[Closed] WW2 bomb detonated safely off coast of IOW today

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25594000 ]much more allied ordnance over in Germany, and it's still exploding[/url]

Nowhere is the ordnance-cleanup effort more fraught than in Oranienburg, a city just north of Berlin. Once the site of a wartime aircraft plant, an SS arms depot, a railway junction for trains to the eastern front, and a research facility for Hitler’s atomic-bomb program, the town was flattened by 10,000 Allied bombs dropped in 1944 and 1945, according to the KMBD. Almost all of these bombs were equipped with delayed-action detonators. “The Americans and British wanted to make as much difficulty as possible for people trying to clean up and to reconstruct the industry there,” Wilfried Krämer, the director of the KMBD, told me. “The fuses would detonate at all different times.” Indeed, some have yet to go off. Using aerial maps from the British and American military archives, the KMBD has pinpointed and defused 159 unexploded bombs in Oranienburg since 1991. Krämer estimates that another 350 to 400 unexploded bombs still lie buried in the city. “We will be working for another generation,” he says.

slimjim78 - Member
Made we wonder, has there ever been a recent case/s of these relics being set off accidentally and causing grief? I don't recall any. How risky is the risk?

Having had a chat with the Navy bomb disposal guys, absolutely. There are still massive mines on the sea floor, some big enough that they reduce the craft that triggers them to little more than splinters

Said to offer a 'significant danger' prior to detonation

I'm pretty sure you'll struggle to find anyone who'll sign a piece of paper to say "no - its not dangerous - just sling it back over the side" so they have no choice but to treat it as a 'live bomb'

They've dredging the Harbour in Portsmouth in preparation for the new aircraft carrier which is supposedly due down later this year.
The sea bed is rock so they are having to do some blasting and then dredge up the spoil.
They've found quite a few unexploded bombs so far, and I'm sure there are a fair few more still to find.

We had a UXB at the club in Chichester Harbour a couple of years ago. This area is strewn with the things, getting dragged up in fishing nets all the time.
Funny thing is, this UXB was on a sandy spit where families always play and we launch dinghies from.

We've had surveys done and each time they give the all clear, before the last one and after..

Can highly recommend this book

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How many UXBs are lurking off Blackpool, I wonder, and how do you get them to explode?

It's an interesting topic and a field that I still work in. The Europeans tend to have it a bit worse than we do, as most of the scrapping happened over there. A WW2 incendiary went off a few years ago on a Munich building site and I think three workers lost their lives. The vast majority of UXO finds are safe to move, but time can also have the effect of making certain explosive constituents more susceptible to shock and vibration, as particular chemicals leach out and recrystallise around fuzes etc. Hence erring on the safe side wherever possible.
We are seeing an increasing number of finds due to new areas of exploration for off-shore windfarms and infrastructure, plus also the regular flow of stuff that was in Grandpa's shed from the war.

I remember [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25594000 ]this one. [/url] may be the one you are thinking of Holmesey.

Edit: didn't notice this has been linked to before. 😳

Anyone remember the program?..

I heard on a BBC podcast about the Battle Of Britain that Bomb Disposal Officers contributed as much to the Victory as the Pilots.

IIRC the Germans used a bomb with a delay timer that effectively denied use of the airfield because nobody knew when the bombs were gonna go off. No airfields, no victory in the B of B.

Bomb disposal people worked out how to defuse it by trial and error - every error being fatal to that officer. After huge casualties they cracked it.

has there ever been a recent case/s of these relics being set off accidentally and causing grief?

That sunken boat in the Thames estuary that contains enough 'kaboom' to sink Dartford (fingers crossed)

edit: oh and they evacuated the city of Augsburg on Christmas Day to blow one up. fortunately, Germans have their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39166241 ]another big bang[/url]

250kg bomb.

This was in Munich a few years back. Turned out it has been buried beneath a building that had been rebuilt after the war. In that building was a legendary dive bar, Schwabinger Sieben. People had been jumping around for years just a few feet away.
Was discovered my some builders.

The experts used straw to help contain the explosion. It didn't. The fire brigade are quite busy putting out clumps of burning straw that had come down on roofs.

I walked along that Street a week or so later. The buildings in the immediate area suffered some damage, the facade was blown off on some. Just about all of the windows in the area are blown and boarded up.

Quite impressive.

Oh, a friend of mine now works occasionally for some company. His job is to stand and watch what the digger brings up and say whether it's safe to take another scoop. Not a job I fancy.

A colleague of mine lived a couple of miles from the Nigerian Air Force base where the armoury blew up in 2002. At the first explosion he thought a coup was happening but the explosions just got worse and bigger as huge bombs went off. He wrote quite a good account later of the event, describing the pounding shockwaves from the exploding bombs and the fear. They managed to leave the area and went and stayed with friends on one of the islands.

Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Lagos_armoury_explosion

Was measuring up for a new structure at Bedhampton sand plant, when the alarm sounded to evacuate the immediate area. Police and Navy were there within the hour to deal with a bomb that was hanging off the magnet over the ship to shore conveyor. It was only a small one.
Apparently this was an almost daily occurrence. They used to store them in a "bomb proof" container and get them dealt with once a week, but an explosion at another plant meant that was not allowed anymore .

