[HN Gopher] WW2 Bomb Explodes in England
___________________________________________________________________
WW2 Bomb Explodes in England
Author : mensetmanusman
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-02-11 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| If someone died would that increase the tally from the war? Would
| the last fatality of WW2 be in 2023?
| hanoz wrote:
| If anyone wants an education in why " _slowly burning_ the
| explosive " isn't as mad an approach to disarming a bomb as it
| sounds, please do see the incredibly well informed responses I
| was rewarded with when I raised a quizzical eye to the technique
| in my post below.
|
| Unfortunately the best replies were usurped by a telling off from
| someone who comically misread my tenor, and now the whole thread
| has been moved from top straight to bottom, presumably as the
| victim of some anti-controversy algorithm. I know it's not the
| done thing to comment on such matters, but there's some really
| great posts in there that people put a lot of effort into, and
| now they're buried, which, dang, is a shame.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| SS Montgomery has 1400 tons of explosives and is within sight of
| a small island town.
|
| _" While the risk of a major explosion is believed to be remote,
| it is considered prudent to monitor the condition of the wreck."_
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ss-richard-mo...
|
| At least they know about it and check the site now and again...
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Ever been to Sheerness? they reckon it'll do two million pounds
| worth...
|
| ...of improvements.
|
| Seriously though, they more than know and check, it's carefully
| marked with large conspicuous buoys as well as constantly
| monitored in case someone fiddles with it and there are some
| pretty big, fast police RIBs round there. (had a nice friendly
| chat with them when they wondered if I was a drug smuggler.)
| Apparently they're cutting off the rusting masts (above water)
| sometime soon to reduce risk further. But there is not much
| that sensibly can be done to actually remove it, and there may
| not be much of it left that can actually go up.
|
| Buried bombs that nobody knows are there are far more
| worrying... and the Germans have that problem rather worse than
| Britain does.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > had a nice friendly chat with them when they wondered if I
| was a drug smuggler.
|
| I mean if you were a drug smuggler you wouldn't have told
| them, would you?
|
| "Oi mate, what you got that there? And no lies!"
|
| "Evenin officer, just 200 kilos of cocaine, nothing fancy."
|
| "Aight crackin, carry on. Wait, you got a loicense fer that
| cocaine?!"
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| :-D
|
| At risk of personally identifying information... I guess I
| did volunteer this one.
|
| I knew not many people pick a day in mid December to go
| sailing. I didn't know I'd be the only one out, the day
| they were doing a massive drugs bust. They clearly thought
| no real pleasure sailor would be there. Fortunately I am
| obviously a harmless WAFI* and the appearance of my kid's
| cheery grin in the companionway was enough to convince
| them. (Bringing them up hardy, you see)
|
| They probably also realised that with their hundreds of
| horsepower it's not like my beloved 4KSB* is a credible
| getaway vehicle.
|
| *Wind Assisted Fucking Idiot
|
| **Four Knot S... Box
| moffkalast wrote:
| That's gotta be the greatest pirate I've ever seen.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I know it's tangential, but there's gotta be a few more
| nautical initialisms you can share!
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Sorry, can't think of any more funny ones right now. 4KSB
| is a Sailing Anarchy-ism; the same kind of boat is for
| some reason a MAB in the UK - a Manky Auld Boat. I take
| exception to that one.
| zabzonk wrote:
| there is a possible urban myth (no one seems sure if it is a myth
| or not) that the "gate guardian" at RAF Scampton in lincolnshire
| consisted not only of a lancaster bomber (i can confirm that - i
| went to school under one of the bomber's wings) but also a
| tallboy and a grandslam earthquake bomb (can also confirm -
| pretty sure there was one of each). the latter 10 tons gross
| weight if filled with explosive. which in this instance, it may
| have been.
|
| what i can't confirm, and nobody really seems to know is whether
| this myth is true. if it was, and if it had gone off it would
| easily have levelled this nuclear bomber base (me included) and
| much of the surroundings, with possibly interesting consequences
| at the height of the cold war.
|
| see https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2020/02/myth-busters-the-raf-
| sca... for more.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I'm leaning towards "no" without evidence because it's a good
| tall tale.
