Hawker News

The art of defusing a second world war bomb

theguardian.com

151 pointsby sandebert114 comments

newprint[31 comments hidden]
My aunt lives in Hamm, Germany. It used to be a massive rail road hub and allies bombed the f* out it. The old church sitting middle of the town still carries the scars of bombing. Few years ago, during the renovation of the shopping mall, construction crew found unexploded American 500 lbs bomb in the ground. City had to evacuate a lot of people. Throughout years, there were multiple other incidents with UXO in Hamm, that I can recall. I still wonder how the 500 pound bomb been sitting in the ground so many years, right in the center of the town, right by the shopping mall and no one noticed.
dingensundso[7 comments hidden]
As a German living in Berlin it's still pretty normal that once in a while WW2 bombs are found during construction. Heavy bombs that didn't explode probably penetrated the ground quite a bit so when rebuilding it was probably just easier to just leave them there. That's just a guess.

There are also still bombs and grenades in the rivers. There are some magnet fishing YouTube channels where you can occasionally see them pulling up stuff like that.

msdz[6 comments hidden]
> so when rebuilding it was probably just easier to just leave them there. That's just a guess.

My take (equally guessed): Among the literal rubble spread all over the cities, people constructing everything back up with whatever means possible couldn’t even recognize a mostly buried object as a bomb (instead of just more scrap from a collapsed building).

So less of an active decision to not deal with it, rather one out of necessity and/or not knowing about them, perhaps?

GolfPopper[5 comments hidden]
My own guess is that a fair number of them just buried themselves. While I don't have all the relevant facts at hand, per the US Naval Institute, a 550 lb bomb dropped form 20,000 feet would hit the ground at 880 feet per second [1]. If my rusty mind is correct, that would be around 9 megajoules, while feels like it ought to be enough to bury a bomb pretty well in any sort of yielding soil.

1. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1941/december/how...

usrusr[hidden]
Have another bomb in the vicinity that did not fail and there will be absolutely no visible indication at all that something penetrated the ground.

I might be imagining this but I think that I have seen a report about some systematic effort to trace bomb dropping patterns in aerial images of the aftermath to find gaps in the pattern where something did not go off. But no idea how early or late after the war that happened (if it did happen). And those patterns will only show up for smaller bombs dropped in quantity, not for the big ones.

Merad[hidden]
You're looking for Young's penetration equations, developed at Sandia National Lab in the 90s. Your favorite LLM can walk through the math step by step if you're interested, but a US WW2 era AN-M64 500 lb bomb gives results of 15-20 ft penetration in average soil. Reality might be a little less because free-falling bombs have forward velocity from the aircraft that dropped them, so they hit at angle instead of penetrating straight down.
jyounker[hidden]
And Berlin is not known for hard soils.
trencedamp[hidden]
The scarier one for me is this happened with a nuclear warhead in I think Carolina, it was buried in impact without going off, and they never found the core
bell-cot[hidden]
> I still wonder how...

A 500 lbs bomb falling from altitude can bury itself a fair ways in soil. Most of its fellow bombs will have good fuses - and with the mess they make, it would take some careful excavation in just the right spot to find the dud bomb. (Or, maybe it fell in a patch of overgrown brush in a park, or in a river, or a farmer's pond, or ...)

And with the scale at which Germany was bombed in WWII, there was nothing remotely resembling the resources to carefully excavate all the myriad square miles where dud bombs might have fallen. Either during the war, or after.

scyzoryk_xyz[13 comments hidden]
True further east, here in former Germany, now Poland. Especially throughout the construction and investment boom that's been happening since 00's. Just last year my neighborhood was evacuated.

Unexploded Soviet ordnance - insane how much of it was dropped and buried in the rubble to this day. You're right though - weird to think that nobody would notice, but so much Europe was turned to rubble at that time. These things got turned to unrecognizable rusty mush after a few decades.

Pretty sure it's also an excuse to keep the bomb squad and evacuation procedures in practice. These things are pretty routine, there is no fear or panic. IThey just diffuse and take the thing away to some military range to dispose of it.

mrlonglong[2 comments hidden]
Defuse. Diffuse has a different meaning.
antod[hidden]
Diffuse is the state of it after an unsuccessful defuse attempt.
lukan[10 comments hidden]
"Pretty sure it's also an excuse to keep the bomb squad and evacuation procedures in practice."

