The development of an effective method of drilling oil and gas wells to depths of 3-5 km and more is a complex problem of great practical interest. "Deep Hole Drilling With Explosives" is a distinctive and very interesting work of the engineer A. P. Ostrovskii, who more than twenty years ago, by his original suggestions, made a start in investigating the field of so-called non-bit processes of shattering rocks when drilling holes, a.nd, with his co-workers, developed a fundamentally new explosive method of drilling deep holes. This book discusses the new trend in worldwide a.pplication of explosives in technology and the national economy; it presents considerable experimental material on the effect of explosions in solid media, material that is not only interesting to specialists in mining but also to physicists. Many phenomena discussed by the author and cited in the book still await explanation, but the fact that these phenomena have been already subjected to experimental study undoubtedly adds to our knowledge of one of the most meagerly investigated areas of the science of explosions-concerning the shattering effect of explo­ sions on solid media. July 29, 1960 Professor M. A. Sadovskii Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR 1 INTRODUCTION Together with the perfection of turbine drilling and the introduction of electrical drills in the USSR, new methods have been developed for shattering rock and drilling deep oil and gas wells without the use of a bit.