|
| Aside: A playground park sand pit used to contain a
| decommissioned FJ (-2 or -3) Fury. No ordinance or armaments
| though: live, dead, or Schrodinger. In the quest to cover kids
| in bubblewrap, of course it was replaced with a boring, cookie-
| cutter playground.
| zabzonk wrote:
| i tend to agree, but you can never discount the stupidity of
| the "bloody military mind" - a favourite curse word of my mum
| when my dad, a pilot, was off on exciting detachments and she
| was stuck in the middle of a lincolnshire wilderness with
| three kids.
| [deleted]
| hanoz wrote:
| This was while they were attempting to disarm the bomb using the
| technique of " _slowly burning_ the explosive ", which in my
| obviously completely inexpert opinion, I wouldn't have
| recommended.
| nine_k wrote:
| I would assume that the explosive was TNT. TNT actually takes
| some effort to detonate; this is why even artillery shells can
| be filled with it, an not explode during firing. TNT can also
| burn safely e.g if thrown into a fire in small amounts; you
| likely can even make a candle out of it.
|
| The bomb likely had another, undetected detonator which was
| triggered, and it produced enough of a shock wave to make the
| TNT explode.
| kortex wrote:
| > The bomb likely had another, undetected detonator
|
| That would be really poor bomb design. Bombs are designed to
| be stored inert near the airstrip, mounted to staged aircraft
| and armed quickly by inserting a primer/detonator. There
| would be one and only one per bomb. The detonator would
| certainly be removed first before trying to burn out.
|
| Explosives usually become more unstable over time, sometimes
| forming pockets of primary explosives, which can detonate the
| bomb. See my sibling comment.
|
| Edit: I'm completely mistaken! Some bombs in fact have
| multiple fuse pockets, so presumably, multiple fuses.
| Nonetheless, even with all fuses removed, UXB can still go
| off during disposal.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Per BBC report[1]:
|
| > Specialists started the process by using a robot to cut
| the fuse and trigger at about 17:30 GMT on Thursday, but
| abandoned this when water from the cutting process
| destabilised part of the sand barrier.
|
| > A decision was then made to switch to a slow burn
| technique, which was being carried out when the device
| exploded.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-64604115
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Your commentary here and in your post above has been
| incredibly insightful. I was reminded of the 1967 USS
| Forrestal fire, when I had recalled reading that the ships
| captain and ordinance handlers were extremely worried about
| loading old bombs aboard the ship. Your explanations gave
| much further context to what was likely happening in that
| ordinance that gave those men such concern. Thanks!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire
| kortex wrote:
| Thank you!
| VLM wrote:
| Well, poor or not, they did it, I found the American TM for
| german bombs of that era printed in the 50s and the SC250
| definitely has a forward and after fuze pocket. Took 5, 17,
| 50, or 57 series fuzes.
|
| Its wild that all this stuff from decades ago is online.
| You get used to not having any historical data about, well,
| historical events.
|
| The type 17 fuze was a clockwork that could go 1.5 to 80
| hours after landing. I could imagine something like that
| getting jarred into working again after a few decades...
| kortex wrote:
| Thanks for the correction! Yeah, I did some more digging
| and there are in fact some wacky designs. The single-
| fusing-element is more dominant in modern designs, but
| war is a crazy place.
|
| (pdf warning)
|
| https://www.fh-
| campuswien.ac.at/fileadmin/redakteure/News/Do...
| chiph wrote:
| The Germans would sometimes use a timed detonator on their
| bombs, intended to kill emergency services personnel who
| moved in after the raid and were fighting fires, aiding the
| wounded, etc. If you haven't seen it, the show "Danger UXB"
| from the early 80's is good.
|
| https://youtu.be/Mm-RQtPNvqY?t=268
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Those crafty Germans must have timed this one to go off
| in 2023.
| chiph wrote:
| After I clicked reply and went to do a chore I thought to
| myself "I didn't talk about how it's been almost 80 years
| and it's unlikely to have been a timer." Doh.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| The British just sent two waves of bombers one a few
| hours after the first to kill off the ambulances and
| firefighters. Seems like the Germans once again beat the
| British at their own disgusting tactics with better
| technology.
|
| Also do you have a source other than a post-war tv show?
| Im getting a lot of unrelated search results when trying
| to confirm that timed fuses were used this way. Typically
| timed fuses were used to make the bomb explode before
| reaching the ground so it wouldn't just blow dirt into
| the air but would actually collapse lots of roofs etc.
| mis-set timers could hurt rescue personnel but i havent
| heard that that was even intended by the Germans.
| fhars wrote:
| Ah, yes, the good old HN classic, "I have thought about it for
| two minutes and come to the irrefutable and objectively true
| conclusion that the specialists who do this for a living and
| have decades of experience and technical know how must
| obviously be morons." Always so funny to read...
