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In 1972, the US Navy dropped sea mines off the coast of Vietnam south of Haiphong to disrupt supply shipping to North Vietnam. No, not like the mine in the photo. They looked more like torpedoes.<\/p>\n
In August of 1972, Navy ships\u2019 crews watched while these mines detonated for no obvious reason. In reviewing archived and now declassified materials, the conclusion is that a magnetic solar storm on the order of a Carrington event caused the detonations.<\/p>\n
Space Weather has published a report on the solar research involved in this. It is available as a pdf at this link: https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1029\/2018SW002024<\/a><\/p>\n This is one part of the abstract:<\/p>\n Abstract:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Today the extreme space weather events of early August 1972 are discussed as benchmarks for Sun-Earth transit times of solar ejecta (14.6\u00a0hr) and for solar energetic particle fluxes (10\u00a0MeV ion flux >70,000\u00a0cm?2\u00b7s?1\u00b7sr?1). Although the magnetic storm index, Dst, dipped to only ?125\u00a0nT, the magnetopause was observed within 5.2\u00a0RE\u00a0and the plasmapause within 2\u00a0RE. Widespread electric and communication grid disturbances plagued North America late on 4 August. There was an additional effect, long buried in the Vietnam War archives that add credence to the severity of the storm impact: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972. The U.S. Navy attributed the dramatic event to\u00a0magnetic perturbations of solar storms. Herein we discuss how such a finding is broadly consistent with terrestrial effects and technological impacts of the 4 August 1972 event and the propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth. We also provide insight into the solar, geophysical, and military circumstances of this extraordinary situation. In our view this storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand challenge for the space weather community, as it provides space?age terrestrial observations of what was likely a Carrington?class storm.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The original and now declassified report from 1972 is held in Texas Tech University\u2019s Vietnam archives. It is 143 pages long, divided into 3 pdfs, if you want to read it.<\/p>\n