The fresh-faced young man from New York was eager to hunt mountain goats and was doing his best to persuade the rugged man from Missouri to act as his guide. The Missourian was Jack Willis and the tenderfoot was 28-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, who was with a…
The Missourian was Jack Willis and the tenderfoot was 28-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, who was with a companion, William Merrifield. TR had just bought a ranch in the Dakota Territory and fancied himself as a hunter. He was also very good at pleading his case. Unfortunately, Willis was not easily impressed and soon had the young Easterner pleading for his help.
Willis eventually agreed to take the two men along as his guests into the sprawling wilderness of northern Idaho, though he refused to serve as their guide. Apparently he was skeptical about Roosevelt’s hunting abilities. However, once on the hunt, he soon realized that his initial skepticism was completely unfounded, and the two men became good friends as their adventure progressed.
Willis seemed to scramble over the rocks with the speed and agility of a mountain goat. Though TR struggled to keep up, Willis was surprised by how the bespectacled “dude” stayed with him on the rugged mountain terrain. Every now and then Roosevelt would pause and wipe the moisture from his glasses, then follow his guide with renewed enthusiasm. There seemed to be no stopping him and the hard-to-please Willis was impressed.
On the afternoon of the first day the men came upon a herd of goats. Within minutes a billy appeared and after cautiously checking for danger, wandered down to within 200 yards of the hunters.
TR raised his rifle and fired, somehow missing the goat, which bolted and pranced uphill away from the hunters. TR fired again and this time a bit of hair flew off one foreleg. Willis noticed that the goat was favoring his leg as he vanished among the rugged peaks.
The hunting party followed the blood trail until dark, which forced them back to camp. Coming down was almost as hard as going up, and TR’s disappointment seemed to cast even more darkness over the trio.
That night Merrifield nursed his sore feet while TR nursed his injured pride. Ignoring the encouragement of his fellow hunters, TR could not be consoled; he was determined to find the wounded animal.
At first light Willis and TR set off in search of the goat, while Merrifield bathed his feet in camp. They found the blood trail again, which led them to where Willis spotted a lone billy atop a rock outcrop a quarter-mile away. The gusty canyon winds would make the shot extremely difficult if not impossible, according to Willis. But TR decided to shoot anyway. To Willis’ absolute amazement, the goat took one leap and fell dead. The .45-75 bullet had smashed straight through his heart.
Once again impressed with the “dude,” Willis offered his hearty congratulations. TR could not contain his excitement and right then offered Willis a hundred-dollar bill for his expert guiding. Willis, true to form, refused the money.
When the two men reached the trophy, TR was especially pleased to see it was the goat he had wounded the previous day.
Roosevelt’s high country adventure was far from over. While Merrifield continued to nurse his sore feet, TR and Willis headed out the next day in search of a second billy. What ensued was a moment of terror they would never forget.
With the silent, sure-footed Willis leading the way, the men walked carefully in single file along a narrow, slate-covered pass that traversed the side of a high cliff. On one side was a sheer drop of some 60 feet.
The men clung to the rock wall as they sidestepped along the slippery ledge. Willis heard a sliding noise and turned to see TR tumbling headfirst into the canyon toward the sharp rocks at the bottom.
Willis felt sure TR would be killed. But as he peered over the ledge to watch his companion’s deathly fall, he was amazed to see TR hit the top of pine tree, breaking his initial fall, bounce into the branches of a second tree, and then roll into a third tree before miraculously landing on a moss-covered ledge.
“I am not hurt a bit! Wait till I find my glasses,” TR shouted up to the shocked Willis.
Amazingly, the future president – and his glasses – were unharmed.
This harrowing incident was one of many in TR’s life that ultimately led to the legend of “Roosevelt Luck.” When he returned from out West in the autumn of 1886, he had become not only an accomplished hunter, but also a complete man.
On 21 September 1921, roughly 450 tons of ammonium nitrate mixture detonated at the BASF plant in Oppau, Germany. The blast killed 560 people, injured another 2,000, and left behind a crater big enough to make an entire chemical factory look like it had simply ceased to exist.
The American beaver is admittedly an adorable-looking creature. However, it is actually a giant, toothy rodent that eats 27 of your wife’s favorite dogwood trees in a single season. Ask me how I know this… Wikipedia photo by Steve from DC.
Before Oppau: My Own Introduction to High Explosives
Blowing up stuff is one of the few marketable skills I retain from the military. Soon after I bought my rural Mississippi farm back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it became obvious that we were going to have to get rid of an even dozen beaver dams if we ever hoped to make the place habitable. A skilled operator can do that with a track hoe. Or you can follow the manly route and call upon energetic chemistry.