Definitely not in this eastern part of germany where I live. Every major construction needs to check for bombs, but it also happens randomly that a excavator finds a bomb.

There were just a looot of bombs dropped. (And they don't always move it, often it is too rusty also to defuse and then controlled explosion if the surroundings allow it (they use lots of water bags on top, witnessed it once))

cucumber3732842[9 comments hidden]
>Definitely not in this eastern part of Germany where I live.

A farmer or construction worker (or at least one outside of Germany or any other culture famed for incessant rule following) only needs to watch the bomb squad guy rip a shell out of the ground with a shovel and no specific care given once before they realize it's best if they just do that damn job themselves and avoid the hassle.

lukan[hidden]
Hm, but they maybe know when it is safe to do so, because they immediately recognize the device and know there is no mechanical fuze that can go off by handling it rough.

Because that can happen. And if they know, it still can go wrong.

From TFA:

"In June 2010, three bomb-disposal experts in Göttingen, Germany, were killed by a 500kg American bomb found beneath the site of a new sports arena. "

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/02/germany-bomb-w...

ceejayoz[7 comments hidden]
> only needs to watch the bomb squad guy rip a shell out of the ground with a shovel and no specific care given once before they realize it's best if they just do that damn job themselves

Do you apply this logic to surgery, engineering, etc.?

"The expert makes it look easy, therefore it must be easy."

cucumber3732842[6 comments hidden]
I know it's really easy to make this out to be big and scary and complex from your ivory tower but the person doing this has already seated a tractor tire with starting fluid, used a forklift as a work platform, welded up the leak on the air compressor and half a dozen other things that you said would kill them that day and it's not even noon. Using the leaf blower and a broom to dig an artillery shell that didn't go off 5min ago when you hit it with a piece of machinery isn't that much of a stretch. These people live in a different (better) world than you.
ceejayoz[hidden]
Please make sure they put your HN username in the obit so I can read it from the “don’t touch the unstable WWII bomb without knowing how to manage it” ivory tower.
watwut[4 comments hidden]
None of what you listed implies familiarity with bombs. They did not said that farmers are dumb, they said they are not experts on safe bomb destruction.
cucumber3732842[3 comments hidden]
I never said they were familiar. I said that the realities of their daily lives mean they don't really care about what the same people who fill the internet comments with sneering takes about how all sorts of mundane things these people do is wrong or unsafe. They simply don't care what you or I or anyone else here thinks.

Regardless, farmers across the EU pull thousands of tons of shells out of the ground every spring. They, as a demographic, have infinitely (because anything is infinitely more than zero) more experience than some out of touch office workers who read the official recommendations the local bomb squad writes up and screech about the fact that nobody follows them.

watwut[2 comments hidden]
Reality of the farmers life mean they do not care about potential WWII bomb exploding while they are right there? There is difference between a shell (a projectile) and a bomb. And reality across EU is that farmers and construction workers do care about not blowing themselves up.

Frankly, the only out of touch person here is you - likely office worker who imagine that all farmers are irrational macho men. And someone who genuinely thinks that if some safety rules are skipped for comfort, then surely most will try to hit the bomb with random equipment to see whether it blows.

cucumber3732842[hidden]
You are intentionally misconstruing my point in an attempt to used craft a comment that appeals to others. There is no moral code under which this is not bad behavior that reflects poorly on those who engage in it.

The farmer or backhoe operator or whatever does not typically know there is a shell or whatever there until after it's been hit with machinery. This is not the year 1100. People are generally not engaging the ground with hand tools. They are engaging it with buckets and implements that do their work in bulk. When you encounter anything man made it's usually only after you've moved it about. "Hey that's an odd looking rock, oh wait that's a shell". Once it's already been hit by your bucket or whatever the sensible thing to do is put it down somewhere far away, call it in, and keep doing whatever you were doing in the meantime.

21asdffdsa12[hidden]
10 - 20 % never exploded, and those exploding buried the unexploded ordnance. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bomb-craters-after-allied-...