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I think it was self-aware a joke referencing that very
| thing...
| jonplackett wrote:
| Whether it is or not, I would strongly recommend the OP -
| just like a striker who just scored a goal from a corner -
| immediately claim that is was 100% deliberate.
| zenexer wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with pointing out that a standard
| technique for disarming a bomb seems counterintuitive to a
| layperson. That's the sort of observation that fuels
| curiosity and interesting discussion. I don't think the OP
| was suggesting that it was the wrong technique.
| nathanwh wrote:
| I do agree that I see that comment a lot on here. However
| that seems to be a pretty uncharitable reading of the parent
| comment, as it seems they were more expressing surprise that
| burning the explosive is a legitimate means of defusing a
| bomb.
| kortex wrote:
| Some context as a chemist. Most explosives require DDT
| (deflagration to detonation transition) in order to explode.
| DDT occurs when the flame front goes supersonic in the material
| and creates a shockwave (simplification but close enough).
|
| Low sensitivity is desirable because you want explosives to go
| off on demand, not randomly. Thus, most bulk explosives can be
| safely burned without detonation. Primary explosives have a low
| DDT threshold, meaning it takes far less energy and/or
| confinement to DDT. Thus, you can have a small primary,
| sometimes a secondary booster, to set off your bulk charge. The
| primer can be removed/dissolved to render the weapon far safer.
| But not perfectly safe.
|
| I don't know the exact composition, but it is likely a
| combination of TNT, and one of the hexagen/MX explosives (RDX,
| HMX) [1]. Luftwaffe used Trialen 105 in their 250kg bomb [2],
| which is TNT, RDX, and aluminum powder, so lets go with that.
| TNT is fairly stable, *MX are quite stable, but picrates are
| ornery. Over time they can break down and react with metals in
| the casing. Metal picrates are much closer to primaries in
| temperament. They are also far more shock sensitive, which is
| why (somewhat paradoxically) it's safer to evac and burn these
| old bombs out, then to try to relocate it. There are other ways
| in which unstable residues can be formed, not just picrates
| (e.g. TNT can release NOx over time and form metal nitrate or
| fulminate salts). You also have all the impurities from
| synthesis (such as DNT and mixed nitrates). Over time this
| forms a witches' brew of mixed nitrates that's typically much
| more sensitive. Sensitive, as in, workers have died when their
| shovel struck the bomb casing. There would not even be time for
| the _clunk_ sound to make it to their ears before obliteration.
| Or even just...nothing [4]. Hug your loved ones, folks.
|
| (side note: this is why if you ever find old orndance, or old
| bottles of certain chemicals e.g. ether, you should stop
| immediately and don't try to move it, just evacuate and call a
| hazmat team)
|
| What most likely happened is the old bomb corroded and formed a
| pocket of these unstable salts, and when the flame hit it, a
| DDT occurred which set off the bulk charge.
|
| This is all well known to ordnance disposal folks, hence the
| sandbox cover and evacuation radius. [3]
|
| Edit: tweaked wording after some more research into bomb
| composition.
|
| P.S. I updated my notes on explosive composition. Turns out WW2
| US/UK favored picrate mixes far more than the Germans (who
| favored TNT, RDX, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum), and as a
| result, allied bombs from this period are much more unstable
| than German ones. Also note, forming unstable species isn't
| necessary for DDT: e.g. the Halifax and Beirut explosions were
| caused solely by burning ammonium nitrate. It's just much, much
| harder to get a pile of AN to go off than rando metal nitrate
| salts.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_explosives_used_duri...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SC250_bomb
|
| [3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150922-these-nazi-
| bombs...
|
| [4] https://www.dw.com/en/wwii-bomb-self-detonates-in-german-
| fie...
