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posted by martyb on Friday June 28 2019, @02:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ka-Boom! dept.

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 RĂ¼diger 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.


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  • (Score: 2) by quietus on Friday June 28 2019, @07:49PM

    by quietus (6328) on Friday June 28 2019, @07:49PM (#861078) Journal

    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 ...

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