[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by Fusilier

For myself, I just go with the idea that it is a near miss. Enough for blast damage to effect the harbor facilities, but distant enough to keep enough intact for basic use. An airbust also negates the issue of radiation a great deal.

At Crossroads, a "direct hit" only sank five ships (now, granted, it was a 23kiloton blast, not the multiple-megaton city-killers that would have been used during a general nuclear war, so a near miss that buried itself in the mud a few clicks from Norfolk prior to going off probably wouldn't wreck that many ships.