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > in my obviously completely inexpert opinion, I wouldn't have
| recommended
|
| I'm pretty confident they had some of the best experts on the
| case.
|
| The UK has some of the best bomb-disposal minds, the IRA
| campaigns on the mainland during The Troubles ensured that.
| Just look it up on wikipedia ... double-digit number of bombs
| planted in some years !
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| Over a thousand or about 60% of the Provisional IRA kills
| were British soldiers. So yea they got hit hard. I haven't
| seen any evidence that they actually improved their bomb
| disposal techniques though. The British Army kept getting
| successfully bombed into the 90's.
| twic wrote:
| Does defusing a brand new IRA bomb involve the same set of
| skills as defusing a decades-old Luftwaffe one? I would have
| thought it's a rather different problem.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| IED has progressed immensely since the internet and the best
| bomb disposal techs are the people who'd been doing it
| recently and they're mostly in the middle east.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Doesn't seem all that nuts to me. C4 can be burned without it
| going bang.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| The rules must be different for 80+ year old explosives?
| Presumably every possible decomposition reaction is now
| present.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Clearly the experts _do_ recommend it in certain circumstances.
| samus wrote:
| Some explosives, like C4, can actually be safely burned. To set
| them off, a detonator is required. Explosives from WW2 probably
| have similar properties, as it makes producing and handling
| huge warheads a much less dangerous activity. Of course, there
| might always be impurities in the material that makes them
| behave much more unstably, both from production and because of
| corrosion and chemical degradation over the ~80 years that have
| passed.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| [flagged]
| mshockwave wrote:
| No I believe it's a common approach. Without the fuse dynamites
| are inert and you can burn it without exploding it, since they
| are actually flammable. Of course, lots of steps can go wrong
| like incomplete removal of the fuse.
| [deleted]
| ranger207 wrote:
| For safety while handling, many explosives need both heat and
| pressure to explode. Famously, soldiers in Vietnam would burn
| C4 for heating water. However, explosives tend to become more
| sensitive over time, and there's always a chance that the
| explosive filler in this bomb wasn't an insensitive explosive
| anyway. Given the chance of it exploding when burned versus
| exploding when jolted, it probably made sense to burn it in
| place
| grogenaut wrote:
| There's a lot about explosives and explosives removal that is
| not obvious. Even more so because those techniques are
| classified both to keep other weapon designers from designing
| around your diffusal methods, but also to keep from elevating
| the "game" as it were of the public.
|
| There's also a ton of stuff you don't learn until years later
| like how some old explosives cause salt crystals to form that
| mess everything up more.
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150922-these-nazi-bombs...
|
| What method would you have used in your common sense guess? The
| old cut the red wire method? Chat gpt says "call the police and
| leave the area" as the most effective bomb diffusal method. The
| experts then "diffuse the bomb" as the next step. So there you
| go.
| spoils19 wrote:
| [dead]
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I'm reminded of the time I heard of the story of a US town
| blowing up a beached whale with TNT that didn't go as planned
| in high-school when we were on unit discussion the mechanisms
| of explosives. I think the teacher was there(?) as a kid and
| it... _ignited_...an interest in explosive engineering in him.
| blihp wrote:
| While you possibly heard about a different story, this one
| has made the rounds over the years:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34
| golem14 wrote:
| Glad no-one was insured. Here's, on a lighter note, a Bob Newhart
| recording on Bomb defusing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArMf6xbMsLI
| WalterBright wrote:
| The last Civil War casualty was just a few years ago when someone
| was fooling around with an intact shell.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| I'm assuming you mean American Civil War... and I wouldn't rush
| to call it done, some of those sieges involved a lot of big
| ammunition and there might be more out there. Impressive it was
| dry enough to go up, though, gunpowder soaks up moisture fairly
| enthusiastically.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yes, the American Civil War.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| If it was the english civil war then that would be even
| more exciting.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Crazy how much energy that sand wall was able to dissipate.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I'm invoking Godwin's law: Always the damn Nazis!
| [deleted]
| gr4yb34rd wrote:
| what happens if they send germany the bill for damages?
| Eduard wrote:
| Then Germany sends back their own bills?
|
| Cologne has a found WW2 bomb every other week or so, e.g. look
| at this non-exhaustive press release list: https://www.stadt-
| koeln.de/basisdienste/suche/?keywords=Bomb...
