Thetsunami bomb was an attempt duringWorld War II to develop atectonic weapon that could create destructivetsunamis. The project commenced afterUnited States Navy officer E.A. Gibson noticed small waves generated by explosions used to clearcoral reefs. The idea was developed by the United States and New Zealand military in a program code named Project Seal.[1] The weapons concept was deemed feasible, but the weapons themselves were never fully developed or used. While perhaps technically feasible, the same nuclear yield deployed instead as an airburst would be expected to be far more devastating.[2]
A related concept, thebouncing bomb,was developed and used in World War II to be dropped into water as a means to destroy Germandams and cause loss of industrial capacity and widespread flooding.
Tests were conducted by Professor Thomas Leech, of theUniversity of Auckland, inWhangaparaoa off the coast ofAuckland and offNew Caledonia[1] between 1944 and 1945. British and US defence chiefs were eager to see it developed, and it was considered potentially as important as theatomic bomb. It was expected to cause massive damage to coastal cities or coastal defences.
The weapon was only tested using small explosions and never on a full scale. 3,700 test explosions[1] were conducted over a seven-month period. The tests revealed that a single explosion would not produce a tsunami, but concluded that a line of 2,000,000 kg (4,400,000 lb) of explosives about 8 km (5.0 mi) off the coast could create a destructive wave.[1]
Details of the experimentscodenamed "Project Seal" were released to the public by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 1999 and are available atArchives New Zealand in Wellington and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives in San Diego, California.[3][4]
A 1968 research report sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research addressed this hypothesis of coastal damage due to large explosion-generated waves, and found theoretical and experimental evidence showing it to be relatively inefficient in wave-making potential, with most wave energy dissipated by breaking on the continental shelf before reaching the shore.[5]
Analysis of the declassified documents in 1999 by theUniversity of Waikato suggested the weapon would be viable.[6]
No specific targets for the weapon were identified, but in 2013 New Zealand broadcaster and authorRay Waru suggestedcoastal fortifications in Japan ahead of aninvasion of the Japanese home islands.[7]
Egyptian magazineAl-Osboa claimed that the2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was intentionally caused by anuclear weapon detonated in a strategic position under the ocean.[8][9]
Andrei Sakharov in 1961 proposed a torpedo with a nuclear 100-megaton warhead; such a torpedo could be fired at a safe distance by fitting it with a timing mechanism. Then it would explode at the right time, causing a tsunami.[10]
In 2018, Russia has released plans for a 20 to 100Mt tsunami bomb, namedStatus-6 or Poseidon Torpedo, which is realized as a nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle with a length of about 24m. According to the plan, the Poseidon Torpedo would initiate a 500m high shockwave.
In 2023, theKCNA reported a test of underwater attack drone 'Haeil' (해일, "tsunami" in Korean) off Hongwon Bay. Reportedly after cruising around 80-150m underwater, it creates an explosion that subsequently creates a radioactive wave.[11]
Thebouncing bomb was a 5-ton bomb developed, separately, duringWorld War II. Like the tsunami bomb, it was also designed to explode in water, and one of its intended effects was to cause massive flooding. However its targets were the massive reinforceddams ofNazi Germany, which were deemed untouchable by ordinary weapons yet, if broken, would cause extensive harm to Germany'swar effort. The bombs' most unusual feature was that they were deliberatelyspun backwards before dropping; this backspin caused them to skip along the surface of the water for a set distance before sinking, and allowed them to evadetorpedo nets that protected the dams before exploding underwater similarly to adepth charge. The inventor of the first such bomb was the British engineerBarnes Wallis, whose "Upkeep" bouncing bomb was used in theRAF'sOperation Chastise of May 1943 to bounce into German dams and explode underwater, with effect similar to the underground detonation of theGrand Slam andTallboyearthquake bombs, both of which he also invented. His April 1942 paper "Spherical Bomb — Surface Torpedo" described this method of attack.[12] The weapons were used successfully against three dams in 1943.
Theearthquake bomb, or seismic bomb, was a separate but related concept that was separately invented by the British aeronautical engineerBarnes Wallis early inWorld War II and subsequently developed and used on land against strategic targets in Europe.[13] The earthquake bomb also used the concept of an explosion in a dense medium. It differed somewhat in concept from traditional aircraft-borne bombs, which usually explode at or near the surface, and destroy their target directly by explosive force. By contrast, an earthquake bomb is dropped from very high altitude to gain more speed, and upon impact penetrates and explodes deep underground, causing massive caverns (camouflets) or craters as well as much more severeshockwaves. In this way, they can affect targets that are too massive to be affected by other types of conventional bomb, as well as difficult targets such asbridges andviaducts. Earthquake bombs were used towards the end of World War II for massively reinforced installations (e.g., submarine pens with concrete walls several meters thick, caverns, buried tunnels), and bridges.[14]
