Forestport Tower goes CRUNCH!!!!

Jim Van Damme here. April 30, 1998, a bunch of us went to the Air Force Research Lab's Forestport site to see what was left of AFRL's 660 ton quarter mile high VLF tower, which had just been demolished after many years of experiments and decay. Pretty gruesome carcass, but still as impressive in death as it was in life.

Here's some MIDI mood music: (click on one to start it)

    Theme from Titanic

    Fawlty Towers (The John Cleese TV show)

    Sledgehammer

    Break It Down Again

    Hit Me With Your Best Shot

 
Here's the first "knee", where the tower cracked in half. Note the upper part landed flat so it isn't all tangled up. Those guy wires are 2 inches thick. At the bottom, the legs of the tower are solid and 5 inches thick. They consist of an outer tube with solid steel inner reinforcing.

 
Kinda amazing that solid steel could get so mangled & bury itself. 660 tons collapsing from a quarter mile up can do that.

Up near the top, the tower is a little less solid. There's smaller reinforcing inside the outer tubes.

The steel is rather bent outta shape from hitting the ground, even the 12 inch girders. Hmmm, looks like we slacked off on the painting the last coupla years.

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