Those areas where moon craters at the end of the war. But by then logistics where decentralized, all those last days last ditch products, where made in underground facilities or small village smith factories. Effectively they bombed a bomb disposal pit..

gmueckl[hidden]
Germany deals with multiple thousands of WW2 bombs each year to this day.
johannes1234321[hidden]
Yeah, bombs are found regularly. A special case was about 15 years ago when there was a bomb in Munich they couldn't diffuse and which in consequence has been exploded purposly right in the city: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJwE2wLJKKc

That was a quite impressive experience. Windows in the surrounding area broke and straw, which they used to damlen the shockwave, caught fire and was thrown around.

hezxks[hidden]
For Berlin you can really imagine how much bombs were dropped if you look at the aerial images from the 50s. You can find them on their Geoportal. if you click on the dots there is a link to see the oblique aerial image to get even a better feeling.

Link Aerial image: https://gdi.berlin.de/viewer/main/?MAPS={"center":[390416.44...

Link example oblique aerial image: https://gdi.berlin.de/data/luftbild_1954_sl/pictures/1954_sl...

billypilgrim[3 comments hidden]
It really is very common here in Germany to get an alarm that a WW2 bomb was found somewhere near you, telling people close by to evacuate. Like every couple of months. It doesn’t even register with people, I don’t know if the news even report it.
ks1723[2 comments hidden]
Some statistics on this for the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia (unfortunately only In German):

https://www.im.nrw/system/files/media/document/file/jahresst...

In 2024, 182 bombs with 50kg or more were removed, 12 of which were detonated on-site.

OoooooooO[hidden]
My grandparents who lived in the Rhein area had to evacuate twice a year on average due to WW2 bombs found.

It just became a routine.

throwawayffffas[hidden]
9 years ago in Thessaloniki Greece, another 500 pound bomb was found 70000 people were evacuated, the disarming took 30 minutes reportedly. Last week they found 1000 pieces of various unexploded ordnance in the city's harbor, leading theory is they were dumbed during the German withdrawal in the second world war.
cogogo[hidden]
About 10 years ago somebody found an unexploded shell/cannon ball from the war of 1812 in Boston Harbor while poking around during an astronomically low tide. The bomb squad detonated it on the beach in my neighborhood (most likely a training exercise hard to know how dangerous it was). Still upset I missed it. At the time I lived in an apartment where I could see the detonation site.
GJim[30 comments hidden]
And the mother of all unexploded WW2 ordance is the SS Richard Montgomery.

1.4kt of explosive sat in the Thames Eastury, 35 miles down river from central London, that nobody knows how to get rid of.

"it was determined that if the wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 300 metres (980 feet)-wide column of water and debris nearly 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) into the air and generate a wave 5 metres (16 feet) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (population circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

TeMPOraL[22 comments hidden]
Isn't that a kind of thing you just have to bite the bullet and deal with directly, because waiting only makes dealing with it more expensive with time?

Just evacuate the people and blow it up, accepting that it'll inconvenience a lot of folks and the national budget even more, but will also briefly revitalize the local economy, as every contractor there is will maximize the opportunity to suck out the funds set aside for repairing buildings damaged in the explosion - and make sure to record the disposal itself from every possible angle, with most expensive cameras government can buy, as selling clips of it to the media industry would be a licensing goldmine and recoup some of the costs.

Hell, turn it into a spectator event, and tourists coming to see it may just pay for the whole thing.

kakacik[5 comments hidden]
If they can spend 5 millions just for mast removal, I am pretty sure they could build some rough reinforced concrete dome / something similar all around it (15m depth ain't something impossible to build on) that could absorb most of the blast.

Say 50 million budget. Of course red tape, bureaucracy and just laziness/incompetence of state bureaucrats would make such budget balloon and drag for a decade or two, but it should be doable.

manarth[2 comments hidden]
Water is a great blast-absorbent material.

If 15m of water can't contain the blast, adding concrete or similar is more likely to add solid projectiles to the explosion than diminish the force of the blast.

jacquesm[hidden]
It's the opposite.
bluGill[2 comments hidden]
You probably wouldn't build a dome. Better to build a open top cylinder so that the explosion is directed up. Then gravity takes the heavy stuff right back down, while water comes out as rain. Though that would be very expensive and hide the explosion so you can't sell tickets.

