noun

• A noisy but harmless pyrotechnic device used especially in military exercises.

  ‘We managed to scare the bear away using 30 mm rubber bullets and thunderflashes - a kind of pyrotechnic or firework.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Or all three so we had to back it up with firing off a thunderflash from a hand pistol.’
  • ‘By 1 pm at the latest, the MPs were dead and though a British army Chinook, dropping thunderflashes and possibly firing, had arrived, it was too late.’
  • ‘The squaddies who raided his ammunition store for those thunderflashes 60 years ago never confessed, so it was Norman who had to go before his colonel on a charge.’
  • ‘Rockets lit up the sky as thunderflashes, flying earth, acrid smoke and the chatter of machine-gun fire filled the air night after night.’
  • ‘They turned up with machine guns loaded with blanks, flares and thunderflashes.’
  • ‘Unfortunately, Ann's son Caspar flung an Army thunderflash into the confined space, injuring my eardrums.’
  • ‘Opinion Leader Research is only one pollster reporting a thunderflash of anger in focus groups that is oddly not reflected in the polls.’