$10–15 billion.


text: The most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever designed are the United States' MOAB (standing for "Massive Ordnance Air Blast", also nicknamed "Mother Of All Bombs", tested in 2003 and used on April 13, 2017, in Achin District, Afghanistan) and the Russian Father of All Bombs (tested in 2007). The MOAB contains of Composition H6 explosive, which is 1.35 times as powerful as TNT, giving the bomb an approximate yield of 11 t TNT. It would require about 250 MOAB blasts to equal the Halifax explosion (2.9 kt).


text: Large conventional explosions have been conducted for nuclear testing purposes. Some of the larger ones are listed below.


text: Other smaller tests include "Air Vent I" and "Flat Top I-III" series of 20 tons TNT at Nevada Test Site in 1963–64, "Pre Mine Throw" and "Mine Throw" in 1970–1974, "Mixed Company 1 & 2" of 20 tons TNT, "Middle Gust I-V" series of 20 or 100 tons TNT in the early 1970s, "Pre Dice Throw" and "Pre Dice Throw II" in 1975, "Pre-Direct Course" in 1982, "SHIST" in 1994, and the series "Dipole Might" in the 1990s and 2000s. Divine Strake was a planned test of 700 tons ANFO at the Nevada Test Site in 2006, but was cancelled.


text: These yields are approximated by the amount of the explosive material and its properties. They are rough estimates and are not authoritative.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action". It includes surface based, subsurface (submarine launched), and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries, the main effort has tended to be homeland defence. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence, as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: In some countries, such as Britain and Germany during the Second World War, the Soviet Union, and modern NATO and the United States, ground-based air defence and air defence aircraft have been under integrated command and control. However, while overall air defence may be for homeland defence (including military facilities), forces in the field, wherever they are, provide their own defences against air threats.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Until the 1950s, guns firing ballistic munitions ranging from 7.62 mm (.30 in) to 152.4 mm (6 in) were the standard weapons; guided missiles then became dominant, except at the very shortest ranges (as with close-in weapon systems, which typically use rotary autocannons or, in very modern systems, surface-to-air adaptations of short-range air-to-air missiles, often combined in one system with rotary cannons).


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: The term "air defence" was probably first used by Britain when Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB) was created as a Royal Air Force command in 1925 [Evidence from a WW1 RPPC shows the term Air Defences was in use by 1916. The rear of the WW1 postcard is annotated with "Sergeants of the No.1 Anti-Aircraft Coy London Air Defences (S.W.) Feb 20/1916]. However, arrangements in the UK were also called 'anti-aircraft', abbreviated as "AA", a term that remained in general use into the 1950s. After the First World War it was sometimes prefixed by 'Light' or 'Heavy' (LAA or HAA) to classify a type of gun or unit. Nicknames for anti-aircraft guns include "AA", "AAA" or "triple-A" (abbreviations of "anti-aircraft artillery"), "flak" (from the German), "ack-ack" (from the spelling alphabet used by the British for voice transmission of "AA"); and "archie" (a World War I British term probably coined by Amyas Borton, and believed to derive via the Royal Flying Corps, from the music-hall comedian George Robey's line "Archibald, certainly not!").


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: NATO defines anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) as "measures taken to defend a maritime force against attacks by airborne weapons launched from aircraft, ships, submarines and land-based sites". In some armies the term "All-Arms Air Defence" (AAAD) is used for air defence by nonspecialist troops. Other terms from the late 20th century include "ground based air defence" (GBAD) with related terms "short range air defense" (SHORAD) and man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS). Anti-aircraft missiles are variously called surface-to-air missile, abbreviated and pronounced "SAM" and surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW). Examples are the RIM-66 Standard, Raytheon Standard Missile 6, or the MBDA Aster missile.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Non-English terms for air defence include the German "Flak" or "FlaK" ("Fliegerabwehrkanone", "aircraft defence cannon", also cited as "Flugabwehrkanone"), whence English 'flak', and the Russian term "Protivovozdushnaya oborona" (Cyrillic: Противовозду́шная оборо́на), a literal translation of "anti-air defence", abbreviated as PVO. In Russian, the AA systems are called "zenitnye" (i.e., 'pointing to zenith') systems (guns, missiles etc.). In French, air defence is called DCA ("Défense contre les aéronefs", "aéronef" being the generic term for all kinds of airborne threats (aeroplane, airship, balloon, missile, rocket).


