Old WW2 bombs and other unexploded ordnance

After some events in recent years in Germany, I wondered how much trouble other European countries (especially the UK and France) have with old unexploded WW 2 bombs. Have you been affected by defusal attempts or got evacuated?

I googled a little, but thought I could ask some people here as well.

One of those events, a bomb "defusal" in Munich in August this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9_2nD9Vj0

I work near an EOD facility, so about twice a month, they blow up a bunch of crap. Could be Unexploded Ordnance from the military, could be old junk they found in some forgotten magazine from WWII. I know they did a HUUUUGE cleanup of UXO on Kaho'olawe back in the Nineties, after using it as a gigantic bombing range for years.

We'd also get briefings about not touching anything that even remotely looks like a bomb (or missile, shell, grenade, rocket, and so on) when we'd go on training missions to the Big Island.

Oh, god, we get so many jobs to do with old ordnance washing up on beaches or dragged up in fishing nets. Mines, torpedoes, smoke markers...all kinds of nasty things.

Not helped by the fact that some idiot decided that the best way to get rid of out-of-date ordnance after the war was to dump it at sea.

My brother lives in Blythe, Northumberland. Do the Maths.

Uh... for those who can't... lots of container shipping and dredging. In the Channel and the North Sea. That which is a bit suspicious gets handled with extreme care. Said idiot has a lot to answer for.

edited 16th Nov '12 3:50:54 PM by Euodiachloris

Here in Halifax we occasionally have them get dug up around areas that used to be depots. They are usually inert and always disposed of safely though. Problem is that one of the places were they pop up is located by a major freeway so whenever they close it to disarm the things rush hour becomes an even bigger pain.

Out in Japan it's an on-again-off-again issue, what with all the Japanese military ordiance that got buried after WWII (The old Somebody Else's Problem folly). Last year they found an old bomb while digging up ground to lay down a new running track. When they didn't know how big it was, they established a "better safe than sorry" cordon that basically shut down the main half of the base. There was some arguign and politicing with the local authorities because the cordon would also cut off one of the big Japanese roads runnign by the base if they enforced it outside the fenceline. They compromised by only having the cordon apply on base. *rolls eyes*

The argument was "If we make them close that road, it will cause huge traffic problems." My reply, which went unanswered, was "Well what will it do to the traffic on that road if the bomb goes off?"

At the ned of the day, the bomb turned out to be much smaller than they were initially afraid of. The EOD guys carefully placed some C-4 around it, then burried the whole thign in sandbags and dirt and blew it up underground. Could barely hear a thing a half mile away where I was working.

Oh, and also, I remember a thing in the news when I was stationed in Kansas. Someone was helping their dad (retired WWII vet) clean up his house, and they found a mortar shell he had been keeping as a memento. They decided to call the police to make sure it was safe, they called Air Force EOD (for military ordnance around there, they just let the mlitary guys handle it while the police EOD guys deal with the industrial or homebrew stuff, and yes, I am as bothered as any of you are that they have a standard plan in place in Wichita for finding live military ordnance in town). Nothing dramatic came of it. They very carefully removed the mortar shell and took it elsewhere to deal with it away from any life limb or property.

It happens quite a lot on Guam. Earlier this year, a construction crew found a large undetonated American bomb, almost the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in the capital. Strangely enough, they didn't close off much of the city. Only the nearby mall's parking area, the immediate city block around it, the Public Library, and Public Defender's Offices were closed. Everything else, including a large bank that happens to be the corporate office of it's sub-branches stood open, despite being less than 500m away from the area.

The EOD teams never had to detonate the bomb though, so I guess they must've informed the nearby businesses that there wasn't a large threat or something to that effect.

More recently though, we had a bit of a scare at the Hotel I work at. A guest who was former Coast Guard reported to the lifeguards that he might have found what he thought was an undetonated Japanese hand grenade in the coral near our beaches, and took phots of it. We had to close down the beach and warn the nearby areas to keep their distance from ours for several hours until the EOD team arrived to examine it. Once the diver located the item and came close to shore, he decided to scream "HIT THE DECK!!!" and toss the item at us on the shoreline, only for us to realize that it was... just a hand-pump. The top rubber part of the pump has a grenade-ish look to it, and the rest of the pump was covered under the sand.

Bomb squad humor.

