Old WW2 bombs and other unexploded ordnance

A scrap metal dealer in Penang has been instructed by the Malaysian police to dispose of 4 tons' worth of old bombs imported from several countries such as China, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

I doubt the dealer will be as willing to buy from the sellers those bombs were acquired from now...

Village full of repurposed bomb and shell casings

A lengthy Smithsonian article on the UXO in Germany and the litany of problems they cause. Death of various city employees and civilians, cost in disposal, and of course loss of property. One poor sod while lucky he didn't get blown up lost his home and got next to nothing for it.

Back in March of 2016 in Liverpool some WWII bombs were discovered in the city center.

An article on the Dangers of UXO in Syria. It talks a lot about cluster bombs namely the older ones with the streamer based fuse initiators that are noted as unreliable and responsible for so much cluster weapon UXO that even the US doesn't want to use them in case they have to move through the area afterwards.

edited 4th May '16 6:38:33 PM by TuefelHundenIV

WW 1 called, they said "that's cute"

And the point of that post was what just being contentious?

A five-man EOD team got blown sky-high today in Hungary by a WW 2-era 250-kilo bomb. Only one of them survived. The military, the defense ministry and the president all expressed condolences to the dead's families. Five kids got orphaned.

The bomb in question was one of ten thousands lying on a 4100 acre Soviet-era artillery range that's been undergoing a thorough de-mining and ordnance disposal operation since 2013.

And the kicker? The bomb was already disarmed, with the fuse removed. Nobody has even the faintest idea how the hell it blew up.

edited 1st Jul '16 4:28:33 PM by amitakartok

That really sucks. As for why it blew up my money is on destabilized explosives. Even modern explosives destabilize after sitting around in less then ideal conditions for long enough and even mild concussion can set them off.

edited 1st Jul '16 4:29:14 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Yeah, some high explosives do unpredictable things when they go bad. I hear crystallized TNT is a pretty puckering thing to encounter.

The artillery range is on one of the biggest steppe-like plains in the country. Maybe lying in the summer sun for hours is what set it off?

edited 2nd Jul '16 2:34:32 AM by amitakartok

Could be. Heat and possibly the degrading effect of UV radiation can certainly help a bomb going off.

Doing some quick digging. The WWII era HE aerial bombs for pretty much everyone was typically a mix of Amatol and TNT. Sometimes other materials were mixed in such as aluminium, wax, and phosphor. Amatol is a compound of TNT and Amonium nitrate used as a blast enhancer by providing additional oxidizer for the explosive.

With that in mind both of those substances are just fine when stored properly however UXO left outside and exposed to the elements tend to break down and destabilize over time. Being caught in direct sunlight heating bomb casings would be bad as well. Some of those old bombs once the explosives start the break down and sweat can become sensitive to even slight percussion.

edited 2nd Jul '16 5:47:21 AM by TuefelHundenIV

A somewhat pertinent question: How often does UXO turn up in unlikely places? Ammunition has been found in parts of Switzerland where no war took place since the middle ages, and from childhood memories I recall that explosive devices are one of the ABC of dangers to hikers in Southern Switzerland.

More details have been released. The bomb in question was an OFAB-250; the fuse was removed, but it was still containing explosive material and the EOD unit was preparing to destroy it when it went off. The dead EOD guys worked with this model before.

According to the official press release, the area's de-mining was supposed to have finished by May 31, but it was postponed to September 26. According to unconfirmed media reports, the government did not inform the EU of this and were pressuring the operation to hurry up and finish as soon as possible so that they won't be found out. Hence the EOD units were working under pressure.

amitakartok: Ah pushing them to take risks for sake of expediency to avoid getting caught in a screw up which is something you really don't want to do with those old bombs like that. Poor buggers got a little reckless and took one risk too many.

Septimus: It depends. In Europe it is a pretty common occurrence with materials from the days of old school cannon to modern era showing up. It will be fairly common in old battlefields, bombing ranges, and old artillery ranges. In the US it is almost entirely limited to Civil War battlefields, training ranges, artillery ranges, and bomb ranges that have been abandoned by the military and then developed into housing after the fact. Usually it is something demining missed.

Any area that has seen a lot of conflict will have increasingly more UXO in various areas from the wars especially in regions where conflict is constantly reoccurring event. The more often an area or region gets used as a battlefield the more likely you are to find UXO.

edited 2nd Jul '16 11:32:48 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Congo must be a rather fun place in that case....

Well, the reason why I was talking about "unlikely" places is because they have been found on pass roads in inner Switzerland and on the beaches of the Southern Switzerland lakes, none of which have been interested by warfare for several centuries.

On the other hand, if memory serves Italy set up trenches and dug-in positions during the world wars on our southern border, so finding ordnance there may not be so unlikely. I haven't ever seen any when I go hiking there, although I remember seeing warnings on how to handle UXO when I was a child.

Septimus; Some of those might be from mines in unstable soil or snow shifting as soil slides around and snow melts tumbling them around and dumping them into water ways and lakes. There are some old Cold War minefields that are still around and packing lethal surprises. Some of those mystery munitions, especially mines could be old misses or lost mine fields.

Shinra; The Congo is one of the well known hot spots for UXO in Africa. US AFRICOM troops usually get additional training because of the larger number of UXO hazards in areas they operate. There is also an international effort to demine parts of Africa which is complicated by the enormous number of deliberately unlabeled and untracked mine fields using low profile and difficult to detect AP mines with anti-tampering devices.

Didn't the Swiss hide ammo across half the country and rig the other half to explode on command during WW 2? Some stuff is certainly going to get lost along the way if that's done.

I dunno about this. To my understanding most UXO in Switzerland is for non-war related reasons (although accidental bombings during World War 2 have left some UXO): Using glaciers for military training results in UXO being encased in the ice and released when the glacier thaws. Inherited domiciles often have UXO as souvenirs or imported from other countries. Abandoned training areas often have UXO leftovers. UXO is also found in rivers and lakes but I am not so certain about their provenance - at least some can be transported by streams, as may have been the case with a non-inert grenade that was found on the Lukmanier Pass in 2011. Others appear to be waste that was simply dumped in the lakes.

Summa summarum here unexploded ordnance is a fairly common finding - 187 have been eliminated by the military in 2015 alone.

There were caches all over the place in case of invasion. The idea was the usual: compartmentalize the defence, so if push came to shove, individual communes, let alone Cantons, could organise gorilla resistance.

With Mussolini in one direction, and Hitler in about three... Well, yeah... Imagine how easy getting the votes became...

Good, old National Redoubt policies got polished off and kicked into overdrive, in short.

edited 3rd Jul '16 3:52:44 AM by Euodiachloris

From the man who created the wind blown Mine Kafon A drone to hunt and help dispose of mines. The drone maps an area to be cleared, uses an attached metal detector to find mines and mark their position, and finally lay a charge on the mine to set it off. He is hoping to be able to automate the process.

I like the idea in general but how does he hope to address the problem of low metal mines that have mostly non-metal parts?

Hoping that finding the metal rich mines alone will be a significant improvement, even if not all UXO can be tracked this way?

@220: The Rouge Angles of Satin strike again You certainly mean guerrilla resistance.

edited 3rd Aug '16 1:29:09 AM by Khudzlin

No. The Swiss will send gorillas into battle armed with automatic weapons and armored vehicles. They don't monkey around with their nation's defense.

Of course they're not monkeying around. Gorillas are apes.

edited 3rd Aug '16 6:43:36 AM by DrunkenNordmann