-Caveat Lector-
Air Force Brigadier General (Ret.)Benton K. Partin has
a long list of credentials and qualifications. He is
one of the foremost experts in the world on the
subject of "bomb damage assessment". I hope you will
read and consider his analysis of the bombing in
Oklahoma City. At least read these few lines:
"The Murrah Federal Building was not destroyed by one
sole truck bomb. The major factor in its destruction
appears to have been detonation of explosives
carefully placed at four critical junctures on
supporting columns within the building."
J.C.
PART ONE: Bomb Damage Analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bomb Damage Analysis Of Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
July 30, 1995
by Benton K. Partin
Brigadier Gen. USAF (Ret.)
8908 Captains Row, Alexandria, Virginia 22308
703-780-7652
On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed, causing
extensive damage to the structure, the
loss of 168 innocent lives, the victimization of the
families of those who lost loved ones, hundreds of
non-fatal injuries, and substantial property
damage in the vicinity.
The media and the Executive branch reported that the
sole source of the devastation was a single truck bomb
consisting of 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate,
transported to the location in a Ryder Truck and
parked in front of the building. It is impossible that
the destruction to the building could have resulted
from such a bomb alone.
To cause the damage pattern that occurred to the
Murrah building, there would have to have been
demolition charges at several supporting column
bases, at locations not accessible from the street, to
supplement the truck bomb damage. Indeed, a careful
examination of photographs showing the collapsed
column bases reveals a failure mode produced by
demolition charges and not by a blast from the truck
bomb.
To understand what caused the damage to the Murrah
Building, one needs to understand some basics about
the use and nature of explosives.
First, blast through air is a very inefficient energy
coupling mechanism against heavily reinforced concrete
beams and columns.
Second, blast damage potential initially falls off
more rapidly than an inverse function of the distance
cubed. That is why in conventional weapons
development, one seeks accuracy over yield for hard
targets. That is also why in the World Trade Center
bombing (where the only source of blast damage
was a truck bomb) the column in the middle of the
bombed-out cavity was relatively untouched, although
reinforced concrete floors were completely
stripped away for several floors above and below the
point of the bomb's detonation (see Time Magazine,
3-8-93, page 35).
By contrast, heavily reinforced concrete structures
can be destroyed effectively through detonation of
explosives in contact with the reinforced
concrete beams and columns. For example, the entire
building remains in Oklahoma City were collapsed with
100-plus relatively small charges inserted
into drilled holes in the columns. The total weight of
all charges was on the order of 200 pounds.
The detonation wave pressure (1,000,000 to 1,500,000
pounds per square inch) from a high detonation
velocity contact explosive sweeps into the
column as a wave of compressive deformation. Since the
pressure in the wave of deformation far exceeds the
yield strength of the concrete (about 3,500
pounds per square inch) by a factor of approximately
300, the concrete is turned into granular sand and
dust until the wave dissipates to below
the yield strength of the concrete. This leaves a
relatively smooth but granular surface, with
protruding, bare reinforcement rods__a distinctive
signature of damage by contact explosives. The effect
of the contact explosive on the reinforcement rods
themselves can only be seen under microscopic
metallurgical examination. (The rods are inertially
confined during the explosion and survive basically in
tact because of their much higher yield
strength and plasticity.)
When a reinforced concrete structure is damaged
through air shock coupling and the pressure is below
the compressive yield strength of the
concrete, the failure mode is generally compressive
structural fracture on one side and tensile fracture
on the other__ both characterized by cracks and
rough fracture surfaces. Such a surface texture is
very different from the relatively smooth granular
surface resulting from contact explosives.
Read the rest of this report at:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/PARTIN/ok2.htm
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