Giant WWII mine detonated at English seaside town
UK bomb disposal experts detonated a huge, 1,500 pound WWII German mine at Bridgwater Bay, Somerset yesterday. The explosion was awesomely awesome, as can be seen here.
Remember, Hong Kong Disneyland is built on lots of unexploded WWII ordnance, left to marinate in salt water and slowly become inert. Let's hope that process is ticking along nicely. Tick tick tick. Link (via Gizmodo)
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a common spelling slip, but weaponized explosives are "ordnance." i only get to trumpet that because my father was a sapper in the army.
but yeah, BOOM!
Just yesterday morning they dis-armed a 450kg British bomb in the Stuttgart Schlossgarten. A few city blocks were evacuated; fortunately it went smoothly.
Small detail: this wasn't a bomb, it was a WWII German parachute mine. (I live in the SW, this was the lead story on our local TV news the other day.) These things carried 2200 lbs of HE and were often sprinkled in along with conventional incendiary and HE bombs during the Blitz. They ran on a seventeen second timer, and there's a fantastic book of that title about the incredible bravery of the mine disposal officers, who sometimes had to painstakingly disarm such weapons when they landed in mud-flats - even thought there was no risk of damage to anything other than mud - so that newer variants could be safely defused on land. As they'd flatten a circle a mile in diameter, these were devastating weapons in built-up areas.
Seventeen Seconds book (now out of print) on Amazon.
parachute mines
I am inescapably reminded of what the old unintelligible farmer had in his barn in Hot Fuzz.
holy shit
http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/graphics/blitz_image1.jpg
The photo alone wouldn't satisfy me, went looking for the video:
http://www.burnham-on-sea.com/coastguard/bomb-video-11-04-08.shtml
Peace
A couple of parachute mines were dredged up in my locale (Thanet, SE UK) late last year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7041372.stm
We didn't know about them until they were detonated, one helluva shake for a couple of seconds.
Overheard conversation in Bridgwater: Honey, have you seen Uncle Willy, wasn't he go snorkeling this morning? Say ... did you just feel that?
Too bad there was not a beached whale carcass that needed to be disposed of in the same area :)
I'd send the cost of disposal to the Federal Republic of Germany.
They need to clean up their mess!
Whoah. I wonder how many fish floated to the surface after that.
Hey Victor Trac!! Please tell me more about the Brit bomb in Stuttgart,got a link?
I am researching my RAF pilot Great uncle who flew missions and ultimately gave his life over the skies of Stuttgart(or close ish((nearer to Strasbourg really) )during WWII.He was the pilot commander of a Lancaster Bomber,Squadron 550.
This could have been a bomb dropped by his squadron.
(although very unlikely,I am still very interested.)
Please share a link friend. :)
Fisherman in the North Sea regularly snag WW2 bombs and torpedoes - and frequently cut them free. Too much fishing lost calling out the experts. A lot of WW1 ordnance was dumped in the Beaufort Channel (North Irish Sea) and fishermen there tell of two or three subsea explosions a month.
As it happens, today (April 14) marks 20 years since the USS Samuel B. Roberts hit an Iranian naval mine in the Persian Gulf. The mine, made to a Tsarist design from 1908, blew a truck-sized hole in the ship and set it on fire. No U.S. warship has come closer to sinking under hostile fire since the Korean War. Four days later, the U.S. retaliated with Operation Praying Mantis, which sank one Iranian warship and left another dead in the water, a loss that helped convinced Tehran to accept a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War.