WW2 British bomb found in Koblenz causes 45000 people evacuation

[Skoshi Tiger]

Pft! big girly wusses!

They should just take a leaf out of New Guinea's book and install safety buckets on the fuses!





Cheers!

BTW The bomb is a 500lb US bomb, from the crash site of B-25 Mitchell "The Happy Ledgend" (41-12907) that crashed due to entering a cloud near Myola on the Kokoda Track (5th December 1942). All crew were lost.

[Sternjaeger II]

LOL that'll fix it

[BPickles]

Originally Posted by Artist

The "total destruction" radius is - afaik - about 100m, at 1800m glass windows will still be broken

More like total physical destruction is about 30 to 60m radius caused by the physical blast. The pressure wave on the other hand which is what really does the damage would be very destructive out to about 75 to 200m radius, ending with broken windows out about 400m etc (but that depends on acoustics) as my best guess-estimates go from my experiences.
In Iraq a strike was called in on the edge of the compound we were taking repeated fire from, but unfortunately it fell short and landed no more than about 400 - 500m out, it hurt everyone's chest a bit from the pressure but didnt damage anyone apart from a few popped ear drums, If i recall right that was a 500lb.

Around civilians they would put up a large safety area, 600m from a strike is considered dangerously close for military calls, double even triple it for civilian populates if they have to set up a cordon.

[fruitbat]

Bah, pity the Belgium farmer who's on top of this,

http://www.chavasse.u-net.com/messines.html

During the Battle of Messines ridge in 1917, 19 mines were exploded under the German frontline.

The resulting explosion was heard in London.

The least explosive used in one of the mines was 14,900 lbs, the most 95,600 lbs. The explosive used was Ammonal.

They averaged around a 200 foot crater, and i've stood in one, the Spanbroekmolen crater, and its big.

Alas 2 didn't go off. the war progressed and they were forgotten.

However, in a thunder storm in 1955 one of the remaining 2 decided to go bang, killing a cow that was unfortunate enough to be minding its own business in the area, the other is still out there waiting with the Ammonal deteriorating.......

Apparently its location has been pinpointed now,

http://www.1976design.com/blog/archi...exploded-bomb/

Don't know about you, but I'd have a serious aversion to thunder storms living there......

[BPickles]

Incredible stuff, its hard to imagine that amount of munitions going up
These help though:

[JG53Frankyboy]

webcam in Koblenz
http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/rp/swr...ap7/index.html

[TomcatViP]

Originally Posted by fruitbat

Bah, pity the Belgium farmer who's on top of this,

http://www.chavasse.u-net.com/messines.html

During the Battle of Messines ridge in 1917, 19 mines were exploded under the German frontline.

The resulting explosion was heard in London.

The least explosive used in one of the mines was 14,900 lbs, the most 95,600 lbs. The explosive used was Ammonal.

They averaged around a 200 foot crater, and i've stood in one, the Spanbroekmolen crater, and its big.

Alas 2 didn't go off. the war progressed and they were forgotten.

However, in a thunder storm in 1955 one of the remaining 2 decided to go bang, killing a cow that was unfortunate enough to be minding its own business in the area, the other is still out there waiting with the Ammonal deteriorating.......

Apparently its location has been pinpointed now,

http://www.1976design.com/blog/archi...exploded-bomb/

Don't know about you, but I'd have a serious aversion to thunder storms living there......

Thx for sharing. Never heard abt !

[Kongo-Otto]

The Danger of unexploded WW2 Bombs is a daily risk.

23rd October 2006 at the Autobahn near Aschaffenburg, during Maintenance Works on the Autobahn a 250 lbs explods and kills one worker, four bypassing semitrailer trucks are damaged beyond repair.



Five Weeks after the explosion another 250 lbs Bomb was found just 200 meters away from the explosion site at the Autobahn A3:


And there are still Thousands of them somewhere to be found, everywhere.

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by fruitbat

Bah, pity the Belgium farmer who's on top of this,

http://www.chavasse.u-net.com/messines.html

During the Battle of Messines ridge in 1917, 19 mines were exploded under the German frontline.

The resulting explosion was heard in London.

The least explosive used in one of the mines was 14,900 lbs, the most 95,600 lbs. The explosive used was Ammonal.

They averaged around a 200 foot crater, and i've stood in one, the Spanbroekmolen crater, and its big.

Alas 2 didn't go off. the war progressed and they were forgotten.

However, in a thunder storm in 1955 one of the remaining 2 decided to go bang, killing a cow that was unfortunate enough to be minding its own business in the area, the other is still out there waiting with the Ammonal deteriorating.......

Apparently its location has been pinpointed now,

http://www.1976design.com/blog/archi...exploded-bomb/

Don't know about you, but I'd have a serious aversion to thunder storms living there......

I knew about the supermines, didn't know there was still an unexploded one though!

[fruitbat]

Here's a youtube vid that shows some stills from the 1955 explosion,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxG12...eature=related

Here's a famous bit of footage of a similar type of mine going of the year before, on the first day of the battle of the Somme, at Hawthorn ridge,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8YfJmwY5Uo

There's a commonwealth war grave near the Spanbroekmolen crater in which several of the troops buried there were killed by falling debris after crawling out into no mans land to there jumping off points for the attack.