"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
— Admiral Sir David Beatty after several British battlecruisers exploded at the Battle of Jutland
A sub-trope of Stuff Blowing Up, Ammunition Detonation occurs when something (usually a projectile) strikes a place full of ammunition (the ammo can be shells, bombs, missiles, and whatnot) and one of the munitions explodes, followed by another, resulting in a chain reaction where a massive explosion occurs. More often than not, if the explosion happens in a war machine, expect the machine to be at the very least out of service for some time.
The technical term for this is called sympathetic detonation
. If it happens specifically because the ammunition in question is in a fire, it's called "cooking off".
May overlap with Explosive Stupidity if the ammunition was placed in a rather unsafe position. See also Flamethrower Backfire for when a Fire-Breathing Weapon's fuel tank is targeted, Pineapple Surprise when grenades or explosives are targeted, and Ammunition Backpack and Badass Bandolier, which may be targeted to invoke this. Compare with Targeting the Exhaust System for a similar weakpoint. When it is the fuel that is shot and not the ammo, see Shoot the Fuel Tank, though the two can overlap with each other. Related to Defeat Equals Explosion. Not to be confused with Shoot the Bullet. A Sister Trope to Match in a Bomb Shack.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Berserk: The first time Guts rides with with the Band of the Hawk, the occasion is a cavalry raid led by Griffith where they set fire to the enemy camp's gunpowder supply and get away before the big explosion.
Comic Books
- Iron Man: Iron Man's origin story ends with him blowing up the ammunition stores of a brutal warlord before he can use them to kill his prisoners.
- Punisher: The Platoon: During a Vietnamese offensive, the main base's ammo dump is hit and explodes, the fireball being visible from the outpost where Frank and his platoon are stationed.
Fan Works
- Bait and Switch (STO): The USS Bajor gets into a fight with some renegade Jem'Hadar on patrol. Tess skewers one of the attack ships with a phaser shot through the torpedo magazine and blows it away.
Films — Live-Action
- A Bridge Too Far: During the evening of the first day of Operation Market-Garden, Paratroopers of the British 1st Airborne Division, during their attempt to capture Arnhem Bridge, accidentally set off a German ammunition depot after using a flamethrower on a nearby bunker. This ends up causing the bunker and the bridge to burn for several hours and well into the following morning.
- Fury (2014): The Sherman tanks in Wardaddy's armored column are taken out like this. The first tank, as they are setting out for their first mission to rescue a platoon pinned down by machine gun fire, gets hit by a panzerfaust launched by Hitlerjughden that ignites the fuel and ammunition. Later, the Tiger that ambushed them uses its powerful 88mm gun to blow up the second and third Shermans, leaving the crew of the Fury to deal with the Tiger itself.
- The Hitman's Bodyguard: Played for Laughs. Kincaid and Bryce get waylaid by some of Dukhovitch's mooks while working their way to the English Channel, and in the ensuing fight, the mooks' car catches fire from stray bullets hitting the fuel tank, which in turn causes all the ammunition they've stored in the trunk to cook off. As luck would have it, one of the bullets hits the protagonists' car dead on and sets it ablaze, too. Which Kincaid of course thinks is hilarious.
- The Killer (1989) features a smaller-scale version of this. In the finale's iconic church shootout, the titular character Ah Jong slides a bandoleer of shotgun shells toward Big Bad Wong Hoi. Jong's partner, Li Ying shoots at it, detonating the shells and taking out plenty of surrounding mooks, besides blowing apart Wong Hoi's Bulletproof Vest beyond repair and nearly killing the main villain.
- In the Australian film The Lighthorsemen (1987) a Turkish bullet strikes an ammunition pouch on the bandolier worn across the chest of a Light Horse soldier, causing all the other pouches to spontaneously detonate.
- Midway (1976): As the IJN-bombers replace their anti-ship ordnance and get refitted with general purpose bombs to attack the airfield on the island of Midway, instead of the remaining American carriers, a large force of American dive bombers and their fighter escorts attack, with several bombs hitting the exposed powder magazines and fuel storage tanks of the Kaga, Sōryū, and Akagi, with the latter two almost immediately being abandoned as total losses and blowing up soon after, while the former was eventually scuttled due to being declared beyond repair.
- Midway (2019): Squadrons of SBD dive bombers attack the Japanese aircraft carriers Sōryū, Kaga, and Akagi and detonate their ammunition and fuel, resulting in their destructions.
- Pearl Harbor: The USS Arizona gets hit by a time-delayed bomb that pierces its top deck, and lands on the ship's 16-inch shell magazine. When the timer runs out, the Arizona gets split in half by all the ordnance going off.