Sourcing Explosives Was Once a Very Different Proposition
Kinepak is a commercial binary explosive product. Prior to mixing, the two components are essentially inert. Put them together and set off a blasting cap alongside and things get interesting. Dimension Supply photo.
Back before al Qaeda ruined absolutely everything with 9/11, acquiring certain explosive materials was a radically different proposition than it is today. No kidding, I once arranged a legal purchase over the phone and picked up commercially available explosive supplies from a dealer in a church parking lot. Suffice to say, it’s a bit more complicated than that today. I swear sometimes it seems that the primary function of modern government is to keep American males from enjoying themselves.
My kids and I spent two amazing days clearing those twelve beaver dams. I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun. We even inadvertently blew up one terribly unfortunate beaver, but that’s a story for another day.
I later experimented with commercially familiar reactive-target chemistry on my property as well. Tannerite is the best-known consumer example of the general concept. Used lawfully and according to the manufacturer’s directions, reactive targets provide the sort of immediate feedback that can put a memorable punctuation mark on a shooting session.
Even I admit that you likely shouldn’t fart around with high explosives until somebody with a little institutional knowledge shows you how to do it safely. Public domain.
High explosives are indeed notoriously unforgiving of stupidity, inattention, or sloth. Normally, only folks like highly-trained professional gun writers should be allowed access to such volatile stuff. However, sometimes large volumes of explosive precursors are entrusted to irresponsible stewards with predictably exciting results.
Oppau 1921: Inside the BASF Ammonium Nitrate Plant
In September of 1921, the BASF plant in Oppau, Germany, was busy churning out ammonium nitrate fertilizer by the literal ton. This same material has a dual use application as an oxidizer in explosives. The facility began producing ammonium sulfate in 1911 to support Germany’s war effort during WW1. They later made ammonium nitrate using something called the Haber Process. Oppau was the first chemical plant in the world to do so.
When heated, ammonium nitrate produces large quantities of oxygen that can then be used to service an explosive reaction. Additionally, ammonium nitrate is fiercely hygroscopic. This means that it rapidly absorbs moisture from its surroundings.
The Dangerous Storage Problem Building Inside BASF
This is what ammonium nitrate fertilizer looks like in its virgin state. You really shouldn’t get this stuff wet. Walmart photo.
Let ammonium nitrate get a little moist, and it sets up into a plaster-like substance. BASF was storing their fertilizer in 20-meter-high silos. German workers had to employ pickaxes to get it out of the storage facilities. As being crushed by massive collapsing mounds of fertilizer was quite a serious concern, workers eventually adopted an explosive method for breaking apart the hardened material.
This was admittedly crazy, but it was sort of based on science. Testing conducted in 1919 demonstrated that formulations containing less than 60% nitrate could not be convinced to explode. The fertilizer BASF made was typically about 50/50. They actually took a load of this stuff out into the woods and subjected it to destructive testing just to see what would happen. Convinced that they were good, these maniac Krauts began storing ammonium nitrate in 50,000-ton lots. Whenever hardened material needed to be loosened, workers relied on an explosive practice that history would eventually reveal to have been catastrophically overconfident. What could possibly go wrong?
In their defense, it is estimated that they had used explosive charges to break up solidified chunks of ammonium nitrate at least 20,000 times in the past. However, despite that much experience, this stuff is still the oxidizer for a very potent high explosive compound. Then, on 21 September, something very bad happened.
The Oppau Explosion Turns BASF Into an Enormous Smoking Hole
This is a period postcard showing the big honking hole where the BASF chemical plant used to be. Wikipedia photo by PGMPJL
Nobody knows the details. There was nobody left to interview. Anybody even close to the point of detonation was utterly vaporized. 560 people lost their lives. A further 2,000 were seriously injured.
There were actually two explosions that occurred about half a second apart. Roughly 10% of the fertilizer in one silo detonated. 450 tons of ammonium nitrate were consumed. The blast left a crater 90 meters wide, 125 meters long, and 19 meters deep. The noise was detectable in northeastern France some 186 miles away. The cumulative effect was equivalent to nearly two kilotons of TNT. This was about one-eighth the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb.
Oppau Explosion Facts: 560 Dead and a 125-Meter Crater
Date
21 September 1921
Location
Oppau, Germany
Facility
BASF plant
Fatalities
560
Seriously Injured
2,000
Material Consumed
450 tons of ammonium nitrate
Crater
90 meters wide, 125 meters long, and 19 meters deep
Estimated Effect
Nearly two kilotons of TNT
Distance Heard
Some 186 miles away
The Fallout: Oppau Was Shattered for Miles
80% of the buildings in Oppau were destroyed. 6,500 local citizens were left homeless. There was not an intact window to be found for twenty miles.
