Old WW2 bombs and other unexploded ordnance

Move all of the civilians out of the way, and hit it with a really big bomb?

It's expeditious. Not very practical, unfortunately.

You know I was reading about those DD shermans and found there was a version in the pacific that used big pontoons instead, but no propellers. They floated better but used the tracks for propulsion. Put that with the DD and it'd probably work a lot better.

I'm baaaaaaack

One of the original amphibious assault vehicles, the LAV I think, had kind of an amusing entry on Wikipedia. Basically, the Marines loved them, because they could hit the beach and keep rolling straight inland without getting bogged in the mud. Later versions added machine guns and armor protection so they could even get a bit of protection and supressive fire on the way in.

The downside is that the Marines, unlike their brethren in the Army, did not have much in the way of skilled mechanics, so they'd basically run the things until the wheels feel off, and leave them where they lied until they could get a replacement.

Sounds like the marines.

I'm baaaaaaack

Nah, sounds more like this lot's MOS.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Orks

Considering that the amount of remaining WWII bombs is not infinite, has anyone ever tried to mathematically estimate when the last of them approximately will be found and get defused?

Not really. It would be impossible to guess. We don't know where every bomb went and wether it blew up or not. This is why finding them is a surprise worthy of news.

edited 19th Jan '13 8:18:15 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

With explosives deteriorating over time, and thus becoming more dangerous, it could be the only way we find out where some of the really big beggars are is when they explode under a row of houses built post war, or a school or a hospital. Life is perverse like that. There isn't the funding to do Magnetic Anomaly Detection or radar surveys of all World War 2 bombsites - there were just too many of them.

One of the reasons why I wouldn't like to go to the likes of Ploesti in Romania. That place got thoroughly twatted by just about every side during the war over the oil fields there, and there is no way that every bomb dropped there either exploded or was found and defused.

Not all unexploded ordnance is from being dropped and not going off either. As I mentioned a while back, they found a bomb under Yokota Air Base in Japan a few months back that had never been loaded onto a plane. When the Imperial Army was disarmed, they just buried the extra ordnance under the "Ignore It And It Will Go Away" doctrine.

Yeah, I heard of that. There were and still are thousands of tons of bombs, including live lethal chemical agent ones, dumped in the Irish Sea and other places off our coastline. The record keeping wasn't all that good either, from what I gather.

Some data from Germany (only WW 2 bombs, not other UXO):
*

• Roughly 1-2 bombs detonate by themselves per year, i.e. without any influence by humans.
• The total number of bombs still buried is unclear, though it will probably still take a lot longer than 100 years to clear it up.
• That people die is rather rare. For example 3 people died during building a highway when a bulding machine hit a bomb in 2006, the other case after the year 2000 was 3 people who died after a bomb exploded just before defusal in 2010.

Well, bombs in Germany often don't make it to the news, because it's quite routine (iirc 5500 bombs/year or 15/day). It's only rare that they have to be detonated in the center of a city.

edited 19th Jan '13 12:24:48 AM by Uchuujinsan

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

There are some other rather scary suprises left over from other wars as well.

IIRC there were some large mines emplaced by British Engineers that were to be used to breach the German lines that never went off. They were lost. The hazard being these are frakkin great huge stonkin piles of explosive that could go off at any time. Keep in mind these are explosives mean to help undermine entrenched and hardened positions.

One of them went off in 1995 and the other one or two are not exactly pin pointed or taken care of yet.

Who watches the watchmen?

Not to mention the bombs that were not actually dropped on their intended targets, due to navigational error or just to get rid of them.

That's the Battle of Messines, isn't it?

edited 19th Jan '13 8:46:37 AM by Catfish42

A different shape every step I take A different mind every step of the line

Yup. I watched a bit of a programme on Channel 4 about that battle and others where the Brits and the Germans had emplaced very big mines and just left them in place when they didn't explode. And they were still capable of doing so. Scary stuff if you are a farmer in Northern Europe.

Hell, some old shells from the Napoleonic Wars still get dredged up in fields in Spain and Germany - Obviously the gunpowder is harmless from centuries of damp, but it gives you an idea, considering the comparatively low-intensity of that conflict compared to WWI and WWII, of how long this is going to be a pain in the jacksy for European governments.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

While not really un-exploded, this seems relevant and pretty cool.

edited 20th Jan '13 2:24:53 PM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

Wonder if they export?

Meanwhile, in the US, we mostly only ever find un-exploded arrowheads. Which is still pretty danged cool to find, mind you.

I would have thought there were still a lot of unexploded blackpowder and other types of shells scattered around your various Civil and Revolutionary War battlefields?

Plus whatever is lying around the airfields, depots and training areas?

edited 21st Jan '13 3:54:36 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

Actually, come to think of it, I've never lived in any places that featured prominently in the American Civil War (except maybe Oklahoma). Not sure how long black powder stays viable as an explosive anyways.

As for the airfields and what not, It seems unlikely that they'd leave too many boom-booms laying around unaccounted for from any places that weren't actively being used. I'm not even sure why that happened in Japan, to be honest.

Anyhow, I don't think they had a lot of explosive type stuff back in the Civil War compared to 20th century militaries that had lots of mass-produced explosives and aerial bombardment to work with. I wanna say most artillery in the 1860's was still of the inert ball variety rather than the exploding shells.

Oh a test for my google fu? Challenge Accepted!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_artillery_in_the_American_Civil_War#Ammunition

http://www.civilwarartillery.com/

Short quote from the second one is instructive -

"During the American Civil War more varieties of artillery projectiles and cannon were used than in any other time in military history"

Wow.

edited 21st Jan '13 4:29:13 AM by TamH70

Which is a fancy way of saying "Supply was an unholy charlie foxtrot during this period."

Yup. Along with good old "let's chuck this at that that there enemy and see if it works like" stuff, 8-)

edited 21st Jan '13 4:46:34 AM by TamH70