- The Pentagon Wars: At the end of the film, when Colonel Burton finally gets the "realistic" live-fire test of the Bradley prototype that he wanted, the result is a catastrophic ammunition explosion that totally destroys the prototype and sends the turret flying. (In reality, this is not a very useful test: the earlier, controlled scenarios that Burton had dismissed as "cheating", both in the film and in real life, are actually standard practice in combat vehicle testing. A catastrophic detonation as was depicted in the film leaves you with very little to analyze compared to the earlier tests, and the Bradley isn't a tank so it was never intended to withstand up-to-date anti-tank weapons anyway.)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Discussed. In the prologue, the ship carrying the Swanns to Port Royal comes up on the aftermath of the Black Pearl attacking a ship, which is in flames when they arrive. Lieutenant Norrington incorrectly attributes it to an accidental fire igniting the powder magazine, noting that merchant ships in the era went heavily armed.
- Spies Like Us: During the battle in the Russian jailhouse, a grenade is thrown at the two leading men. Fitz-Hume catches it and calmly asks Millbarge what it is. A panicked Millbarge yells "YOU DON'T WANT IT!" and a miffed Fitz-Hume then stands up and indignantly throws the grenade through the open window, where it conveniently lands in the box with the other grenades. Two Russian soldiers see it, look ant each other and scream in fear before rushing out of the jailhouse just before it explodes.
- Swordsman: The third movie, The East is Red, ends with an Epic Ship-on-Ship Action between the Ming, Portuguese and Japanese navies. Asia the Invincible infiltrates the largest Japanese Imperial vessel, enters the ammunition cache, and throws a torch on the gunpowder blowing up the whole thing.
- Tora! Tora! Tora!: The USS Arizona ends up getting sunk when a Japanese armor-piercing bomb, dropped by a Japanese "Kate" level bomber strikes the ship and detonates its forward magazine, causing a massive explosion and violently shaking the otherwise-unharmed Japanese crewmen aboard the bomber.
- Tragic Hero (1987): In the climatic final shootout, Lee (played by Chow Yun-fat) took on Big Bad Yung, who's wearing a Badass Bandolier of shells, in a close-range fistfight. It culminates in Lee performing a Railing Kill where Yung is sent to the other side, on a burning flame with explosive results.
Literature
- Referred to and then exploited in The Guns of Navarone.
- When Miller and Mallory are in the fortress magazine, some Nazis start trying to break down the armored door at the magazine entrance. From the heat of the door, Miller deduces the Nazis are using an acetylene welding torch to burn through the door. Mallory wonders why they don't just blow it up, and Miller shudders.
Corporal Miller: Perish the thought. Don't even think about it, boss. Sympathetic detonation's a funny thing — there's an even chance the whole damn lot would go up.
- Miller proceeds to plant his own bomb under the shell-lift, in such a way that it will be set off by the lift when it descends to the magazine. It's only a few pounds of explosives, but when it explodes the whole magazine does indeed go up with it.
- When Miller and Mallory are in the fortress magazine, some Nazis start trying to break down the armored door at the magazine entrance. From the heat of the door, Miller deduces the Nazis are using an acetylene welding torch to burn through the door. Mallory wonders why they don't just blow it up, and Miller shudders.
- Legacy of the Drow Series: Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie spend a significant part of Passage to Dawn hunting pirates on the Sword Coast with the Waterdhavian privateer ship Sea Sprite. In one incident, they're faced with a ship armed with a rare smokepowdernote cannon. Catti-brie succeeds in hitting the enemy ship's powder magazine with her magic bow, blowing the ship sky-high.
- Sharpe's Gold: Needing to get his consignment of gold back to Wellington, Sharpe is trapped in the Portuguese fortress at Almeida, which is about to be besieged by the French. He sabotages the fire precautions in the fortress's main ammunition store, lays a trail of gunpowder, and thus sets off an explosion that renders the fortress indefensible. Thus, rather than being tied up in a long siege, he is able to make a quick retreat to headquarters with the vital gold.
- Timeline (1999): The final confrontation ends with Chris setting Dekkard on fire in the armoury of the castle which leads to this trope.
- The Tyrant Baru Cormorant:
- The Cancrioth ship-monastery Eternal is a 400-foot-long colossus armed with an equally massive amount of cannon. The fact that the heaps of gunpowder required to fire those cannons could blow the whole ship to bits if touched off is a recurring plot point, whether ignited by defenders to prevent the ship and its secrets from being captured, or by boarders trying to sink it.
