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London City Airport Shut as WW2 Bomb Found in Thames
- Graham24 9y agothere's a lot of it about. We sometimes hear sea mines being blown up the Royal Navy, or hear about them being caught in fisherman's nets. Must be way worse in Germany.
- docdeek 9y agoReasonably regular occurance in France, too.
- k33l0r 9y agoAccording to Wikipedia “the French Département du Déminage (Department of Mine Clearance) recovers about 900 tons of unexploded munitions every year” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
- paulmd 9y agoAnd, in the most heavily-impacted areas such as Verdun, they estimate that it will take not less than 700 years to clear the areas, at the present rate.
- philjohn 9y agoNot only that, but they're still finding chemical munitions from WW1 around europe. There was a documentary on the BBC last year called "Inside Porton Down" where they showed the lengths they have to go to disarming and destroying these compounds. Despite being 100 years old they still maintain their potency and could kill or maim easily if handled incorrectly.
- toyg 9y agoVery common in Italy. My hometown has always been a critical railway node, so it was heavily bombed by USAF; any time they start building on unused land, they inevitably find some unexploded ordinance. It's super-weird when they just take down a building, re-dig the site, and lo, they find stuff underneath that could have exploded at any time in the last 75 years killing hundreds...
- Steve44 9y agoThere was a minefield laid between Scotland and Norway in WW1 and then a similar one laid in WW2. There are potentially over 100,000 devices still out there from what I remember reading. We also dumped an awful lot of nasty stuff in Beaufort's Dyke, a trench in the Irish Sea. Another reply mentioned the Porton Down TV documentary, that is well worth watching.
- brazzy 9y agoGermany here: there's news about parts of some city or other being temporarily evacuated every couple of months. Usually the bomb is defused without incident. Here's one example where they had to do a controlled detonation on site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NbM2Xbc1uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NbM2Xbc1uk - not so controlled after all, since the straw bales they used to dampen the shockwave cased several fires.
- dx034 9y agoMost of the North Sea and Baltic Sea are have been cleared but some areas remain full of mines. And there's no real desire to clean those up if it's in areas shipping/fishing doesn't use. Makes it harder for other nations to hide submarines in case of a future conflict.
- beegeezuz 9y agoYou got to love these beautiful minds. This bomb has been there since 1945 and SUDDENLY!!! they have to shut down the airport because it can blow up ANY SECOND NOW!!!
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoThe last time that this happened in London was 2-3 years ago: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/army-explosives-experts-prepare-to-defuse-and-detonate-500lb-wwii-bomb-dug-up-under-bethnal-green-a2463316.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/army-explosives-exper... "The bomb is 10ft from my flat on the other side of a wall and I’ve had so many parties here if it was going to blow up, it would have done so by now."
- oldcynic 9y agoThey're pretty common. More like one every month or three and it's only the big ones that make the news. From a 2015 BBC piece[0]: "A guide on dealing with unexploded devices was released by the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) in 2009." "An estimated 15,000 items, ranging from unexploded bombs to small mortar rounds and grenades, were removed from UK construction sites between 2006 and 2008, the association said" [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33861431 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33861431
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoGiven that there was no fighting on the ground in the UK during WW II, why are mortar rounds and grenades found?
- robin_reala 9y agoPractise ranges on greenfield sites that are now being built over.
- BerislavLopac 9y agoThis one was half a mile from my old flat: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39151023 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39151023
- grahamel 9y agoThey're faily common but only the bigger or more disruptive ones make the news, there was one last year[1] that closed a few bridges [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/19/wwii-bomb-discovery-closes-waterloo-and-westminster-bridges https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/19/wwii-bomb-di...
- konschubert 9y agoMaybe they should leave it shut. This airport means that a good share of the east londonders have to live their lives under noise so the 1% can get to their meeting a little bit more easily. To me it's an example of social oppression.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoThe Green party had a fairly good plan for London City Airport: Close it down, replace with "thousands of new homes within easy reach of central London" http://www.sianberry.london/news/pollution/our-plan-to-redevelop-the-london-city-airport-site/ http://www.sianberry.london/news/pollution/our-plan-to-redev... Which seems fair to me - surely a better site for an airport would be larger, further out and well-connected by rail? This applies to Heathrow as well.