|
| Most can be disarmed, but some have to be exploded in a
| controlled manner.
|
| Nowadays I get pushed safety notifications to my phone (KATWARN
| app) wherever I am in Germany that they found a WW2 bomb
| nearby.
|
| The app then shows the location and evacuation information.
| ben_bai wrote:
| Exactly, we (germany) find lots of old WW2 bombs and smaller
| ordinances on our own terrain per year.
|
| "Controlled" detonation of old bomb in Munich 10 years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrFydaWOTpI
| jchw wrote:
| You know, I think there might be a reason in particular why
| Germany would be responsible for WW2 era bombs in England and
| not vice versa...
|
| (Not entirely serious here, but still.)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Yeah, let's levy all sorts of punitive measures on them.
| After all, they were responsible and they lost! Nothing bad
| could happen from that approach.
| jchw wrote:
| Well, other than the fact that it's too late now, that
| does actually sound like what happens after you lose a
| war, regardless of who's responsible.
| samus wrote:
| The issue is settled now. Germany paid huge war
| reparations after WWII until the 1990s.
|
| Apart from that, many of these explosives are
| malfunctioning bombs that were supposed to go off when
| firefighters and rescue personell are at the site. Such
| devices are pure malice; the defense argument can't
| justify them.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| You can't randomly levy all sorts of minor nuisance onto
| somebody after they've conceded and signed a bunch of
| treaties largely drafted by the winning side meant to
| settle this. That's just a great way to self-sabotage
| your diplomatic reputation.
| jchw wrote:
| > signed a bunch of treaties largely drafted by the
| winning side
|
| That's what I was referring to. That's why it's too late
| now.
|
| Wasn't that complicated, but sometimes people on HN read
| what they want to read.
| kataklasm wrote:
| That's what the winning nations in WWI did and it was one
| of the single biggest reasons for WWII happening.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Yeah, but doing that caused a second world war. Hopefully
| we learned something from that mistake.
| Retric wrote:
| It's a popular theory that caused WWII, but it's likely
| WWII would have happened either way. At a minimum Japan
| wasn't impacted.
| dahdum wrote:
| > Then Germany sends back their own bills?
|
| That's a bit like Russia sending Ukraine bills for destroyed
| military equipment.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| That probably will happen if the ruskies win.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Not really considering Britain and its allies declared war
| on Germany. You can argue they did it for the greater good
| but it's not like your example.
| [deleted]
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There is an argument, of who started it.
|
| But there is (or rather was) an greater argument, of not
| wasting anymore time, with historic fights over and over
| again and rather move on and look forward.
|
| All the great conflicts are getting solved that way and not
| with bean counting.
| simonh wrote:
| Do you think a former colonial power really wants to go down
| that road?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Unless you want it sent in the Compiegne Wagon, they send all
| their bomb disarmament bills back to the UK and they have far
| more of them.
| kitd wrote:
| The guys who built that sand wall deserve a raise. Saved severe
| damage to property and possibly a few lives.
| Haga wrote:
| [dead]
| dhosek wrote:
| Wild, that they're still finding these almost 70 years later.
| There used to be a British series about finding unexploded bombs
| that was shown on PBS in the 80s or 90s called Danger: UXB about
| the teams that would defuse the unexploded bombs that would be
| found in England.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Here in Germany, all kinds of unexploded crap from WW2 is quite
| routinely found, and not just during building/renovations.
|
| I heard in one documentary following the defusing/safe
| detonation of one of these that the "KBD" (one of the
| shorthands for the civilian ordinance disposal services) is
| estimated to have to work in this field for at least several
| decades considering the (potential) amount of explosives still
| hidden in the ground and water. Especially the water is another
| hot topic since after WW2 the Allies just dumped huge amounts
| of explosive ordinance and chemical weapons into the North and
| Baltic Seas which are slowly corroding under the water and
| releasing their toxic innards into the ecosystem(s).
|
| A bunch of people employed by the ordinance disposal service
| have died doing their work over the years (relevant portion
| cited):
|
| "Despite a professional and extremely cautious approach, deadly
| accidents caused by uncontrolled explosions occur time and
| again when defusing bombs. In the years 2000 to 2010, eight
| explosive ordnance clearance personnel were killed in action,
| [11] three of them alone in the detonation of a 500 kg Allied
| bomb on June 2, 2010 in Gottingen." -- https://de-m-wikipedia-
| org.translate.goog/wiki/Kampfmittelr%...