- The Falcresti frigate RNS Sulane is ultimately destroyed when a lucky shot from Eternal's cannons finally penetrates its copper-jacketed hull and ricochets through a magazine filled with rockets, torpedoes, and Greek Fire.
- H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising: The Terran atomic bomb dropped on Keegark sets off the two Ulleran atomic bombs hidden there.
- Well World: In Twilight at the Well of Souls, before the battle with the Zhonzhorpians (think bipedal crocodiles) and Olbornians, Colonel Asam orders a squadron of flyers to bombard the battlefield with rocks and buckshot. He suspects there are mines planted all across the battlefield, and there are. When the bombardment hits one, the result is exactly what Asam expected — the Olbornians, being amateurs at warfare, had laid their mines much too close together, so setting off one causes a chain reaction that sets off every mine near it.
- X-Wing Series: Wraith Squadron, in starfighters, faces a close-packed artillery line on the ground — presumably rushed there by a commander who Didn't Think This Through, because as soon as the Wraiths start blowing up the artillery units, they set off the ones next to them, until the whole line is quickly gone. Wedge winces at the report that they "committed fratricide."
Live-Action TV
- Bosch: "Everybody Counts": Bosch and Edgar’s murder suspect starts throwing hand grenades at them from cover. Bosch wings him as he's about to throw and he drops the grenade. The detonation starts a fire, but Bosch briefly attempts to go inside anyway to retrieve evidence before the rest of the killer's ammo and the powder he was reloading cartridges with start going off and force the detectives to dive for cover as the whole house blows up.
- Nova: "Nazi Attack on America" documents a survey of the wreck of U-166 off the coast of New Orleans, originally attributed to an air attack by the US Coast Guard. The divers discovered that the submarine had actually been destroyed by depth charges from a US Navy corvette, PC-566, whose captain Herbert G. Claudius had claimed credit for the kill but was not believed. The survey showed that one of Claudius's depth charges had landed directly on the submarine's foredeck and detonated the forward torpedo magazine when it went off. Claudius was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit for the action in 2014.
- Tremors: "Night of the Shriekers": A scientist is trying to train Shriekers (heat-sensing monsters) to locate people buried in rubble, and has microchips embedded in their brains to control them. When a lightning strike fries the control mechanism, the Shriekers go wild and escape, killing everyone and everything in their path. Everyone gathers at Burt Gummer's bunker. But when Burt is trying to take out the Shriekers, the scientist, desperate to save her work, throws his ammo supply in a garbage can and sets them on fire, destroying his ammo supply and also trapping some of the other characters in the store room.
Music
- Escape The Clouds: "Captain Morena" ends with the title character and her Arch-Enemy falling to their deaths in a Mutual Kill after the powder magazine of her enemy's airship exploded during their Duel to the Death.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: There is a possibility of this happening to a 'Mech in the event of a critical hit to a location with ammunition stored in it, as well as having the ammo explode sympathetically if the 'Mech overheats enough. In most cases, an ammunition explosion will do enough damage to completely destroy the 'Mech. Because of the danger of this happening In-Universe, there is an available modification (the Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment or CASE) that makes the ammo explosion go outwards, limiting all the damage to just the body compartment the exploding bin is in — the 'mech may be rendered nonfunctional but it will still be intact enough to be repaired. And most importantly, the entire 'mech not going up in an explosive fireball means the pilot has a far better chance of surviving the catastrophe.
Video Games
- Age of Empires III: The ammo depots/caches (called Armories) found across the campaigns explode when destroyed; the same is true of the Maltese unique building, the Depot, modeled after the Armories. The explosion itself has a little bit of delay, but deals indiscriminate area of effect damage.
- BattleTech (2018): Puncturing the armor on a BattleMech's body segment has a chance to detonate any ammunition stored there, causing extra damage to that location as well as reducing the 'mech's ability to contribute to the fight.
- Cannon Fodder: There are caches of explosives (rockets and grenades) scattered across some levels that your troops can pick up and use. This trope comes into play if the player (intentionally or otherwise) shoots at the crates instead, triggering a massive explosion.
- Castle Wolfenstein. In the original 1981 game, the player character can find chests full of bullets for his gun, grenades, and cannonballs. If he fires his pistol at such a chest, there is a huge explosion, killing him and ending the game.
- GoldenEye (1997): One of the objectives of Jungle is to blow up the ammo dump in the cave entrance. The boxes will detonate when shot or hit with a mine.