Note that I'm not claiming the above is a good plan. Just that it is better than a dome.

kbelder[hidden]
Build a dome and put a spaceship on top. An improvised Project Orion.
petesergeant[2 comments hidden]
Yes, but why be the politician or civil servant responsible for dealing with it when it will most assuredly be someone else's problem in a few years? The political upside of getting it done is low, and the risk and cost are high.
TeMPOraL[hidden]
OTOH make a spectacle out of it, and forever secure your place in history books.
BoxOfRain[2 comments hidden]
I think the 1960s salvage effort of the similar SS Kielce which detonated while they were trying to remove the explosives put off similar efforts for SS Richard Montgomery. Mind you, I'm not sure what they thought would happen since they attempted to clear debris from the wreck with explosives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Kielce

pja[hidden]
“In 1966, the Folkestone Salvage Company was contracted to clear the wreck, and disperse her explosive cargo. In 1967, the salvage company tried to dismantle part of the hull by setting explosive cutting charges.”

One of those times when you do have to ask “who exactly thought this was a good idea?”

cucumber3732842[11 comments hidden]
If you keep it from exploding long enough the explosives will degrade and stop being explosives. Seawater ain't great for stuff.
mnw21cam[10 comments hidden]
Some explosives degrade by becoming more and more sensitive and dangerous, not less.
M95D[6 comments hidden]
Source?
dnemmers[hidden]
TNT or Dynamite will 'sweat' crystals as it is aging.

https://www.munirem.com/recovery-and-neutralization-of-dynam...

thejazzman[hidden]
As dynamite bundles age past their recommended shelf life, the absorbing material degrades, and the liquid nitroglycerin begins to seep or "sweat" out of the matrix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite

ceejayoz[hidden]
One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

> When the condition of the munitions was originally assessed there was concern that copper azide, an extremely sensitive explosive, would be produced through reaction between lead azide and copper from fuze components (lead azide would react with water vapour, rather than liquid water, to form hydrazoic acid, which could react with copper in the detonating cap to form copper azide).

> An investigation by New Scientist magazine in 2004, based partly on government documents released that year, concluded that the cargo was still deadly, and could be detonated by a collision, an attack, or even shifting of the cargo in the tide. The deterioration of the bombs was so severe that they could explode spontaneously.

GJim[2 comments hidden]
Disappointing to see you being downvoted for asking for a source, though this is the sort of thing we are increasingly seeing on HN.
ceejayoz[hidden]
The downvotes are being too lazy to take three seconds to Google it.
bluGill[3 comments hidden]
The question though is at what rate will things happen. Not everything degrades that way as well. The ideal state would be everything degrades such that when those that do become more sensitive explode there isn't enough else still explosive (because it degraded to nonexplosive) and so we don't get the secondary explosions that makes the whole dangerous.

We are also hoping that future technology will figure out a better way to handle this.

TeMPOraL[2 comments hidden]
Sounds like each consecutive politician making a gamble that, if it actually does explode and kill people, it will be during someone else's term in the office.
bluGill[hidden]
Trying to remove it is also a gamble though: if anything goes wrong the bomb squad dies and it destroys everything anyway. There are no good answers, and it hasn't gone wrong yet.
dmurray[hidden]
According to Wikipedia the leading plans were more like evacuate everyone, build some protection around it, then dissemble it one piece at a time and blow the pieces up individually.

This makes sense if you can tolerate some chance of the whole thing blowing up, but you'd still prefer not to replace all those windows.

throwawayffffas[hidden]
Hm, reminds me of the 2020 beirut explosion. It was 2.7 kt of ammonium nitrate.
Oarch[2 comments hidden]
They just cut the masts off it last week, apparently to stop boats heading over to look at it.

I saw them while still attached earlier this summer - very spooky, like being next to a potentially active volcano.

tim333[hidden]
BBC says it was to stop the masts collapsing and maybe setting the thing off https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6wyz44x4g33o
sandworm101[hidden]
Small point: People throw around the "kt" label when it means very different things in context. Nuclear weapons are generally measured in TNT equivalent, the hiroshima bomb being roughly 15,000 tonnes equivalent (15kt). This is so common that "kt" has blurred in the mind and we forget that different explosives can be considerably more or less powerful than their TNT equivalent.

The 2020 Beirut explosion involved 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrite which exploded with a force equivalent to 1,100 tonnes of TNT.