70+ year old bombs are harmless. it’s all crystallised inside and wouldn’t detonate/explode
when they blow stuff up it’s added explosive just for show so the local paper gets a picture and they get to make a bang.

H&S means not taking any risks.

^Dead digger driver and other people killed by them say otherwise...

Impressive footage too. Would not like to be in that war with them blowing up everywhere

70+ year old bombs are harmless. it’s all crystallised inside and wouldn’t detonate/explode
when they blow stuff up it’s added explosive just for show so the local paper gets a picture and they get to make a bang.

That's completely wrong.

I have worked with explosives and with a lot of ex- RN clearance divers.

I have seen a video of a French minesweeper that thought it had found a single UXB, so their dive team set a demolition charge on it.

They didn't realise that it was actually from sunken ammunition ship, just a few metres away. It triggered a huge explosion that almost sunk the vessel.

Have read of some of the stuff in the public domain regarding Richard Montgomery. It's a real issue. [url= https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ss-richard-montgomery-information-and-survey-reports ]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ss-richard-montgomery-information-and-survey-reports[/url]

Fascinating. Had no idea about that ship in the Medway

70+ year old bombs are harmless. it’s all crystallised inside and wouldn’t detonate/explode
when they blow stuff up it’s added explosive just for show so the local paper gets a picture and they get to make a bang.

I like the idea when it comes to detonating these old bombs they pack them with enough plastic explosives to simulate the 1940 experience.

#caring

How many UXBs are lurking off Blackpool, I wonder, and how do you get them to explode?

They'd have had to have been dropped there accidentally because unless the Nazis were targetting poor fish & chips and hen/stag dos I doubt many will have been dropped nearby on purpose.

I was travelling home from the IoW last week when this was discovered. Luckily was doing the East Cowes > Southampton trip...

That ship in the Medway is actually in the Thames Estuary. You can see the masts above the water.

There is also HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, Orkney.

Sunk in 1939 with full 15" magazines.

A WW1 dreadnought and apparently, WW1 stuff reacts very badly with seawater. Would make quite a big bang if it went off.

The TV series from the 70's is excellent.

In 1979 Judy Geeson made me fell funny.

[url= http://m.dw.com/en/thousands-evacuate-düsseldorf-after-discovery-of-wwii-bomb/a-37863748 ]8000 evacuated. [/url]

Thanks to a great drinking session with an ex-ATO family friend, Apparently the German bombs are as found significantly more dangerous than the British ones, as we were using variations of TNT, but towards the end of the war the German munitions often contained stuff like nitro glycerine, which over time leaches out and crystallises into extremely unstable states.

Many years ago i was diving with friends down near Swanage, of the four i was the only one that wasn't ex-Navy, diving in two pairs, one of the guys in the other pair came to the surface with an old artillery shell saying he was going to clean it up and put it on the mantelpiece.

He carried this thing about 1/4 mile up the beach to the car park, before the lad i was paired with stated to him "you do realise the fusehead is still in place?"

Cue, calling the coastguard and them the bomb-disposal guys and them closing a good section of the beach scattering families as they did so.

From memory they put what looked like a large air mat over it but inflated it with water, they then blew it up with the water absorbing the blast.

Apparently they just dumped loads of munitions in the sea off Dorset after WWII and they are forever being washed up or stuck in nets, but he did say my mate may be one of the first to carry one up a beach and present it to them!

There may be up to a megaton of ordinance dumped in the Irish Sea.

Exciting stuff, not just your usual BANG! stuff, too - chemical weapons & phosphorus.

Some of the stuff was dropped in the "wrong" place, near to the beach.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4032629.stm ]BOOOOOM![/url]

There may be up to a megaton of ordinance dumped in the Irish Sea.

That's nowt.

Have a look at what is dumped up in the Baltic.

[url= http://www.chemsea.eu/news,chemsea-releases-final-project-findings,55.html ]CHEMSEA Project Findings[/url]

And this is why we can't have nice things.

A colleague of mine lived a couple of miles from the Nigerian Air Force base where the armoury blew up in 2002. At the first explosion he thought a coup was happening but the explosions just got worse and bigger as huge bombs went off

I'm quite suprised they had any explosive in them. I'd have expected the local soldiers to have extracted it all and sold all it all to the local warloads and just left empty cases in the stores.....

Off of the coast of IOW you say .... Damn. 😈

gobuchul - those reports you linked on the SS Montgomery really are fascinating. The imaging on the 2014 report in particular is incredibly detailed.

I just hope that if/when it goes off, someone captures it on film..

The imaging on the 2014 report in particular is incredibly detailed.

Done by these guys. Clever stuff.

[url= http://www.adusdeepocean.com/ ]http://www.adusdeepocean.com/[/url]

[url= http://www.adusdeepocean.com/visualisations/salvage/ ]http://www.adusdeepocean.com/visualisations/salvage/[/url]