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https://www.dw.com/en/wwii-bomb-self-detonates-in-german-field-leaves-crater/a-49331435
Impressive picture too.
A loud explosion in a field startled residents in the town of Limburg in western Germany on Sunday. The blast occurred in the middle of the night and was large enough to register a minor tremor of 1.7 on the Richter scale, according to local media.
[...]Prior to the news release, residents were puzzled and confused by the crater, with some online speculating that it had been caused by a meteorite.
But Rüdiger Jehn, of the European Space Agency, told German newspaper Frankfurter Neue Presse that this was false. "A great deal of heat is released during an asteroid impact," the ESA expert said, adding that no evidence of heat or melting could be seen from the crater footage.
[...]The real culprit was an aerial bomb, which was buried at a depth of at least 4 meters, weighed 250 kilograms (550 pounds) and had a chemical detonator, investigators said. Authorities confirmed that the bomb had exploded by itself, without any external trigger.
[...]Two unexploded bombs were discovered on Monday in the central German town of Giessen, prompting the temporary evacuation of some 2,500 people. Earlier this month, an unexploded device was defused in a busy area of central Berlin.
[...]Between 1940 and 1945, some 2.7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Europe by US and British forces and half of them landed in Germany. Half of those that were dropped on Germany landed in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country's most populous state today.
Of the roughly quarter million bombs that did not explode, thousands are still hidden underground all over Germany.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 28 2019, @04:27PM (7 children)
A quarter million unexploded? (Presumably the vast majority of these already discovered and disarmed, because . . . )
Thousands still hidden underground all over Germany. Just waiting to explode one day.
I would imagine that some effort has been made to try to find these during ensuing decades.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday June 28 2019, @06:14PM (5 children)
I wouldn't expect most of them to still be functional after 75 years. The explosives maybe, but don't 40s-era detonators stop working with age?
(insert joke here about torpedo detonators from multiple countries in WWII that didn't work even when they were fresh out of the factory)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @06:26PM (4 children)
yes. that is the point. the detonators are decaying, with the consequence that the bombs are going boom.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday June 28 2019, @06:52PM (3 children)
I wouldn't assume that when a detonator decays, that means it's going to explode on its own as a matter of course. Couldn't the detonator stop working without exploding the bomb?
WWII was obviously way before "smart" weapons, but I wouldn't expect them to "fail deadly." People did need to transport and load the things into planes, so making them detonate *too* easily would've resulted in a lot of friendly fatalities.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday June 28 2019, @07:07PM (1 child)
Although it sounds like anti-handling devices [wikipedia.org] make everything a great deal more "fun."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday June 29 2019, @11:49AM
Wow, that was fascinating. I don't recall ever hearing of these before, or was long enough ago to fade (say, since last week...getting old sucks...).
Thanks.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday June 29 2019, @05:32PM
The detonator usually isn't attached to the bomb until it's ready to be used. The bomb is more than likely something like TNT, which is relatively stable. The detonator itself is an explosive charge which is used to set off the main explosive, so you don't want to mess around the with the detonators. Without the detonator, the bomb itself is relatively safe to handle, though it's still a bomb so you'll still want to use care.
A lot of the explosives used in the detonators tend to get more unstable over time (easier to set off). This wasn't really a problem for their intended use as there was really no intent to keep these things around very long before dropping them on the enemy. Considerations for things like bombs that embed themselves into the ground and don't explode just isn't something they didn't think about.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday June 28 2019, @07:49PM
You imagine somewhat wrong: business of the day was to clean-up the ruins, than build affordable housing -- quite probably right on top of the cleared space. To illustrate the size of the housing problem of those days: a number of years ago I hit a French town in the North-Eastern part of France, which had the bad fortune of also being a major railway crossroads/bottleneck during WWII. By '52 people were still living in baracks.
World war II bombs are a relatively light problem, though -- touching wood here -- WWI ammunition, on the other hand ...