Cooking off

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A cooked-off round may cause a sympathetic detonation of adjacent rounds. Insensitive munitions are designed to be less vulnerable to accidental firing induced by external heat.



Muzzle-loading cannon on merchant and naval vessels of the Age of Sail would cook off if their guns were loaded when the vessels caught fire. Examples include the merchantman Earl Fiztwilliam and HMS Queen Charlotte


Machine guns

Cooking off is a characteristic of certain air-cooled machine guns firing from a closed bolt. In such a design, when the trigger is released the weapon feed leaves a final round in the chamber. Residual heat conducts through the cartridge case. If the kindling point of the propellant is eventually reached it will burn even though the primer has not been struck, thus firing the chambered round. Nitrocellulose, the primary component of modern smokeless powder, has a relatively low autoignition temperature of around 160–170 °C (320–338 °F). [1] Contrary to popular myth, this will not cause the machine gun to "runaway" at cyclic rate of fire (as compared to a slamfire) because each chambered round has to first be brought up to temperature. The time this takes depends on the temperature of the chamber and of the environment, but is usually several seconds, although if caused deliberately may be very fast. During this time the barrel is cooling.

Cook offs in machine guns are prevented by:

Closed bolt

Most modern infantry assault rifles fire from a closed bolt, meaning that when ready to fire, there is a round in the chamber of the barrel and the bolt and working parts are in the forward position, closing the breech. Squeezing the trigger releases the striker or hammer, firing the cartridge in the chamber. Assuming proper operation (no stoppages) a cook off is possible with this design because a cartridge is kept chambered in the potentially hot chamber, where it can absorb enough heat to cause ignition of its propellant. [2] Apart from the possibility to cook off the heated propellant requires a special formula to allow for consistent muzzle velocity throughout all temperatures.

Caseless ammunition



Cooking off is a serious hazard to crews in damaged and disabled tanks. Attempted solutions include storing ammunition under water and insulating ammunition compartments. The current technique, used in tanks such as the M1 Abrams, is to armor the compartments and provide blow-off panels to channel the force of the explosion to the exterior of the tank and prevent the jack-in-the-box effect.

Missiles and air-dropped bombs

The risk of aircraft armament cooking off is a significant hazard during pre-flight operations, especially for aircraft carriers. Fuel fires, which can spread across the flight deck rapidly and engulf many aircraft, are the most serious risk. This was a significant contributor to the 1967 fire disaster aboard the USS Forrestal, when such a fire (set off by an inadvertently fired Zuni rocket striking the fuel tanks of a waiting A-4 Skyhawk) detonated two unguided bombs of Korean War 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. Because of the age and condition of the first two bombs, the fire safety crew was unable to cool them before they cooked off, which should have been possible for contemporary weapons with higher cook-off temperatures.

A different sort of cook-off event was the trigger for the 1969 explosion and fire aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which also involved a Zuni rocket. During this event, the exhaust from an MD-3A "Huffer" Air Start Unit (ASU) overheated the warhead of a Zuni that was mounted on a parked aircraft, causing it to cook off. As with the Forrestal disaster, this led to procedural and equipment changes, specifically regarding ASUs.

See also

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Caseless ammunition


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