current news.
5,400 Evacuated in Japan as World War II U.S. Bomb Defused. another one was found last may. and more than like many more are still buried. as well as in England and Europe.
[source](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,381385,00.html)
In the area I live in this is nothing unusual. There are a lot of british and american bombs dug out here. http://www.an-online.de/sixcms/detail.php?template=an_detail_suche_archiv&_wo=Suche%3AOnlinearchiv&_starttest=x&_suchid[0]=30026&_suchid[1]=30057&_suchid[2]=30051%2C51496&_suchid[5]=30010%2C30051&_suchbegriff=bombe&_do.x=25&_do.y=6&_artikelid=560957&_artikelid=544720#nachoben
A colleague actually found one when he started with the foundation of his new house
sorry pal. I can’t read German. they will be finding more and more of these as people move further into remote area. might be a good idea to look for them. just like your friend. that could have had regretful consequences.
The worst areas of the lot are in Flanders (around Ypres) and France near Verdun. An immense amount of unexploded shells including a lot of gas shells. That causes a lot of casualties (even including the deaths of several Belgian Army bomb disposal types) on a regular basis.
also tons of land mines. there is a world organization that hunts land mines. this type or newer types i don’t know.
Germany: clean-up of World War I poison-gas plant finished [Hallschlag]
“The clean-up of a former plant which made horrific German poison-gas shells used in the First World War is complete after 20 years of work, an official told legislators Thursday. The Espagit factory in Hallschlag, Rhineland Palatinate state accidentally exploded in 1920 when an estimated 20,000 poison-gas shells were on the premises. The debris meant the site was an ecological disaster area for decades.” (The Earth Times; 15May08) http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/205689,germany-clean-up-of-world-war-i-poison-gas-plant-finished.html
No joking, when I was a kid I was playing on this very areal. We were camping out there. It was just an industrial hulk to us. Years later everybody realised what's exactly slumbering there underground!
holy shit !!! all the way back to WW1 incredible. and that’s dated may of this year.
Some of the older blister agents like mustard gas, (phosgene) could be made very persistent. to this day in the wooded areas of Europe where this gas was used people wandering through the brush, and woods will develop rashes, and such troubles, and this is caused by the residue of WW1 gas deployment. treating for poison ivy does not help.
By David Rennie in Voormezeele
Last Updated: 2:24AM BST 20/05/2005
In a corner of a foreign field that is forever England, the deadly perils of war have surfaced once more.
Each year, especially during spring ploughing, the mud of Flanders yields up a lethal harvest of unexploded bombs, shells and grenades - and each year these 90-year-old weapons grow more dangerous.
Perhaps a quarter of the one billion projectiles fired during the First World War failed to explode.
Many were faulty, others landed in the deep, soft ooze of the Western Front’s battlefields, only to reappear nearly a century later in the shares of a farmer’s plough, or against a workman’s spade.
It is a race against time, as years of corrosion leave the old shells with ever thinner, more leak-prone casings, ready to spill their loads of mustard gas, phosgene or phosphor into the ground, or on to their unlucky handlers.
On this afternoon, a team from Belgium’s military bomb disposal squad has been summoned by local police to Bus House Cemetery, a British graveyard three miles south of Ypres, after builders found something suspicious.
The local unit from the Dovo, the bomb squad’s Flemish acronym, patrols some of the most infamous battlefields in history.
Each year, the unit, based at Poelkapelle near Ypres, collects nearly 300 tons of rusting bombs, grenades, mortars and shells. About one in 20 contains poison gases, potent enough to kill a man.
Heavy rain fell as Warrant Officer Marc Baelde made his way carefully along the cemetery wall, scanning the immaculately tended headstones. “My tip for the day,” he advised. “If you see us running, try to catch us up.”
A second later, he grinned. “Oh ho, ho, they’re big ones,” he said, spotting three large shells, and a smaller projectile lying near it.
One shell was British, three German, and more than one was a “possible tox”, meaning it might contain poison. One had been fired, making it much more dangerous to handle.
The Poelkapelle base now has two large X-ray machines, capable of detecting if a shell is filled with poison, and a neutron-induced gamma spectroscope, for identifying which type of toxin.