The SS Richard Montgomery sank with 1,400 tonnes of explosives, of a variety of types, some of which could be more powerful than TNT.

euroderf[hidden]
So a cautious person would naturally wonder when will an adversary (such as Iran?) choose to do something with this situation.
lp92[hidden]
Seems like some enterprising biotechnology researcher needs to create some explosive eating bacteria/fungu, like the plastic eating mushrooms like the ones found in the Amazon.
m463[hidden]
I've always kind of wondered if it would be possible to invent some kind of fungus or bacteria that eats tnt, and just let it eat away.
smackeyacky[12 comments hidden]
It’s worth tracking down a UK miniseries called “Danger UXB” that was made in the early eighties. Not sure how accurate the actual on screen dry ice and cut the red wire stuff was but as a character study of the men involved and the danger they were constantly in it was compelling viewing. Heartbreaking too. One of my favourite TV shows
robk[3 comments hidden]
Whoh 1979! Downloading now, thanks for the rec
iJohnDoe[2 comments hidden]
Downloading from where?
coldcity_again[hidden]
https://archive.org/details/danger-uxb-1979

A very worthwhile watch. I come back to it every few years.

helsinkiandrew[hidden]
While searching for that I discovered "U.X.B." a 1942 UK bomb disposal training film that is surprisingly thorough in description of the types of German bombs, fuses, and how to report UXBs (during WW2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhpmXeCp6sc

weinzierl[hidden]
Not directly bomb related but another good UK series from the 80s that gives a good impression of how so many bombs ended up undiscovered is "The Machine Gunners".

My parents were around the age of the children in the series during WW II in Germany and what they recounted matched how the children experienced the time pretty well.

rjmunro[2 comments hidden]
James May did a bit about it in one of his shows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnQ_pS4T0vI
throwaway270925[hidden]
Oh how i would love a modern incarnation of man lab! Such a good show!
Steve44[hidden]
That was one of my favourite TV series as a kid.

It was still in fresh memory for a lot of people, broadcast 25 years after the end of WW2, I think it got the feeling over very well.

pbowyer[hidden]
Also "Blitz Street" with Tony Robinson, where they build a street of typical 1940s houses and slowly increase the WW2 bomb size to see the damage the would do.
pseudohadamard[hidden]
This is a dramatization of a 1958 book that goes more technical detail than the series did, "Unexploded Bomb: A History of Bomb Disposal" by Major B.Hartley. There's also a relatively recent talk on it, "Hacking WWII Bomb Fuses" which may be on YT somewhere.
corint[hidden]
There was a similarly named documentary on Channel 4 called "Danger, Unexploded Bomb" which covered all the various types of fuzes. Sadly seems to be lost to the sands of time, now!
tinthedev[6 comments hidden]
Wonderful article. Reminds me of my experience scuba diving in Croatia. My group and I were doing a seabed waste-collection dive, and part of it was an obligatory training on ordnance. The sea there has had a fair few wars and conflicts.

I remember being astounded by how the water "amplifies" the explosions - so while a hand grenade blast is very dangerous on the surface, under the sea it becomes far more horrific prospect, due to the water transferring the blast more efficiently. Nerve wracking stuff, when you're thinking about diving down there - imagining that a bomb dozens of meters away could pulverize you.

Still pretty rare, thankfully. I applaud the diver bomb disposal squads - some of the most dangerous work there is.

vova_hn2[5 comments hidden]
> I remember being astounded by how the water "amplifies" the explosions - so while a hand grenade blast is very dangerous on the surface, under the sea it becomes far more horrific prospect, due to the water transferring the blast more efficiently.

Curiously, it is exactly the opposite in many video games. In video games water often protects you from the explosion. I wonder, where did this trope came from...

bluGill[3 comments hidden]
It is more correct to say that air because it compresses dissipates explosions. Water doesn't amplify them, but it is still going to be a lot worse than air.

My guess is water protects from nuclear radiation and they get confused. Anyone else want to guess where the trope came from?

manarth[2 comments hidden]
If you're a diver in the water, the water transmits the shockwave very effectively, and is dangerous.

If you're outside the water, the density difference between air and water acts to diffuse the shockwave.

Water is a really good absorbent of explosive energy (as long as you're not also in the same water).

tinthedev[hidden]
Well explained. That's why I put scare quotes around "amplify" - but I couldn't find a better way to state it.
bell-cot[hidden]
Roughly speaking, air/liquid interfaces are excellent protection from explosions, and more are better.

