Cooking off

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Cooking off

Cooking off (or thermally induced firing) refers to ammunition

Ammunition

Ammunition, often referred to as ammo, is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery....
exploding prematurely due to heat in the surrounding environment.

rent design flaws in early 17th century Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
leather cannon

Leather cannon

A leather cannon was an experimental Sweden-Finland attempt of constructing a lighter weapon that would bridge the gap between muskets and heavy stationary cannons....
s led to the gun tube becoming deformed which prematurely ignited the gunpowder, injuring the loader.

After the cooking off of artillery shells in the G-5 field gun

Field gun

A field gun is an artillery piece.Originally the term referred to smaller guns that could accompany a field army on the march and when in combat could be moved about the battlefield in response to changing circumstances....
in the late 1980s, the South African Army

South African Army

The South African Army is the army of South Africa, first formed after the Union of South Africa was created in 1910.The South African military evolved within the tradition of frontier warfare fought by popular militias and small irregular military commando forces, reinforced by the Afrikaner historical distrust of large standing armies....
changed commands from "cease fire" to "cease loading".

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Encyclopedia

Cooking off (or thermally induced firing) refers to ammunition

Ammunition

Artillery

Inherent design flaws in early 17th century Swedish

Sweden

Leather cannon

Field gun

South African Army

Rifles

Cooking off is a characteristic of certain machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a Automatic firearm mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire List of rifle cartridgess in quick succession from an Belt or large-capacity Magazine , typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
s, especially those firing from a closed bolt, that are air-cooled, and capable of sustained use. When the trigger is released, the weapon feed leaves a final round in the chamber, where heat ignites the propellant firing the round, which will then cause the weapon to reload and fire again, this will continue until all the weapon's ammunition is consumed. Cooking off limits the rate of fire

Rate of fire

Rate of fire is the frequency at which a specific weapon can fire or launch its projectiles. It is usually measured in rounds per minute , or per second ....
of many rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls....
s, since heavy use will heat up the gun's barrel.

In the case of the US M249 or some other squad assault weapons sustained fire of only a few hundred rounds per minute can create sufficient heat. Inefficient or insufficient cooling of the barrel or chamber can cause either a cook off or stoppage of the gun through metal expansion. For rifles with very light barrels, such as the M16, the long term sustained rate of fire is as low as 16 rounds per minute, owing to limited heat dissipation and the risk of cook-off.

Caseless ammunition

Caseless ammunition as a type of small arms ammunition eliminates the cartridge case that typically holds the primer, propellant, and projectile together as a unit....
eliminates the metal

Metal

In chemistry, a metal is a chemical element whose atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions , and form metallic bonds between other metal atoms and ionic bonds between nonmetal atoms....
case that typically holds the primer

Primer

Primer can refer to:*Primer , a 2004 feature film written and directed by Shane Carruth*Primer , a device on some gasoline engines used to prime the engine with gasoline before starting it...
or igniter and the powder charge (gunpowder) that propels the bullet. The metal case absorbs a large portion of the waste heat of firing. Ejecting this hot, empty case removes that heat from the weapon. With caseless rounds, other means of reducing waste heat are necessary, especially in automatic fire.

Tanks

Cooking off is a serious hazard to crews in damaged and disabled tank

Tank

A tank is a Continuous track, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility and Military tactics Offensive and defence capabilities....
s. Attempted solutions include storing ammunition under water and insulating ammunition compartments. The current technique, used in tanks like the M1 Abrams

M1 Abrams

The M1 Abrams is a Tank classification#Main battle tank produced in the United States. The M1 is named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army Chief of Staff of the United States Army and Commander of US military forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972....
, is to armor the compartments and provide blow-off panels to channel the force of the explosion to the exterior of the tank.

Missiles and air-dropped bombs

The risk of aircraft armament cooking off is a significant hazard during pre-flight operations, especially for aircraft carrier

Aircraft carrier

An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a navy force to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations....
s. Fuel fires, which can spread across the flight deck rapidly and engulf a number of entire aircraft, are the most serious risk. This was a significant contributor to the 1967 fire disaster

1967 USS Forrestal fire

The 1967 USS Forrestal fire was a devastating fire and series of chain-reaction explosions on 29 July 1967 that caused great loss of life on the aircraft carrier after an unusual electrical anomaly discharged a Zuni on the flight deck....
aboard the , when such a fire (set off by an inadvertently fired Zuni rocket

Zuni (rocket)

The Zuni is a 5.0 inch unguided rocket deployed by the United States Military of the United States. The rocket was developed for both Air-to-air missile and Air-to-surface missile operations....
's striking the fuel tanks of a waiting A-4 Skyhawk

A-4 Skyhawk

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a aircraft carrier ground-attack aircraft designed for the United States Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. The delta winged "Skyhawk", powered by a single turbojet was designed and produced by Douglas Aircraft Company ....
) detonated two iron bombs of Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War refers to a period of military conflict between North Korea and South Korea regimes, with major hostilities lasting from June 25, 1950 until the armistice signed on July 27, 1953....
vintage which had been loaded onto the stricken bomber, rupturing the fuel tanks of adjacent aircraft and setting off a chain reaction of similarly cooked off bombs.