History still hurts

[SeaCat]

Taken from the English version of Spiegel.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,698245,00.html

Cat

 

[rgraham666]

Well, crap.

 

[R. Richard]

Shakespeare:
"The good that men do often dies with them, while their evil lives on long after them."

 

[oggbashan]

In the UK we discover unexploded bombs and other ordnance every week. So does France and Belgium. When I walk along our local beaches I am always careful to avoid any metal objects. If they look like ordnance, I will report them.

Around the D-Day beaches the amount of undiscovered armaments is massive. Last time I was in Normandy a road bridge was closed with a week's advanced warning to dispose of a 500lb bomb found in the river bed.

The road was expected to be closed for a couple of hours at the lowest tide. The hours turned into days because the munitions experts discovered a laden truck with 50 to 60 12-inch artillery shells next to the bridge.

When I was young, I lived in Gibraltar. If I dug in the scanty soil I would find metal everywhere. During the 18th century Great Siege of Gibraltar it was estimated that seven tonnes of cannonballs had been fired at every square foot of the Western side of Gibraltar. I found a few dozen of them, and clips of live .303 rounds from WWII on the beaches. Free-diving about 100 yards from the beach I could see masses of WWII relics. In the fifty years since then much of the sea bed has been cleared, wrecks swept of live ordnance and made safe, and miscellaneous metalwork reduced.

Locally, we weren't bombed much. The place where every bomb landed during 1940 - 1945 is known and each bomb either exploded or was removed by 1946. But out to sea? That's different. Anything can wash ashore, and does.

There are still teams of ordnance experts slowly clearing the minefields in the Falkland Islands. It will take many years for them all to be gone.

The worst?

During the Great War of 1914 - 1918 the Allies dug huge mines under the German Lines in Belgium. They filled them with tens of thousands of tonnes of high explosive intended to be detonated simultaneously. Most of them did. Some didn't but the landscape was changed so much that they couldn't find the mines that hadn't exploded. A couple were found and made safe in the 1920s but two, with thousands of tonnes of high explosive, are still there. How stable is that H.E. after 90+ years?

Og

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Shakespeare:
"The good that men do often dies with them, while their evil lives on long after them."

Quite right and I support all Og says.

In the US, where we have never had an invasion, we are not sensitive to landmines, unexploded ordnance and bomb disposal squads.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we rely on European experts to deal with mines and IEDs.

 

[stephen55]

Unexploded ordnance from WWI...according to Wikipedia...

It has been estimated that, for every square metre of territory on the front from the coast to the Swiss border, a tonne of explosives fell. One shell in every four (some sources say one in every three) did not detonate. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial Site is notable for supposedly having one unexploded munition for every square metre.

Given the swamp-like conditions of trench warfare in the period, the unexploded weapons - in the form of shells, bullets and grenades - buried themselves on impact or were otherwise quickly swallowed in the mud.

The Vimy Ridge site consists of large areas where the public are forbidden to walk due to unexploded ordnance. Because it's too dangerous to cut the grass in these areas, sheep are allowed to graze.

At least the public has little to fear if they keep to the cleared areas. But what about the people who live in conflict areas around the world; areas littered with anti-personal mines and the residue of war?

 

[oggbashan]

It is possible to buy WWI souvenirs from street markets in Belgium.

Every month UK customs intercept items of live ordnance that tourists bring back thinking that they have bought deactivated, safe, souvenirs.

My brother had a WWI rifle on display in his old house. It hung over the kitchen's inglenook fireplace. One of his visitors, a local policeman, noticed it. He looked closer. It had a full clip of 1918 vintage cartridges, and a live round chambered.

My brother disposed of it. The ammo had been repeatedly heated by the open fire - for seventy years.

I gave him a replacement - a deactivated rifle with a current deactivation certificate. None of his friends noticed except one who thought my brother had polished the wooden fittings.

Og