WW2 Bombs, have any gone off without being disturbed?

There was a 4000lb Cookie found in Dresden lying in the mud of the Elbe during a period of unusually low (summer) water levels in recent years. Cookies are thin-cased blast weapons and are very unstable; they have been known to go off when jettisoned with an unarmed fuse. This one must have had a relatively soft landing in the mud and water of the river.

As ~Alan~ suggests; there must be lots in the Thames mud. One was found in a dock in Liverpool, when it was being emptied of silt.

Anon.

In terms of the type of fuses am I correct in that it’s the chemical fused bombs that are most dangerous?

You are on the right track, but the german fuzes were either electrical or clockwork.

The chemical snag is that they used Picric Acid in the boosters which can degrade to a very sensitive state.

…… I think this is worthwhile emphasizing as a testament to the care that is exercised, and to the skills and courage of those who have the dangerous (and probably poorly paid) job of disposing of them.

I seem to remember a documentary on UXB’s in the UK and Germany. They were saying that UXB’s in Germany must be removed if their location is known.
This being done by a department of the Fire Service.
In the UK, they know where many of the bombs are, but leave them in place until there is a need to move them. For building or road work etc.
There must be a huge number in the Thames mud ?, where they will be very well preserved.

There is a map which shows around 5,000 known UXB’s in the London area alone – and that is just the ones they know about. There must be at least as many again.

And that only covers 8 months, albeit probably the worst 8 months!

In terms of the type of fuses am I correct in that it’s the chemical fused bombs that are most dangerous?
Presumably the small amount of charge in an electrical fuse would have dissipated long ago?
I guess we could expand this discussion to wars like Vietnam. More modern bombs, more dangerous?

There is a map which shows around 5,000 known UXB’s in the London area alone – and that is just the ones they know about.

This site of any interest Bomb Site?

And then there was goettingen where three were killed and four wounded when an uxb went up during dismantling in 2010. And three killed on a fishing vessel from Scheveningen in 2005 when they landed a bomb which went. That’s just off the top of my head. The list is longer than you think…

And there’s the seven killed and 19 injured in Thailand in 2014 when a supposedly defused bomb blew up in a scrapyard.

It was certainly true until a few years ago. Probably more to do with the redevelopment or clearing of city centre bombed areas than pure new development.

It will continue to happen though. Like a lot of these things it’ll be worse some years than others. The likes of the French have to deal with the ordnance from two major wars, and not just in the built-up areas.

Anon.

Depends on how you define “a few years ago”. I’ve lived in Germany (Munich) for more than 25 years ago – and you?

In Munich, it’s rarely the city centre that is affected (one notable exception being the UXB that had to be detonated in Schwabing a couple of years ago). It’s at the moment in particular the former industrial wastelands of the north and northwest of Munich, where BMW, Krauss-Maffei, Knorr-Bremse, MTU (formerly BMW Flugmotoren) and railway maintenance yards were located. There is also a lot of immediate post-WW2 housing there which is being torn down to make way for denser housing schemes, and the last free areas are being redeveloped for the same purpose. Redevelopment of central Munich, e.g. west of the main station is done and there is no building space left there whatsoever. The only reasonably central area left for redevelopment is the Ostbahnhof area, where things are bound to turn up as well.

When Riem Airport was closed and redeveloped in the early Nineties, WW2 photographs were scrutinized to locate UXB and I think they got most of them in that way.

The list is longer than you think…

Yes, I noticed after having checked Wikipedia. But the post I replied to related to Germany – where I live – and it doesn’t happen every year, as was stated. Considering the amount of UXB still present and the number safely taken care of every year, the number of killed/wounded people is relatively small, and I think this is worthwhile emphasizing as a testament to the care that is exercised, and to the skills and courage of those who have the dangerous (and probably poorly paid) job of disposing of them.

In 1993 I was in Rangoon with Doug Bowler, ex-RAF, returning to the site of his incarceration as a POW. He reminisced at one point about a wartime work detail when the Japanese made prisoners clean up at the waterfront following an American or British bombing attack. Doug remembered rolling an unexploded 500 or 1000 pounder off a pier and into the Rangoon River. There was no waterfront explosion then…and none that I know of since then, but perhaps one day Yangon will be front-and-center on this forum when the tragedy of the present linked with the past via one giant BOOM is the hot topic.

Rod Scott, in Wargaming’s RAF Museum affair in June 2013, commented on the potential for UXBs at Rangoon International Airport, the site of the wartime Mingaladon aerodrome:

“The problem with those [delay-fused bombs], they do have a bit of a habit of not functioning. They are particularly touchy. They are probably the worst that we can encounter within the occupation, and the possibility of one in ten of them being there, when they dropped thousands of bombs on the site, is not really great news from an EOD perspective.”

And that was Mingaladon, a site that was not nearly as heavily bombed as many targets in Europe (and elsewhere).

Just imagine the current potential for disaster at these sites.