- jackweirdy 9y agoGiven LCY can only handle short haul routes (the longest flight, to JFK, has to land and refuel in Ireland before the medium haul leg), Expanding the Eurostar seems a better fit to me. It recently expanded with direct service to Rotterdam & Amsterdam, future expansions are under discussion. https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/direct-eurostar-london-to-amsterdam.htm https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/direct-eurostar-lon...
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoI was under the impression that you could already take a train from London St Pancras to Amsterdam, or was I forgetting about a change in Paris Gare Du Nord?
- tedeh 9y agoThis thing seems to happen once in a while and all the times I can remember the bomb is safely disarmed, which obviously is the best outcome. Does anyone know how long ago it was that one of these things actually unintentionally exploded?
- anvandare 9y agoIn Germany at least as recently as 2014: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10550492/Construction-worker-dies-as-World-War-II-bomb-explodes-in-Germany.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/105... Unexploded ordnance is a sad thing, causing continued death and misery (mostly land mines) long after whatever war it was meant for has ended.
- phillc73 9y agoThere was a controlled explosion in Graz, Austria in 2011. The un-exploded ordnance was found during excavations for expansion of the main railway station. http://www.viennareview.net/news/news-briefs/austria-news-briefs/wwii-bomb-in-graz http://www.viennareview.net/news/news-briefs/austria-news-br... http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/english_news/23308_WWII-bomb-discovery-brings-public-transport-to-a-halt.html?em_cnt=23308 http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/english_news/23308_W...
- sschueller 9y agoCluster bombs are also horrific devices and should not be used by anyone including the United States. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/cluster-munitions-pentagon-south-korea.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/cluster-munitions-pent...
- MagnumOpus 9y agoThe latest I remember is three months ago, in Kuala Lumpur [1]. Three very serious injuries. In the UK I don't remember any uncontrolled explosions, though a lot of the bombs are detonated by the EOD teams rather than disarmed. [1] http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2017/10/10/3-workers-seriously-hurt-in-mrt-project-explosion-in-kl/ http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2017/10/10/...
- BattyMilk 9y agoThere's a lot of this stuff around! About 10yrs ago, my dad caused a lengthy shutdown of the channel tunnel after a piece of metal (he'd assumed it was a machine gun barrel) he picked up on the Somme battlefield was found in the boot of his car during a random search. It was a live WW1 mortar. They closed the tunnel and detonated it at the terminal. As farmers work on the fields in northern France they regularly find artifacts from the war and just toss them aside as an annoyance.
- steve19 9y agoI am very surprised given how little machine gun barrels resemble a motar round! Was your father prosecuted? Edit: see stefanfisk comment, there is a surprising similarity between one type of wwi motar and wwi machine gun barrels.
- BattyMilk 9y agoHe was, yes. He received a 9 month sentence suspended for 2yrs.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- steve19 9y agoI am sorry to hear that. That must have been a terrible experience for him and you.
- stefanfisk 9y agosometimes the similarities are not too far off http://www.westernfrontmilitaria.com/ourshop/prod_4018094--SOLD-WW1-British-Stokes-Trench-Mortar-Shell.html http://www.westernfrontmilitaria.com/ourshop/prod_4018094--S...
- Tech-Noir 9y agoFor privacy's sake I won't link to the story, which is not hard to find since the Channel Tunnel doesn't get closed that often, particularly over bomb scares, and I will delete/edit this post if the poster wants, but wow: The bomb went undetected as he travelled back to the UK through the Tunnel but later, as he attempted to return to France to show the device to a war expert friend, he was stopped for a routine check.
- Tepix 9y agoHere in Germany in an average large city we get this every other week or so. Luckily so far these duds don't seem to self-ignite after more than 7 decades in the dirt.
- gmueckl 9y agoIn Germany, around 5000 bombs from WW2 are discovered and disarmed or detonated each year still. Most of these don't make news. Some of them make it to regional news when they need to evacuate parts of towns or cities for safety. Other than that, this massive effort is mostly under the radar. edit: the number I remembered was lower than the actual count.
