Considering that this pinnacle of technology manages to blow up two Martian tripods, one of them by the shrapnel resulting from its explosion, it's not much of an achievement.
The Martians had fewer than thirty tripods in the book. This fight represented all but one of their total combat losses. And given that Humanity was basically completely overwhelmed by this point, for the Thunder Child those two Tripods were quite an achievement.
Deleted the following Natter that violated Example Indentation.