Frankly, I’m amazed there have not been many more incidents, with significant loss of life. On Monday 11 people, at last count, were killed by one terrorist bomb in St. Petersburg. That’s nothing compared to what might happen in Berlin, or London, or Munich, or…etc., etc., etc., should an old bomb detonate.

Attached is a photo (source unknown to me) taken during a US bombing raid on the Rangoon docks on 11 November 1943. Most of these bombs fell into the river.

Fortunately not true, happens very rarely that someone is killed. There was in recent years a single incident during roadworks where a digger hit and triggered an UXB.

And then there was goettingen where three were killed and four wounded when an uxb went up during dismantling in 2010. And three killed on a fishing vessel from Scheveningen in 2005 when they landed a bomb which went. That’s just off the top of my head. The list is longer than you think…

It was certainly true until a few years ago. Probably more to do with the redevelopment or clearing of city centre bombed areas than pure new development.

It will continue to happen though. Like a lot of these things it’ll be worse some years than others. The likes of the French have to deal with the ordnance from two major wars, and not just in the built-up areas.

Anon.

Just be glad we don’t live with the scale of the problem they have in Germany. It is much worse there and people are killed every year when stuff is disturbed, mostly plant operators.

Fortunately not true, happens very rarely that someone is killed. There was in recent years a single incident during roadworks where a digger hit and triggered an UXB.

Two unexploded bombs were found and disarmed in Munich during building construction work in the last two weeks.

Then there’s the old lady in the northern outskirts of Munich who wanted to profit from the exploding (no pun intended) property prices here in Munich by selling a piece of land that she owns, and then much to her dismay 10 (metric) tons of WW2 explosives, including phosphor grenades, were discovered in a covered pit. Bomb disposal squads have been at work on this for weeks, nearby residents having to leave their homes during the day when they’re at work. And according to local law, the little old lady has to pay herself for the disposal; some € 200.000,- ..

There were also a few of those runway pipe bombs found – the ones designed to be detonated to destroy the runways in case of invasion. An article in Flypast magazine many years ago said that no-one was sure how many had been laid, nor how many were left.

Anon.

The report where I read this also commented that no other airfield has been the subject of such an intensive search and the degree of unexploded ordinance found at RAF Harwell is probably typical for any operational airfield in the U.K.

The former 398th BG airfield of Nuthampstead was also thoroughly searched after many items of ordnance were found in the old bomb storage area at Scales Park, this would have been in the 1960’s.

Some of the stories you hear about the lax way they treated the stuff in the war years are scary.

One I heard is about bombs being carried around on trucks, literally rolling around on the back. On (probably at least) one occasion, several fell off and ended up in a ditch by the road. They couldn’t get one of them out and just left it there. It was there for years.

A few high ground and many ground level aircraft crash sites had bombs or depth charges present for years before anything was done about them. There are probably a few still to be found or are known about.

Anon.

When former RAF Harwell was cleared by its post war occupants the Atomic Energy Research Establishment the authorities insisted that a very thorough investigation was conducted looking for nuclear material rumoured to have been buried in its early years. None was discovered, but a frightening amount of discarded British ordinance was found including a deliberately buried 250lb bomb which was just about under the isotope lab. It was found on sand bags and was fitted with an anti handling fuse. The report suggested that this was possible a bomb which was returned to the airfield as a hang up and a swift burial was the safest, no fuss disposal means.

The report where I read this also commented that no other airfield has been the subject of such an intensive search and the degree of unexploded ordinance found at RAF Harwell is probably typical for any operational airfield in the U.K.

A major factor with American bombs is the terrain and sub-surface conditions at many of the sites. A great many bombs penetrated the ground, drove down to a gravel layer and bounced back towards the surface leaving their nose fuse pockets facing upwards. This left an air pocket around the fuse gaine and the vapours of the fulminate have crystallised around the mechanism and thread. These crystals are very unstable and just moving the bomb or attempting to unscrew the fuse to make the bomb safe can result in the fuse triggering the main charge.

Anon.

Add to that mix the now very corroded alloy fuses themselves.

Apparently there is stacks of it about, just waiting to be unearthed.

There is a map which shows around 5,000 known UXB’s in the London area alone – and that is just the ones they know about. There must be at least as many again. The wisdom then, as now, is that; left alone they are pretty unlikely to go off on their own.

Anon.

My house has blast damage but there are no signs of an explosion, no splinter narks etc on any houses near me. The London County Council maps show my house and a couple next to it as having blast damage but nothing more serious. One theory from some that know about these things is that it might have been a large bomb fitted with a “kopfsring” Think I spelt it correctly. These would cause a crater, there would be a pressure wave and a tremor in the ground. All enough to make someone think a small bomb had gone off. So I could have a ton of TNT under my road.

Another house nearby was damaged by a bomb passing through it and not exploding. The damage was repaired by an RAF unit. They might have been based at a local school that was bombed twice. Once the news was suppressed, the second occasion was very widely publicised. There’s still a lot of local bad feeling about it, if I were to mention the RAF being stationed there while the school was operating I’d be lynched.