- MechWarrior inherits the Critical Hit system of its parent franchise BattleTech, and as a result shots to portions of a 'Mech which have lost armor can damage both the internal structure and any components there, including ammunition bins. Taking a hit to the ammo was especially catastrophic because all that damage would expend itself on the host 'Mech, normally causing it to explode in a decidedly detrimental manner. Thanks to a combination of plentiful ammo supplies and relatively slow consumption rates, short-range missiles and machine guns are infamous for going off like unsecured fireworks when their ammunition bins are breached. Mechwarrior 5 in particular features a very distinctive visual effect for ammunition cookoff, involving internal explosions punching through the victim's frame and spewing out burning sparks.
- Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault both feature the USS Arizona's catastrophic explosion and sinking after a Japanese armor-piercing bomb detonates the battleship's forward magazine.
- Naval Ops (AKA, Warship Gunner): If a ship catches fire, there's a risk of it spreading to the magazines. If these explode, the ship will take major damage and also lose a significant portion of her ammunition reserves.
- Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger: In a few missions, you're required to take out ammunition bunkers by collecting rockets, and aiming those at crates of shells or other rockets. The subsequent chain reaction of explosions finishes the job for you.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Ammunition caches often act like explosive red barrels in boss fights. One Trooper mission on Ord Mantell exaggerates it by having the Trooper casually kick a box full of explosive ammunition, which causes it to explode as soon as they're out of range.
- Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon: Mission 10 of the campaign entails protecting a group of civilian ships that are delivering weapons and munitions for the Navy. Should one of said civilian ships be destroyed, a small explosion emits from them, heavily implied to be the supplies detonating. This ends up coming into play story-wise, as a cutscene at the end of the mission has an Ironclad ship perform a ramming attack on one of the civilian ships, which takes it out, but the shockwave of the explosion briefly knocks out the Ironclad's crew, giving Jim the chance to board the ship and uncover the conspiracy surrounding said ships.
- Unreal Tournament: The "Volatile Ammo" mutator from the DE Bonus Pack and the Game of The Year Edition makes all ammo packs shoot their respective ammunition everywhere once hit by weapon fire. For example, shooting rocket packs will make rockets fly in all directions, shooting Ripper blades will make the pack shoot blades in all directions, and so on.
- In Warframe Empyrean missions, one possible target in Grineer territories is a missile platform. Sabotaging it will cause explosions from all the unlaunched missiles to rock the place. While the launch systems might be wrecked, the platform will still remain habitable; one of Cephalon Cy's quips is to even suggest civilians could repurpose the place into a recreational centre.
- War Thunder: Ammo stowage is modeled on many ground vehicles featured there; usually a common tactic is to play this straight by aiming there to quickly destroy them. However, some stowage can disappear in most vehicles if less ammo is brought before starting a battle.
- World of Tanks: Due to the meticulous detail paid to Subsystem Damage mechanics of various tanks, it's entirely possible to hit a tank's ammo racks and outright destroy it from the resulting explosion. The Wet Storage upgrade can significantly reduce the chance of an ammunition explosion occurring.
- World of Warships: This used to be the case where destroyers, cruisers, and battleships had a chance to be killed instantly if they were hit by an enemy projectile. After update 13.11, this no longer happens.
Web Video
- Yuro: Yuro became a victim of this at the beginning of the Amagi guide video. Apparently, the Amagi detonated while the ship was above 75% HP. Yuro points out that a ship cannot detonate with more than 75% of their HP, but speculates that another shell could have damaged them. Regardless, they're frustrated at this event.
Western Animation
- Looney Tunes, Dumb Patrol: A variation. During World War I, Yosemite Sam, on the side of the Germans, tries to shoot down Bugs' plane. In his final attack, he sets the engines of his four-wing, 12-propeller plane to full power, which tears it apart. What's left of the fuselage, with Sam in it, immediately drops out of the sky, and...
Bugs Bunny: Uh oh, he's heading right for the ammunition dump!
[The screen violently shakes, with multiple extremely loud explosions heard offscreen] - Star Wars Rebels: Exploited in The Last Battle. Proton bombs are rolled to the feet of enemy AT-AT walkers and laser bolts are deflected towards the bombs to blow up the feet so that the walkers fall over.
Real Life
- While the exact details of how the HMS Hood exploded vary, the most likely explanation is that a shell from the KMS Bismarck penetrated and exploded under the deck and into the aft magazine, resulting in Hood’s (in)famous demise.
- In some cases, battleship main magazines exploded not from being penetrated by enemy fire, but from the entire vessel capsizing and sinking, causing the shells stored in the magazines to tumble about and go off from the repeated impacts. HMS Barham and IJN Yamato both exploded for this reason while in the process of sinking. In such cases, the explosion is a result, rather than the cause, of the ship's loss.