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: The maximum distance at which a gun or missile can engage an aircraft is an important figure. However, many different definitions are used but unless the same definition is used, performance of different guns or missiles cannot be compared. For AA guns only the ascending part of the trajectory can be usefully used. One term is "ceiling", the maximum ceiling being the height a projectile would reach if fired vertically, not practically useful in itself as few AA guns are able to fire vertically, and the maximum fuse duration may be too short, but potentially useful as a standard to compare different weapons.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: The British adopted "effective ceiling", meaning the altitude at which a gun could deliver a series of shells against a moving target; this could be constrained by maximum fuse running time as well as the gun's capability. By the late 1930s the British definition was "that height at which a directly approaching target at can be engaged for 20 seconds before the gun reaches 70 degrees elevation". However, effective ceiling for heavy AA guns was affected by non-ballistic factors:


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: The essence of air defence is to detect hostile aircraft and destroy them. The critical issue is to hit a target moving in three-dimensional space; an attack must not only match these three coordinates, but must do so at the time the target is at that position. This means that projectiles either have to be guided to hit the target, or aimed at the predicted position of the target at the time the projectile reaches it, taking into account the speed and direction of both the target and the projectile.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Throughout the 20th century, air defence was one of the fastest-evolving areas of military technology, responding to the evolution of aircraft and exploiting technology such as radar, guided missiles and computing (initially electromechanical analogue computing from the 1930s on, as with equipment described below). Improvements were made to sensors, technical fire control, weapons, and command and control. At the start of the 20th century these were either very primitive or non-existent.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Initially sensors were optical and acoustic devices developed during World War I and continued into the 1930s, but were quickly superseded by radar, which in turn was supplemented by optronics in the 1980s.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Command and control remained primitive until the late 1930s, when Britain created an integrated system for ADGB that linked the ground-based air defence of the British Army's Anti-Aircraft Command, although field-deployed air defence relied on less sophisticated arrangements. NATO later called these arrangements an "air defence ground environment", defined as "the network of ground radar sites and command and control centres within a specific theatre of operations which are used for the tactical control of air defence operations".


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Rules of Engagement are critical to prevent air defences engaging friendly or neutral aircraft. Their use is assisted but not governed by identification friend or foe (IFF) electronic devices originally introduced during the Second World War. While these rules originate at the highest authority, different rules can apply to different types of air defence covering the same area at the same time. AAAD usually operates under the tightest rules.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Until the 1950s, guns firing ballistic munitions were the standard weapon; guided missiles then became dominant, except at the very shortest ranges. However, the type of shell or warhead and its fuzing and, with missiles the guidance arrangement, were and are varied. Targets are not always easy to destroy; nonetheless, damaged aircraft may be forced to abort their mission and, even if they manage to return and land in friendly territory, may be out of action for days or permanently. Ignoring small arms and smaller machine-guns, ground-based air defence guns have varied in calibre from 20 mm to at least 152 mm.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: Passive air defence is defined by NATO as "Passive measures taken for the physical defence and protection of personnel, essential installations and equipment in order to minimise the effectiveness of air and/or missile attack". It remains a vital activity by ground forces and includes camouflage and concealment to avoid detection by reconnaissance and attacking aircraft. Measures such as camouflaging important buildings were common in the Second World War. During the Cold War the runways and taxiways of some airfields were painted green.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: While navies are usually responsible for their own air defence, at least for ships at sea, organisational arrangements for land-based air defence vary between nations and over time.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: The most extreme case was the Soviet Union, and this model may still be followed in some countries: it was a separate service, on a par with the army, navy, or air force. In the Soviet Union this was called "Voyska PVO", and had both fighter aircraft, separate from the air force, and ground-based systems. This was divided into two arms, "PVO Strany," the Strategic Air defence Service responsible for Air Defence of the Homeland, created in 1941 and becoming an independent service in 1954, and "PVO SV," Air Defence of the Ground Forces. Subsequently, these became part of the air force and ground forces respectively.


title: Anti-aircraft warfare

text: At the other extreme the United States Army has an Air Defense Artillery Branch that provided ground-based air defence for both homeland and the army in the field, however it is operationally under the Joint Force Air Component Commander. Many other nations also deploy an air-defence branch in the army. Other nations, such as Japan or Israel, choose to integrate their ground based air defence systems into their air force.