5 ms·

The Boston Globe gets a look at a DB of every bomb the US has ever dropped

81 points by eob 14y ago

dfc 14y ago
It is worth pointing out that the article never claims that the database contains information on every bomb the US has ever dropped. The article clearly states that more information is needed, eg: "For the Korean War Robertson found the detailed mission records for the first 10 months of the three-year conflict but he is still trying to get his hands on the rest."
- coldarchon 14y ago
  As a German from the hard industry Ruhr Area which was heavily bombed during World War 2 I can assure you their database is useless. There are 1 or 2 hidden bombs found in the ground EVERY month which apparently come out of nowhere because they are neither on the pictures of air reconnaissance after the bombings nor in their protocols for being sent at all. Yesterday they found a 1.000 pound bomb in Wilhelmsburg and 2.000 people had to leave their homes temporarily for its deactivation. A dredge had found it.
danso 14y ago
He worked nights and weekends finding out. Robertson unearthed 1,000 original World War I raid reports, and entered each by hand. For World War II, he scanned roughly 10,000 hand-written or typed pages. More modern conflicts meant combing a hodgepodge of conflict-specific databases. This is the kind of thing I wish they [the Pentagon] would open up to hackathons. How many hours of this valuable historian's time was wasted doing manual entry, something that could've been expedited with some mTurk + OCR work? Not all civic data projects draw attention, but this one at least has the cachet of notable history, worldwide good (to help identify areas of possible unexploded unordinance) and, of course, things that go boom.
- dfc 14y ago
  How many "hackathons" are about pure data entry? In my opinion the hackathon comes after the data entry process...
  - heretohelp 14y ago
    The point is that a lot of this could get automated and plenty of hackers would've been willing to help out. Edit: Fuck it, I'll make something to help normal people do this.
    - danso 14y ago
      Right, the goal could've been to create a framework for splitting apart documents, recaptcha-like, and sending it out to mTurk or other transcription services. OBviously, there are tons of datasets to build this against, but this one might have sparked extra interst.
  - malkia 14y ago
    5x Redudant Mechanical Turks? (I've made up the 5x, not an expert in redudancy, but just thought if 5 people enter the same information about same bomb, it might be considered safe).
- Someone 14y ago
  Those reports could contain phrases like "we didn't see our target, so we dropped them on the city". Making them public could be painful for some people and might lead to litigation. I also guess most of the time spent will be spent in interpretation (is this target code consistent with what we know happened from other sources?), not in data entry.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - jt2190 14y ago
    Are you sure that the reports aren't already public? Are you saying that aircrews were allowed to pick their own secondary targets if their primary targets were not reachable?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gringomorcego 14y ago
Awesome! Looks like it needs a little help in regards to Cambodia though: "In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the US Air Force secretly dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of general purpose bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs and dart-cluster bomblets on neutral Cambodia. The action had been authorised by the then President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger. Initially the campaign’s aim was to expose the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by Communist North Vietnamese troops. Therefore, the areas in the east of the country bordering Vietnam were worst affected. Later a massive countrywide bombing campaign was launched to support the pro-American Lon Nol government fight the communist Khmer Rouge. As a result 600,000 Cambodians died out of a population of 7 million and another 2 million people became refugees. Today unexploded ordnance still remains a risk. Kicking or picking up unknown pieces of metal can have disastrous consequences. For more than thirty years, it was generally accepted that 539,129 tons of bombs were dropped during Nixon’s four year campaign. The number of air raids between April 1969 and March 1973 was put at 3,530 [1]. These figures, however, have come under scrutiny recently. To explain, we must first go back to 1994. " http://www.conorwallphoto.com/pages/tutorials/landmines.html http://www.conorwallphoto.com/pages/tutorials/landmines.html Wah wah.
pan69 14y ago
"One particularly relevant example: From October 1965 to May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the records analyzed. Cluster munitions, designed to release small bomblets, often did not explode on impact and still pose a hazard to villagers." Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world: "During the Vietnam War, Laos was the target of the heaviest US bombing campaign since World War II, making Laos the most bombed country in history."[1] I believe the story is that US B52 bombers would take off out of Thailand to drop their load on Vietnam targets. However, if they bypassed their target they were not allowed to dispose of their load on Vietnam terriroty. Since the bombers can't land with their load on board it has to be disposed of before landing. Apparently Laos was the place of choice. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest [2] http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/
- greghinch 14y ago
  > Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world Yep that is unfortunately true, and many people there are still suffering from this today. The famed Ho Chi Minh Trail went primarily through eastern Laos as well. It's such a shame, Laos is a wonderful, beautiful country full of good people who were never involved in any conflict.
sampsonjs 14y ago
"The database, he said, has recently been used to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan and to judge claims by Iraqi villagers that bombs containing depleted uranium contaminated their water supply." Wait, how about we have a "hackathon" to figure out ways to stops those bombs from being dropped in the first place! That would be totes awesome!

