Our recent trip to Israel was unusual because our tour leaders, a pastor and his wife whom we knew from Maui, are very knowledgeable about and interested in the history of the Israeli state, including its struggles to survive.
Accordingly, we saw the British detention camp where Jewish refugees from Europe—most recently released from concentration camps—were kept to prevent them from entering Palestine by the British.

Another highlight was the Avalon Institute, an exhibit of an underground ammunition factory built under a kibbutz, under the noses of the British. They made 9 mm ammunition for Sten guns is what I was told. Above ground part of the kibbutzim ran a noisy laundry to hide the sounds of the machinery underground.

One of the interesting things we saw, in addition the machines for making bullets and casings, was a disc chronograph. Wikipedia’s article on the gun chronograph has the following description:

quote:

An early chronograph that measures velocity directly was built in 1804 by Grobert, a colonel in the French Army. This used a rapidly rotating axle with two disks mounted on it about 13 feet apart. The bullet was fired parallel to the axle, and the angular displacement of the holes in the two disks, together with the rotational speed of the axle, yielded the bullet velocity.[6]

I did think they exaggerated the threat of a disastrous “explosion” that they implied could have destroyed the entire complex, but otherwise it was highly informative.

Consider putting this on your list of sites to see if you visit Israel.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
< snip >
I did think they exaggerated the threat of a disastrous “explosion” that they implied could have destroyed the entire complex, but otherwise it was highly informative.

It would depend on a bunch of factors but it is possible to do tremendous damage to a small arms ammunition manufacturing facility. We Americans tend to shrug this off because the DoD Explosives Safety Board (DDESB) (America's Gold Standard for safety WRT stuff that goes BOOM!) has such extraordinarily effective design and operational standards that explosions in manufacturing and storage are, for all intents and purposes, Black Swan events. In the 90s I did a project where we estimated the incident rate at less than one incident of any cause or consequence (i.e., included those caused by lightening strikes) per 400,000 ammunition magazines storing any quantity of explosives for any part of one year.

For example, if the Israeli were making primers, which I'll bet they were, that involves handling primary explosives (which are shock sensitive). Depending on what primary they used (lead styphnate or lead azide) it would be quite possible to set it off in the process of loading the primer cups.

Likewise, if they used salvaged propellant (e.g., cordite) both the unloading of the cartridge and the processing Cary risk of auto ignition if the stabilizer is deteriorated.

Finally, any explosion would have brought the Brtitish Army down hard, closing not only the ammo line but the cleaners as well.

Neat place to visit.