Technically not WW 2, but I live in sayreville, New jersey and in WW 1 we had a munitions plant and one day it just...blew up. so every couple years someone digs up part of a shell or something. Some shells were found under the playground for the upper elementary school just a few years ago, actually.

edited 19th Nov '12 8:43:02 PM by Joesolo

Thanks for sharing your stories. I noticed though, that people who didn't have any similar experience probably won't post here. :>

Bombs in Germany normally don't have to be detonated on site, it's only the nasty chemical fuse kind that is a problem. To explain a little, those bombs were designed not to detonate on impact, but up to 48 hours later, to hinder firefighters and other rescue craft from doing their job. Those bombs were built intentionally in a way that makes defusion (almost) impossible. When dropped they released acid that was supposed to dissolve the celluloid keeping the bomb from triggering, until it detonated after that celluloid got sufficiently weakened. If it fails, the trigger mechanism is extremely unstable, especially after 70 years. That's why that bomb had to be detonated in Munich, with a few million in damages. The same type of bomb (I think it was larger though, 1000 pound instead of only 500) killed 3 people in Goettingen in 2010. It detonated before they even started defusing it. Evacuation was luckily almost finished. We don't actually have so many problems with the "small" stuff, or at least I never heard of it. But we are still sitting on an estimated 25000 old aerial bombs in Munich.

My old history teacher inadvertently brought a live World War One grenade back from a school trip to Ypres in France. The Army had to come and deactivate it.

It is an intermittent problem in Europe.

Unexploded ordinance is a big issue. There are even dangerous Civil war shells still around in the U.S.

Mines are the most dangerous because they are more difficult to clean up thanks to anti-tampering devices.

I've heard that mines are the most dangerous for that reason, and that cluster bombs are the most dangerous instead, but for a couple of different reasons. Mainly, they combine the small size (harder to find) and destructive power of a mine, with the fact that really nobody ever knows where cluster bombletts land (unlike mines, which you had to actually send someone out to set up usually).

But really, any explosive device designed to go boom right away that does not do so is inherently dangerous because it is no longer working in a predictable fashion. Unpredictable malfunction plus a few hundred pounds of high explosive (possibly breaking down due to extended exposure to the environment) equals lots of fun for everyone involved.

Not to mention that cluster bomblets are often bright colours which make them attractive to children.

I just hope there aren't any unexploded Tallboys or Grand Slams lying about, particularly in Norway and France. You don't really want to imagine what would happen if three or eight tons or so of extremely high explosive goes boom near a bunch of schoolkinder exploring the old battlefield thingies after one of them tries chucking a rock at a big funny looking lump of metal.

That would be really bad, but I don't think any of those went "missing".

I dunno. One ended up in Burma after all. That is if you go by what the "John Rambo" film would tell you,

Plus Bomber Command was chucking them around like confetti in its quest to blow up viaducts, V3 sites and pocket battleships.

They a found block buster not that long ago in Germany. A "cookie cutter" iirc.

edited 10th Dec '12 6:28:45 PM by TuefelHundenIV

One of these bastards?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_(bomb)

12000 Lb at the maximum size for that type of bomb. Nowt to sneeze at. Even a 4000 Lb version isn't anything to sneer at either.

Note one line of the article:

Yep, the Lanc had the largest unmodified bomb bay of any World War II heavy bomber!

The B-29 was modified to be able to carry two Grand Slam 22000 Lb bombs externally though. I am not sure if they ever carried them into battle but the capability was there if needed.

And if the war in Europe had lasted another year or so, they may well have done in Berlin with those alone.

The USAF dropped Tallboy-derived bombs out of the backs of C-130s in Vietnam, apparently.

From what I understand, most American bombers tended to carry far less than their theoretical maximum bomb load, but I don't know if that had more to do with internal capacity or lifting capacity. IIRC, a B-17's max payload was somewhere around 7-9 tons, but it would be very limited in range and speed, so they carried 3-4 tons most of the time. They probably would have to get rid of other luxuries to reach that payload, such as ammo, defensive armament, and gunners. (assuming that you need pilot and co-pilot, a radio operator, a flight engineer and a dual-rated bombadier-navigator, that means you can lose the belly gunner, 2 waist gunners, and tail gunner, and a single-rated bombadier or navigator, for 5 guys or about a half ton, not counting their kit (guns, ammo, etc.)

See, we dont even NEED bombers. we'll chuck shit out of Cargo planes at you.