Land systems of Australasia

The theory, however, did not account for a bomb strike taking place in the middle of a launch simulation. The technical crew who died at catapult three had been running her through a series of prelaunch tests in preparation for the day's exercises. When the bomb struck, the seventy-five-meter-long catapult tubes were full of the highly volatile fuel-air mix; enough, when it detonated, to rip a huge furrow out of the angled portside flight deck. Enough, as well, to trigger a much more powerful and catastrophic explosion in a liquid oxygen tank recessed in a nominally secure area just below the lip of the flight deck, behind the Optical Landing System. It blew with a blinding white light and a head-cracking roar that approximated the effect of a subnuclear plasma-yield warhead. Most of that blast wave traveled up and outward, raking the flight deck of all human life and obliterating the frail dive-bomber that had launched the attack. But it did not kill the Clinton. The voided double hull and monobonded deck plating absorbed and then shed 60 percent of the blast ...»