| this_user wrote:
| In the part of my city that I live in, they find, on average,
| about one bomb per year that necessitates an evacuation so it
| can be defused. Usually, these are found during construction
| work.
| Sakos wrote:
| One was found in my city this week. Another one a few weeks
| ago. They're surprisingly common.
| Tomte wrote:
| My German town of 70000 inhabitants has a WW2 bomb evacuation
| roughly every 4 years, in my experience.
|
| Many hundred to a few thousand people have to leave their
| houses, police and other emergency services from the whole
| state come into town, the whole day or evening is full of
| sirens.
|
| The local paper is running articles about the two or three bomb
| specialists as if they were old friends you haven't seen for a
| while.
|
| Also when you're building the permit explicitly states that
| anything found that looks like munitions must be left alone and
| the town's crisis center be informed immediately. Around here
| (but that's because the area was heavily bombed) they routinely
| check aerial photos before issuing the permit. They even ask
| old people who lived around here if they remember bombs falling
| around the plot that's about to be built on.
| ddejohn wrote:
| Here's a chilling reminder of the _first_ world war,
| https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-forbidden-forest/
|
| It's pretty devastating to think that we're still dealing with
| the fallout of WWI a hundred years later.
| terramex wrote:
| There is forest not far away from my parents home (central
| Poland) where people were constantly finding unexploded bombs.
| Finally, in 2012 a team was hired to clean it. It took them 9
| months and they found "tens of thousands" of missiles, bombs,
| munitions etc.
|
| https://dzienniklodzki.pl/tony-bomb-i-pociskow-z-ii-wojny-sw...
|
| If you are into First World War memorabilia sometimes you don't
| even need metal detector to find shrapnel balls in local
| forests if you know where to look.
| samus wrote:
| Makes one wonder how much of it has found its way into
| illicit hands. Yes, it's more dangerous to the owner than to
| any target at this point, but if you know what you're doing
| it could be a source of explosives that is otherwise
| completely untraceable.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I think it would be more cost and time-effective to just
| make explosives than go around searching for them, hoping
| they don't blow up when you dig them out, then concealing
| them and bringing them back to wherever your base of
| operations is. Explosives are (somewhat) easy to make, it
| is setting them off reliably without blowing yourself up
| that is difficult.
| [deleted]
| greedo wrote:
| A munition with a fuse is nothing terrorists etc would
| want. There's no way to know when it would explode, nor any
| way to control it.
| Merad wrote:
| I'd imagine most people with the knowledge to safely handle
| these types of explosives already have access to modern
| weapons grade stuff (black market munitions, etc.). For
| your run of the mill domestic terrorist type it really
| isn't that hard to make explosives (fertilizer and diesel
| fuel), so probably not worth the risk of messing with
| unstable 100 year old bombs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's not all that strange, a bomb that does not go off will
| bury itself deep in the terrain, you need to go looking for
| them somewhere between 8 and 12 meters deep!
|
| The expectations are that for the areas in NL where there was a
| lot of bombing that it will take another 125 years before
| they'll be able to declare the job done.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| In Germany WW2 bombs continue to go off at a rate of 1/year. We
| have to thank the Lord Lindemann and Bomber Harris for that -
| the two promoted the frankly idiotic idea of carpet bombing
| cities instead of armament factories, hoping that the
| population would overthrow Hitler. That at least was the
| official line.
|
| What these two war criminals did was mix delayed fuze explosive
| bombs in with the regular incendiary and explosive load. The
| idea was to kill firefighters and interfere with the
| firefighting effort after a bombing run. Some of these delayed
| fuzes worked too well and instead of 4 hours after release they
| go off after 70 or 80 years.
| nixass wrote:
| I'm in datacenter business and I'm managing couple of
| facilities around EMEA. German (Frankfurt and Berlin) sites are
| notorious for sending out warnings that WW2 bombs were found in
| vicinity and defuse plans. Having hundreds of kilos heavy bombs
| near data centers makes my nerves tense. And I can only imagine
| how many are still to be found
| ta1243 wrote:
| There was one about a year ago.
