The Royal Norwegian Navy blew up all torpedoes remaining in the sunken frigate, Helge Ingstad, which sank as a result of collision with an oil tanker in November 2018.
Helge Ingstad was one of the most modern ships in the navy and cost over $500 million dollars. It sunk between the port city of Bergen and the North Sea.
The Navy already dealt with torpedoes on board the sunken ship. However, more ammunition will need to be reviewed before the remains can be raised.
How about shooting the torpedoes at the frigate ? :)
Fish killers! I wonder why they had to blow up the torpedoes? Maybe because they got wet? Could they have been damaged in the collision? Damn… that’s scary. Seriously, any squids out there have any insight? Do modern, unfuzed torpedoes have some kind of waterproof covers that are left off until the torpedo is readied for use? They’re pretty expensive – seems like they would want to salvage them if they went through the trouble of removing them already.
I used to carry torpedoes by truck to the testing ground on the Hawkesbury river. I stopped at KFC for lunch one day, and the girl behind the counter asked if it was safe. I said yeah, you would have to hit it really hard with a hammer or similar to make it explode. You should have seen the faces of the people there, so funny, of course it was fitted with a dummy warhead.
But with a real warhead, I wouldn’t want to be part of the salvage team, a freak wave smashing it into a bulkhead, or a spark igniting some fuel, paint thinners or oxygen/hydrogen created by electrolysis, and it’s Hasta la Vista, baby.
Know the old French film – The Wages of Fear – about trucking active nitroglycerine on rough mining roads – ;)
Not the finest moment in Norwegian military history – by a long margin.