- donjoe 9y agoThe authorities had to detonate a bomb in Munich (Schwabing) back in 2012 which did not work out as planned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwjmf5wwLL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwjmf5wwLL0
- narrowtux 9y agoIn another video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRccXqD5KsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRccXqD5KsY) some of the people involved were interviewed and they all say that it went exactly as planned, because a detonation with a radius of 300 meters was planned.
- gmueckl 9y agoI remember that incident quite well. But cases like this (or worse than this) are luckily a rare exception given the number of bombs that are found.
- Tomte 9y agoExactly. I've been living in this town for six years now. In this time there have been three big bombs found, with substantial evacuations on the same day (a few thousand people). The last time was some weeks ago, and the local press not only did features about the two experts defusing the bomb, but was welcoming them by their first name, as they were old acquaintances. Also, when you get official permission to build the permission does not only include restrictions like maximum height etc., but also very clear directives in case munitions are found, including the correct phone number in the regional government. Before the permission for the building I'm living in was issued they actually interviewed older neighbours, one of which claimed he remembers some bomb droppings on this lot. They cross-checked with aerial imagery from the 1940s and concluded there was low risk and permission could be granted.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- BDGC 9y agoIf you’re in to this kind of stuff, I recommend “Aftermath: The Remnants of War,” by Donovan Webster.
- ridgeguy 9y agoThere is a WW2 shipwreck [1] in the Thames estuary that apparently still has 1400 metric tons of explosives aboard. Remaining explosives include 286 2000lb bombs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
- coffeeacc 9y agoAnd also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke
- jotm 9y agoWow, really smart guys...
- rwmj 9y agoThe funny thing about Beaufort's Dyke is that it's a possible route for a UK-Ireland tunnel (similar to the Channel Tunnel), although of course not now since it's full of unexploded ordinance.
- jotm 9y agoYeah, I mean, Jesus, couldn't they have dumped stuff a bit farther from the islands. What the hell, it's right between NI and GB...
- grumblepeet 9y agoMy father was in the Royal Engineers and after WWII he was part of the unit dumping this stuff. He claimed there were also tonnes of mustard gas and very dodgy dynamite dumped too. The dynamite was sweating and gave them all headaches. Terrible job dumping this stuff in the Irish Sea off of a heaving ship.
- ridgeguy 9y agoMy father used dynamite in his work (geological exploration). He was susceptible to migraine headaches. I could always tell when he'd been personally setting charges, because he'd come home with a killer headache on those days. Not because of overage 'sweating' dynamite, but because of his high sensitivity to headache triggers like minute amounts of nitroglycerine vapor.
- KMag 9y agoHere in Hong Kong last week, two different American 1,000 lb. bombs were found a couple days apart during construction on reclaimed land (Wan Chai), dropped during the Japanese occupation. Presumably, they fell in the shallow bay, sank in the mud, and were later covered by lasdfill as one of the densest populated areas on earth expanded.
- dboreham 9y agoWhere I grew up in Scotland the problem was ww2 mines (the spiky kind you see in submarine movies).
- lerie82 9y agosame bomb? http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-39939925 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-39939925
- tombrossman 9y agoA related recent post: "Bomb Sight – Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16141839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16141839
- teachrdan 9y agoThere's a great book about this phenomena, "Aftermath: The Remnants of War." Apparently unexploded ordinance in Europe from WWI is very common because trench warfare lasted for years and, due to relatively primitive manufacturing techniques, mortars, bombs, etc. often failed to detonate. That explains a lot of the comments below about French farmers getting killed by ancient munitions https://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Remnants-Landmines-Warfare-Devastating/dp/067975153X https://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Remnants-Landmines-Warfare-...
- cafard 9y agoDuring WW I, what is now American University in Washington, DC, had a chemical warfare station. Once the war was over, the unit disposed of the ordnance using standard operating procedures: they dug holes, rolled the shells in, and filled the holes. About 70 years later, when the fields around AU had been developed with expensive houses, people (including I think the Korean ambassador) started finding the shells in their gardens. A lot of money has been spent since on the cleanup.