The pressure pulse traveled to Mannheim just across the Rhine from Oppau, tearing the roofs off of houses fifteen miles away. A streetcar was blown off of its tracks in Heidelberg, some 19 miles distant. Rescuers recovered more than 500 bodies in the first 48 hours.
Why the Oppau Explosion Happened Despite 20,000 Earlier Blasts
This is the Oppau chemical plant right after the explosion. Note the enormous hole in the foreground. Public domain.
It turned out that the less than 60% rule was not quite accurate. Lower percentages of nitrates are tougher to conflagrate, but it can obviously still happen. The ease with which one can coax this stuff into detonating is driven by lots of different things.
Particle size, density, and ambient humidity all played a role. Prior to the accident, chemical engineers had tweaked the production process to decrease the moisture content and lower the relative density. Both of these factors contributed to the accident. Investigators also determined that the lot in question was not homogenous, containing pockets of ammonium nitrate that were more enriched than others. Once one of these pockets touched off, the resulting shockwave sympathetically detonated the rest of it.
In case you haven’t yet had the pleasure, this stuff will add a whole new dimension to your shooting experience. Tannerite photo.
My own experience with reactive targets reinforced how much apparently minor physical differences can change the behavior of energetic materials. Things that seemed important in theory sometimes made little practical difference, while variables a casual observer might overlook could matter enormously. With the benefit of hindsight, that is precisely the sort of complacency the Oppau disaster warns against.
Two months prior to the Oppau tragedy, some thirty tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded in Kriewald, Germany, under comparably suspicious circumstances. That blast claimed nineteen lives. History does not record why this event did not drive a re-evaluation of the industrial processes at Oppau.
Oppau Was Not the Last Ammonium Nitrate Catastrophe
This is Beirut, Lebanon, after the cataclysmic 2020 explosion. This was the largest ammonium nitrate detonation in history. The material in question had been intercepted as part of an Iranian shipment for Hezbollah. Wikipedia photo by Mahdi Shojaeian
Investigators originally thought that the blast had originated in the reactor facility where the product was actually made. It was discovered only later that the explosion spawned from a storage silo. Not that it much mattered.
The Oppau blast was the third-largest ammonium nitrate explosion in history. This follows the legendary Beirut, Lebanon, detonation in 2020 and the explosion of some 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate in Texas City, Texas, in 1947. We may explore those simply epic events at some point in the future.
At the time of this detonation, there were no ammonia plants of this sort in the United States. American engineers rightfully believed that the state of the art simply did not support the safe mass production of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Lots of folks make it these days, but it is easier to manage safely now that we understand the physics behind this reaction so much better.
From the Oppau Disaster Back to a Mississippi Farm
Detonating cord is such delightful stuff. Consisting of a high explosive core sealed within a waterproof sheath, det cord is typically used to initiate larger explosive charges. Public domain.
It really is great fun to spend a couple of days turning binary explosives into noise. Back on the farm, we cleared our beaver dams using the training, equipment, safety margins, and procedures I had learned through prior experience. The kids naturally considered the whole affair premium entertainment. A grand time was had by all.
Once the beaver dams were done, we contracted with a dirt guy to build us a proper dam across the little creek that runs through my backyard. The end result is seven acres of heaven that is now teeming with bass, bream, and water moccasins. However, in the immediate aftermath, the lake was just bug ugly with dead trees sprouting up everywhere.
Sometimes a chainsaw isn’t the optimal tool for felling trees. Public domain.
I tried lots of different techniques for felling these trees. I can attest that running a chainsaw out of a canoe is a suboptimal solution. As soon as you touch the trunk, the reactive force begins spinning the canoe around in circles. As the mission is to cut these old derelict trees down, you can never be sure which direction they might fall. Being crushed and drowned by a tree I cut down myself would look pretty stupid on a tombstone.
I eventually experimented with energetic methods rather than balancing a running chainsaw in a canoe. Properly handled explosive force can do remarkable work, but the operative words there are properly handled. The entire Oppau story exists because familiarity and repetition can convince otherwise intelligent people that a dangerous process has somehow stopped being dangerous.
The Real Lesson of Oppau: Experience Does Not Rewrite Physics
This what blasting caps look like as they are inserted into C4 plastic explosive. That’s about as much fun as it looks. Public domain.
Blowing stuff up really is fun so long as you don’t also wipe out yourself, your home town, and 560 of your closest mates in the process. Some commercially available reactive-target products can be legally transported and possessed under circumstances that differ dramatically from regulated blasting materials. Other explosive components and activities are governed by extensive federal, state, and local requirements. Anybody dealing with such materials needs to know the law, follow applicable storage and handling rules, and understand that energetic chemistry does not grade on a curve.
