Minor quibble, Jay -- the bombs were not detonated in the nozzle, but in the combustion chamber itself. That's where the combustion instability was occurring (not surprisingly).

This is one of the most fascinating and impressive stories in the whole Apollo project. It's also an example of the "art" of engineering, where computers (of the era) and theory were useless. It was patient experimentation, redesign, and testing that ironed out the stability problem, not an "Aha!" moment or theoretical analysis.

By the way, does anyone know how powerful the bombs were? Obviously they had to be pretty big, or their effect would be swamped by the energies of the engines themselves. But how would they compare to, say, a stick of dynamite?