A 1980 ban on dumping ammunition at sea left Belgium with a rapidly growing stockpile that topped 29,000 projectiles two decades later.
In the past four years, Poelkapelle has destroyed 22,000 shells, blowing up the non-toxic ones and burning the rest in armoured ovens.
With a practised casualness, WO Baelde lifted the shells into the back of his army lorry, and placed them in a large bed of sand, to stop them rolling about. Only a canvas awning covered the shells and grenades he and his team picked up that day, in four stops - more than 250lb of high explosives in all.
In spring, the team makes several stops a day, sometimes finding shells stacked at farm gates, like bottles left out for the milkman. Farmers and arms collectors have grown blasé and there is, on average, a fatal accident a year.
On the second stop of this day, an old farmer guided the team to a shell so big it needed a stretcher to carry it. In many countries, such a find would be a major event. But here, in the bone-filled fields of the old Ypres Salient, only two horses were on hand to watch WO Baelde and a colleague struggling across a flooded ditch with their deadly load. The shell weighed as much as a man, and had been fired.
The men wear only gloves against toxins, and wellies for the mud. Protective gear hinders safe working. “All it gives you is a more decent funeral. The suit helps to keep all the bits of you in one place.” Poison is the other peril. One team member was recently sick for two days after phosgene leaked on him. “The day you’re scared, you must stop doing this job,” said WO Baelde.
There are some franky scary photos out there of the dump at Poelkapelle where these things are stored awaiting destruction. Stacked 10 high, under a corrugated iron roof held up by wooden poles. Unfortunately I’ve had no luck finding them this evening.
here’s one they found just last month in London
‘Hermann’ the German bomb says farewell with a bang—after 67 years’ -06 June 2008
A LOUD triple bang was heard and vibration felt in a wide area of East London tonight as ‘Hermann the stubborn German’ Second World War bomb was detonated by the British Army.
‘Hermann’ the German weighted in at a wopping 2200 lbs. wow
this time last year they found a V-1
[URL=“http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/07/28/britain.wwii.bomb.reut/index.html”]story](http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED06%20Jun%202008%2022%3A31%3A52%3A950)
The RN also managed to lose a similarly sized bomb off Suffolk not so long ago. Perish the thought that a certain chap I know in the Navy might have the piss ripped out of him for it.
wonder if they plan to recover it???
There was a very large explosion off the coast a week or so later, and they announced it had been blown up. Those of us with bacofoil beanies suspect they still couldn’t find it and were so embarassed they just set off a large charge in about the right place.
hopefully its in deep water and pose’s no threat. but there is still ordinance in shallow waters that sports divers can reach. and some have lost their lives by trying to retrieve it. they’ll dive inside wrecks. become disoriented and can’t get out in time. or they’ll die playing around with the ammo. one of the most popular diving area’s is truk lagoon. filled with japanese wrecks from operation hailstorm. February 17th through the 18th, 1944. you can look but don’t touch. its illegal to bring anything up from these wrecks. ill post hailstorm unless someone beat me to it.
[hailstorm](http://www.scubahaven.com/photogallery/trucklagoon.html)
It was in approximately 10ft of water. Which is why it took them a week to find it!
Being a construction worker must be a bit hazardous in parts of London, or Hamburg. :shock:
I know from our area -where a lot of bombs were dropped as well- that before a project for a building is started, the whole terrain is being searched by explosive ordnance disposal unit first.
…news article from today reinforces how bombs in Germany are stll being dug up just like flamethrower say’s…
"WWII bomb forces evacuation
16/07/2008 11:41 - (SA)
4 000 flee bomb detonation
Berrlin - Police say some 5 000 residents have been evacuated as experts work to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb found in Berlin.
The British bomb was found during construction work in the capital’s western Wilmersdorf district.
Police said on Wednesday that experts are conducting tests on the bomb’s detonator to determine whether it can be transported elsewhere for disposal.
Around 400 of the evacuated residents were put up in schools and other public buildings while others stayed with friends.
Unexploded bombs from World War II are still found frequently in Germany more than 60 years
Herman:
do you have a link to this story???
Ya, it was in the news but I also found it at www.news24.com…then go to the subtopic of"world news" where I read it.