81 points by eob 14y ago

dfc 14y ago

It is worth pointing out that the article never claims that the database contains information on every bomb the US has ever dropped. The article clearly states that more information is needed, eg: "For the Korean War Robertson found the detailed mission records for the first 10 months of the three-year conflict but he is still trying to get his hands on the rest."

coldarchon 14y ago
As a German from the hard industry Ruhr Area which was heavily bombed during World War 2 I can assure you their database is useless. There are 1 or 2 hidden bombs found in the ground EVERY month which apparently come out of nowhere because they are neither on the pictures of air reconnaissance after the bombings nor in their protocols for being sent at all. Yesterday they found a 1.000 pound bomb in Wilhelmsburg and 2.000 people had to leave their homes temporarily for its deactivation. A dredge had found it.

danso 14y ago

He worked nights and weekends finding out. Robertson unearthed 1,000 original World War I raid reports, and entered each by hand. For World War II, he scanned roughly 10,000 hand-written or typed pages. More modern conflicts meant combing a hodgepodge of conflict-specific databases. This is the kind of thing I wish they [the Pentagon] would open up to hackathons. How many hours of this valuable historian's time was wasted doing manual entry, something that could've been expedited with some mTurk + OCR work? Not all civic data projects draw attention, but this one at least has the cachet of notable history, worldwide good (to help identify areas of possible unexploded unordinance) and, of course, things that go boom.

dfc 14y ago
How many "hackathons" are about pure data entry? In my opinion the hackathon comes after the data entry process...
- heretohelp 14y ago
  The point is that a lot of this could get automated and plenty of hackers would've been willing to help out. Edit: Fuck it, I'll make something to help normal people do this.
  - danso 14y ago
    Right, the goal could've been to create a framework for splitting apart documents, recaptcha-like, and sending it out to mTurk or other transcription services. OBviously, there are tons of datasets to build this against, but this one might have sparked extra interst.
- malkia 14y ago
  5x Redudant Mechanical Turks? (I've made up the 5x, not an expert in redudancy, but just thought if 5 people enter the same information about same bomb, it might be considered safe).
Someone 14y ago
Those reports could contain phrases like "we didn't see our target, so we dropped them on the city". Making them public could be painful for some people and might lead to litigation. I also guess most of the time spent will be spent in interpretation (is this target code consistent with what we know happened from other sources?), not in data entry.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jt2190 14y ago
  Are you sure that the reports aren't already public? Are you saying that aircrews were allowed to pick their own secondary targets if their primary targets were not reachable?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gringomorcego 14y ago

Awesome! Looks like it needs a little help in regards to Cambodia though: "In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the US Air Force secretly dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of general purpose bombs, carpet bombs, napalm bombs and dart-cluster bomblets on neutral Cambodia. The action had been authorised by the then President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger. Initially the campaign’s aim was to expose the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by Communist North Vietnamese troops. Therefore, the areas in the east of the country bordering Vietnam were worst affected. Later a massive countrywide bombing campaign was launched to support the pro-American Lon Nol government fight the communist Khmer Rouge. As a result 600,000 Cambodians died out of a population of 7 million and another 2 million people became refugees. Today unexploded ordnance still remains a risk. Kicking or picking up unknown pieces of metal can have disastrous consequences. For more than thirty years, it was generally accepted that 539,129 tons of bombs were dropped during Nixon’s four year campaign. The number of air raids between April 1969 and March 1973 was put at 3,530 [1]. These figures, however, have come under scrutiny recently. To explain, we must first go back to 1994. " http://www.conorwallphoto.com/pages/tutorials/landmines.html http://www.conorwallphoto.com/pages/tutorials/landmines.html Wah wah.

pan69 14y ago

"One particularly relevant example: From October 1965 to May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the records analyzed. Cluster munitions, designed to release small bomblets, often did not explode on impact and still pose a hazard to villagers." Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world: "During the Vietnam War, Laos was the target of the heaviest US bombing campaign since World War II, making Laos the most bombed country in history."[1] I believe the story is that US B52 bombers would take off out of Thailand to drop their load on Vietnam targets. However, if they bypassed their target they were not allowed to dispose of their load on Vietnam terriroty. Since the bombers can't land with their load on board it has to be disposed of before landing. Apparently Laos was the place of choice. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest [2] http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/

greghinch 14y ago
> Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world Yep that is unfortunately true, and many people there are still suffering from this today. The famed Ho Chi Minh Trail went primarily through eastern Laos as well. It's such a shame, Laos is a wonderful, beautiful country full of good people who were never involved in any conflict.

sampsonjs 14y ago

"The database, he said, has recently been used to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan and to judge claims by Iraqi villagers that bombs containing depleted uranium contaminated their water supply." Wait, how about we have a "hackathon" to figure out ways to stops those bombs from being dropped in the first place! That would be totes awesome!