That is perhaps the most enduring lesson of the Oppau explosion. BASF workers had repeated their process thousands upon thousands of times. Success became routine. Routine became confidence. Confidence became complacency. Then chemistry reminded everybody in the most savage way imaginable that twenty thousand uneventful repetitions do not constitute immunity from physics.
In 1921, in Oppau, Germany, a bunch of guys got in a bit of a rush and blew themselves to smithereens. Something similar happened in 1947 in Texas and then again in 2020 in Beirut. However, with knowledge, proper controls, respect for the law, and serious attention to detail, energetic materials can be managed far more safely than they were a century ago. Oppau remains the spectacular, crater-shaped reminder of what happens when experience is mistaken for invulnerability.
Before Molly Goodman asked her 23-year-old son-in-law to nail up some loose molding in her hallway, she should have asked herself if the lad was qualified. We don’t mean qualified as a carpenter, we mean, like, qualified to walk, chew gum and breathe without coaching.
Lacking a hammer and maybe a few IQ points, young Richard Gardner produced a .25 caliber pistol and commenced to rapping tacks with it. A few seconds later, a tack rapped back.
Gardner’s tool-of-choice discharged, sending a round through his hand and into the abdomen of his 21-year-old wife, Mary Ann. Fortunately, both were treated and released from a local Lancaster, S.C. hospital. Note: We’ve never known a .25 caliber pistol you could call a “tack-driver.”
Two Items Short
Kevin Stanley Stokes was only short two items on his robbery list — guns, car keys, wallet and brains — when he hit a grocery store in Cadiz, Ky. He parked the getaway car outside in a handy location, packed his gun into the store for a bout of barrel-waving and threat-making, then fled with a paper bag holding about $170.
Stokes must have known there were thieves in the area because he had carefully locked his car doors. Must have left his brains in his other pants; he locked the keys in the car!
As Kevin stared at his keys on the seat, those sirens kept getting louder … and closer. Lots of witnesses around. Lots of empty pavement and clear sky. Lots and lots of adrenaline-pumped, heavily-armed cops converging on his narrow butt. He laid down the roscoe and went, according to Chief Ray White, “without incident.”
Witnesses to Kevin’s arrival at his locked car quoted him later. He is reported to have said, “Whoops!” We believe it.
Wrong Place, Time
On almost any other night, Z’s Sports Tap would have been a much better target for a robbery attempt. The popular downtown Chicago bar does a landslide evening business, and the till gets pretty pumped.
The two stickup men who waltzed in through a side door on a recent Tuesday night were probably dreaming of the stuffed cash register, overflowing with proceeds from the party in the main room.
When they confronted employee Tammy Bertucci, she politely explained she’d have to fetch their loot from the party room.
Confident or brain-damaged, they sent after the cash. She simply reported the robbery to the party-goers and let them handle it. After all, over 100 of them were Chicago cops, there for a retirement bash.
“Our two rocket scientists,” as police spokesman Pat Camden called them, went to jail after a scene reminiscent of the climax in “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.”
On the one hand, they can brag to the boys in the Big House that they’ve had more guns pointed at ’em than Davey Crockett at the Alamo. On the other, we don’t envy them their nightmares.
Armed Robbery 101: Don’t Rob A Bank In Front Of A Police Officer!
Several less-than-brilliant bunglers vie for our title of “Waste Of A Good Gene” this time, but for our bucks, William Bratcher takes the cake — and a dozen jelly-filled donuts to boot.
Just imagine a would-be bank robber so lacking in perception he fails to notice the bank’s only customer is a uniformed cop!
Okay, so the officer wasn’t in your traditional patrol-cop threads. But, as Billy-boy approached the front doors of the credit union in Northglenn, Colo., he just might have noticed the mountain bike parked outside was marked “POLICE.”
If not that, he should have noticed the sole customer in the bank was wearing a rather military-looking biking outfit, complete with badge, patch, radio and gunbelt. Instead, he entered, walked past the cop, leaped over the counter, pulled an auto pistol and began the usual “everybody down on the floor” speech.
Officer Jim May declined the invitation and produced his own bullet-launching hardware. Bratcher stuttered, stalled, and pointed his gun at May. Rude, huh?
May thought so too and promptly popped a cap in the area of the 10-ring, taking Bratcher to a) the floor, b) the hospital, and c) eventually to the slammer.
We assume that, by now, Bratcher has either learned the truth of the matter or gained a healthy respect for cyclists.
—
Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs last issue to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gunwriters whom he had lampooned in “Friendly Fire” for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