|
| It was about 50 yards from my bedroom window when I was at
| university 20 years ago. Wierd to think what could be sat in
| the field opposite my house right now.
| samus wrote:
| Bombing wasn't all that accurate back then. No GPS- or laser-
| guided ammunition was available yet. Missiles were quite
| experimental still and mostly used by fighter-bombers. Night
| bombing adds its own difficulties. Also, both sides had to
| deal with enemy air defense that was quite state of the art,
| therefore they could rarely take their leisure time to target
| well.
| implements wrote:
| I believe the CEP (Circular Error Probable - the area near
| the aiming point the bomb was likely to hit with a 50%
| probability) was something like 5 miles for night-time
| high-altitude bombing during WW2.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| A cursory search of WW2 airplanes, I am finding plenty of
| bombers that could operate at 500+mph (probably not when
| fully laden, but still). Targeting anything when going at
| that speed by little more than eye is still hugely
| impressive.
| sarnowski wrote:
| In Germany it is mandatory to do a bomb search on a plot before
| you are allowed to start building a building.
|
| Also photos of bomb drops are used to check where bombs might
| have fallen and not explode.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/firm-uses-hist...
| dghf wrote:
| Parts of northeastern France are still off limits because of
| stuff left over from the _First_ World War. Official estimates
| are that, at the current rate of clean-up, it will take
| somewhere between 300 and 700 years to clear the area
| completely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge
| albertopv wrote:
| Few years ago, in a town not far from Venice, digging a new
| road underpass, they found a completely unknown underground
| warehouse filled with nazi arms. That was quite exceptional,
| but still nowadays WW2 bombs are found all over Italy, millions
| were dropped.
| implements wrote:
| Great series. Towards the end they were showing the early
| experiments with steaming high explosive from bombs too risky
| to move. I guess this "burn the explosive out" method is the
| current evolution of that.
| kitd wrote:
| They had to dredge Portsmouth Harbour to accommodate the new
| QE2-class aircraft carriers.
|
| Almost every week it seemed work had to stop and the area
| evacuated because they kept pulling up unexploded ordnance,
| Portsmouth being the home of the Navy and therefore very
| heavily bombed during WW2.
| docdeek wrote:
| It's a reasonably regular thing here in France. It's the sort
| of thing they'll find anytime there's a new building going up
| with underground parking beneath it - the contractor digs,
| finds a bomb, the army cordons off the quartier for a few hours
| and sorts it out. Makes the local news but mainly because it
| either obstructs traffic or is close to a school that needs to
| shut for the morning.
| dmitriid wrote:
| There are Red Zones in France that are deemed unsuitable for
| human habitation _since WWI_
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge
| euroderf wrote:
| > the contractor digs, finds a bomb
|
| What does this mean ? Someone is operating a backhoe and
| there is a loud KLUNK and the operator looks at what it hit
| and says to him/herself jeez I'm lucky to still be alive ?
| docdeek wrote:
| I guess it is something like that, but don't know for sure.
| I live in a major urban area so if they find an unexploded
| bomb it has probably been built over a couple of times
| since it was originally dropped. The most recent near me
| (about 800 meters away) was in 2021 and the most
| interesting thing about it for me was that it was a US
| bomb, not a German one.
|
| http://www.uniindia.com/news/world/people-france-
| wwii/233733...
| Xylakant wrote:
| Most bombs are found by actively surveying the site, often
| using old aerial photography. But random finds happen and
| sometimes with deadly consequences. In 2014 a bomb exploded
| during earth works, the backhoe operator was killed
| https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/unfall-baggerfahrer-bei-
| bombe...
| emmelaich wrote:
| For Belgian / Flemish farmers, yes.
| samus wrote:
| Pretty much, although in that case they would indeed be
| very lucky to not set it off. I guess it is more likely
| that they find it when they put down the soil they just
| excavated. I would like to be educated about this, but I
| feel they should pretty much expect these things and check
| with a metal detector before excavating the next layer of
| ground.
| VLM wrote:
| I'm sure it happens, sometimes.