- Some military and military police units make an attempt to defy this. For example, in China, they use crossbows as it's thought that the lower temperature of crossbows will be less likely to detonate explosives, a reasonable fear as parts of the country might have anti-governmental elements that are trained in the use of suicide bombs.
- This is why "wet stowage" was devised for the ammunition carried in tanks — experience in WW2 showed that stowing heavy-calibre ammo for the main weapon "dry" in easy-access racks was too much of a hazard. If an enemy tank had the time and leisure for an aimed shot at the side of the tank, where the armour was not only thinner but hitting right above the locations where ammo is stored — the result of a penetrating shot would be to touch off anything up to twenty or thirty tank rounds all at once.note . "Wet stowage" involves an insulating layer of ethylene, glycol and water separating the individual rounds — so any damage to one shell is insulated from the rest.
- Japanese cruisers and destroyers of WWII often used the infamous Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedo, which not only packed a large and powerful warhead but was much faster, stealthier, and longer-ranged than any of its counterparts in other navies due to the use of compressed oxygen rather than compressed air. This, however, also made the Type 93 even more prone to exploding than other torpedoes when struck by enemy attacks. The Japanese were aware of this and had standard doctrine order that the torpedoes be fired off at the start of the battle before the shooting startednote .
- The Japanese destroyer Hayate was the first Japanese warship to be lost during the Second World War, sunk by American shore batteries during an attempted Japanese landing on Wake Island in December 1941. The shore batteries likely hit the destroyer's aft torpedo mounts or possibly the depth charges. It caused a large explosion to split the ship in half and sink.
- The Japanese cruiser Chokai was long thought to be a case of this trope and derided as a case study in the way the Japanese obsession with torpedoes was self-detrimental due to various sources claiming her to be the only warship sunk by a carrier's guns rather than by carrier aircraft as a result of this trope...a claim that was only ever supported by USS White Plains 's confused and mistaken after-action report, and contradicted by other American primary sources, all Japanese primary sources, and critically the lack of any evidence for such an explosion on Chokai's wreck. The wreck does still point to the specific type of torpedoes the IJN was using having been detrimental, as it shows evidence of a massive oxygen-fed fire which gutted part of the ship (and could well have been responsible for the belief that her torpedoes'd been detonated, as this massive eruption of flame would've produced a fireball that would've made it look like the torpedoes'd exploded), but this fire was probably from the oxygen plant used to charge the cruiser's torpedoes rather than from the torpedoes themselves.
- Played straight by another Japanese cruiser, Suzuya, during the same battle; as she was sunk due to an American bomb setting off her Type 93s.
- As depicted in the films listed above, the loss of the Japanese aircraft carriers Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu in the Battle of Midway is attributed to a variation of this. During the battle, the carriers were in the process of refueling and rearming the planes in their hangar decks to launch an attack against the U.S. Navy carriers. However, by sheer chance American carrier planes managed to find and attack the Japanese ships at that very moment. All three carriers were dive-bombed in the space of five minutes, and because of the bombs, torpedoes, and fuel in their hangars, the ships each suffered secondary explosions that led to their destruction. The Akagi deserves special mention because it was hit by only a single aerial bomb; this ordinarily would not have been fatal damage, but because of the aforementioned loaded hangar, the ship was quickly engulfed in flames that proved impossible to control, and after several hours of unsuccessfully trying to put out the fires the Japanese admirals had little choice but to order the carrier scuttled.
- World War I: During the Battle of Jutland, several British warships, particularly of the battlecruiser force under Admiral Beatty, exploded violently after being hit by German shells (Beatty's forces had a combination of weak protection and less stable propellants), prompting Beatty to famously exclaim, "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!" Post-battle investigations showed that the gun crews were habitually bypassing fire-prevention measures in order to fulfill orders from above to increase rate of fire, allowing flash fires to pass through safety barriers and get into the magazines. Beatty's own flagship HMS Lion nearly suffered the same fate but for a mortally wounded turret commander, Royal Marines Major Francis Harvey, ordering his magazine flooded; he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for saving the ship.
- "Turret tossing" or "jack-in-the-boxing" are slang terms for a catastrophic ammunition cook-off in tanks that are enough to not only usually kill the crew but send the entire turret flying, often hundreds of feet into the air. It became famous during the Russian invasion of Ukraine because Soviet/Russian tanks from the T-72 family have proven to be particularly vulnerable to this: they use a carousel-style autoloader system for the main gun, which doesn't protect the shells or separate them from the crew as well as the turret bustle storage more common in Western tanks.note
- This trope also took place during the Age of Sail in cases where fires resulting from combat damage reached the powder magazines. A good example is the Battle of the Nile, where the French ship-of-the-line L'Oriente exploded after being set alight.