|
| Most of the time, the lawsuits for digging up someone's
| fiber optic cable or natgas line are so staggering that
| there are various "free" one-call services that mark buried
| objects. The public utilities all pool resources to fund
| it, so it's free in the sense that your utility bills pay
| for it. I know a guy who had a gig doing that and in
| addition to locate devices that are kind of like a giant
| telco wire toner, they do indeed sometimes walk around with
| a literal metal detector. Doesn't work very well on
| terracotta sewer pipe but those generally collapse in a
| couple decades as I've found out the hard way.
|
| Anyway, yeah, a dude with a metal detector walking around
| with a map of buried pipes in one hand saying "that's odd
| there's not supposed to be a pipe here"...
| Someone wrote:
| Yes. I think it's more dangerous for farmers, though. They
| have weaker machinery. Also, in parts of Belgium and
| France, it's so common to find stuff that they carry small
| explosives, including mustard gas grenades from World War
| One, to the side of the road for later pickup by bomb
| disposal experts
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest)
| NikkiA wrote:
| I remember a WW1 naval mine being washed up on the beach we
| went to when I was a child, and being evacuated away into the
| town centre. Sort of leaves a memorable event when your 'day at
| the beach' is ruined like that.
|
| It was mid-70s, so Danger:UXB was still a couple of years away.
| wcoenen wrote:
| In Ypres, Belgium, there are still unexploded shells from the
| first world war being unearthed. Those are now more than 100
| years old. Farmers there know not to plough certain areas of
| their land.
|
| I think the most recent fatalities because of those bombs
| occurred in 2014: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
| europe-26654314
| emmelaich wrote:
| It's so common there that you just leave your unexploded
| munitions at your gate for a pick-up.
|
| From Wikipedia ..
|
| > _In Belgium, Dovo, the country 's bomb disposal unit,
| recovers between 150 and 200 tons of unexploded bombs each
| year. Over 20 members of the unit have been killed since it
| was formed in 1919_
|
| Many more of the public (farmers typically) have been killed
| due to the "iron harvest"
| MandieD wrote:
| We still have several a year involving sudden neighborhood
| evacuations in the Nuremberg area, and I expect my son, age 2,
| will still be dealing with this when he's an old man if he
| stays anywhere in Germany.
|
| It's especially chaotic when one is found close enough to stop
| traffic to and from the main train station, which is also a
| nexus for the subways.
| Xylakant wrote:
| It's very common in Germany. August last year, Berlins disposal
| site caught fire with 25 tons of not disposed ammunition on the
| site. In winter, they blow up old ammunition every week - they
| stop for the summer due to fire hazard.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I loved that show when I was a kid. There is a ropey version
| floating around on the ocean waiting for a curious buccaneer to
| pick up. It still holds up.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| It's relatively common in the UK. According to this BBC
| article[0] the Ministry of Defence deal with about 60 a year.
| There was one washed up on the beach last month in Brighton
| near me[1].
|
| [0] What do we know about unexploded WW2 bombs?
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-56243750
|
| [1] https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2023/01/02/suspected-
| bom...
| thombat wrote:
| The problem of dumped munitions in the Baltic is compounded by
| it being a good place to find amber, which looks quite similar
| to white phosphorus:
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/two-women-injur...
| pengaru wrote:
| Based on its discovery during dredging operations, I didn't
| expect to see an onshore explosion. Did they move it before
| attempting to defuse?
| jameskilton wrote:
| Article says they built a sand bunker around the bomb to
| provide protection in case this happened. Sounds like the
| bunker did its job!
| ajb wrote:
| In fact, they often just build a bunker and do a controlled
| detonation - the bunker directs the explosion forces upwards,
| where they don't harm anything. Not sure why they decided to
| defuse this one.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The seismic wave propagating through the ground can damage
| nearby buildings.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| When it is easy, they defuse it. But usually it is all
| rust, so controlled demolition is the preferred way to go
| and usually always done, unless it is hard because of
| sensible surroundings. But then the bomb gets transported.
| implements wrote:
| Nearby gas mains and harbour sea wall, I believe.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Looks like it was maybe dredged up and that's a) how they found
| it and b) why it's on the side there.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.norfolk.police.uk/news/latest-news/communities-t...
|
| https://twitter.com/NorfolkPolice/status/1624133384069959682
| grogenaut wrote:
| The piece of shrapnel the size of a bus that lands on the road
| gives you a sense of the scale and is horrifying. At first I was
| like "they let someone drive by that site while diffusing?!?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-11 23:00 UTC)