The torpedo defense systems in the most advanced WWII battleships & carriers were about 5 layers thick: sea (may contain enemy mines & torpedoes) | empty compartment (air gap) | ballast/fuel tank | air gap | ballast/fuel tank | yet another air gap | important stuff (engine rooms, powder magazines, whatever)

And to be reasonably effective, each air & fluid layer needs a certain thickness - which scales roughly with the size of the explosive charge.

Animats[12 comments hidden]
France has a much worse disposal problem. They're still cleaning up unexploded WWI artillery shells. That's been going on steadily for a century, and there are still large keep-out zones. Estimated completion in another century.
21asdffdsa12[5 comments hidden]
Surely, these rouge zones can be turned back into useable areas- after the bombs are defused. If there was lots of lead, then the produce from those areas would be poisonous though..
folbec[4 comments hidden]
Lead, mercury, arsenic... Some places will never be settled again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge

(to top that some ammo dumps were simply dumped in holes in the ground at the end of the war and are slowly diffusing there toxic compounds via under ground rivers)

21asdffdsa12[3 comments hidden]
How do we as a species communicate for the next ten thousand years, that these places are poisoned and dangerous? The answer- statues of Goatse..
pjc50[2 comments hidden]
You may be riffing on it already, but for those who aren't familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin... ("this is not a place of honor" has already become a meme that has escaped containment)
Animats[hidden]
That's an easier problem. The conclusion for the Onkalo nuclear fuel repository was, once it's filled and sealed, not to mark it at all. A marker would create attention, and any future society capable of mining deep enough to get in would probably know about radioactivity.

Here's the sign at the SL-1 site, which is not a deep burial.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SL-1Burial.jpg

justin66[hidden]
I'm pretty sure if you've seen figures in the 100 year range, that's something that was largely aspirational, put out after the 100 year anniversary of the armistice. Some of the experts in France still say over 500 years at the current rate of remediation.
OkayPhysicist[hidden]
Here in the states, the main WWI issues are stockpiles of chemical weapons that were buried and then forgotten about. They pop up from time to time, and we've only recently started cleaning them up. Ironically, the ones that were stored somewhat deliberately with safety in mind end up being some of the worst to dispose of, because the poorly-stored ones can be largely thrown into a blast-resistant washing machine, popped open with a small charge, and then scrubbed with all sorts of fun chemicals to neutralize the toxins.

Fun fact: One of the best analogs available for phosgene that's been sitting in cold water for a hundred years is Wintergreen DOTS candy, if you can keep the engineers and military brass from eating all of them.

hommelix[hidden]
In France and Belgium it is common for farmers in the area of former battle of WWI to collect unexploded ordinance while ploughing in autumn. Sometimes the bombs have been dropped and not exploded. Sometimes it is an old stock along the line that was not used as the line moved.
PetitPrince[2 comments hidden]
I wonder how F up Ukraine is going to be in the future. I know that the thousands of kilometers of drone fiber wire is probably going to be a problem, but are there other horrible things to be wary of? (mine I assume?)
SiempreViernes[hidden]
Oh yeah, definitely mines: both sides are mining heavily, including using air dispersed mines whose final position is impossible to record accurately. Both sides also use cluster bombs which are like air dispersed mines but more prone to become duds and look somewhat like toys.
pseudohadamard[hidden]
Same with parts of Germany, there are signs along the side of the road telling you not to stray from the road. Most recently it's affected firefighters fighting forest fires where the forest is full of UXO.
jillesvangurp[hidden]
We got an alarm delivered via phone here in Berlin a few weeks ago notifying of an evacuation zone near our office where they had found a WW II bomb. Big enough to evacuate everyone in a 500 meter (I think) radius. Our office was outside of the evacuation zone.

It was slightly funny because I configured my phone to use a weird chipmunk voice to read stuff out loud apparently (not a feature I use) and it actually started reading out the message. Big WTF. moment until I figured out. Grabbed my attention though and it was the first real alarm I've received. We get a practice alarm message every few months.

alexpotato[2 comments hidden]
> Fuller also marvels at the detailed records local wardens kept. They saw the danger that unexploded bombs would pose for future generations. In keeping those records, they reached out a helping hand from past to present.

This is a great vote for documentation and keeping records.

You never know piece of trivial information may prove vital down the road. You also don't know how long in the future a current piece of critical information will stay critical.

hommelix[hidden]
> You never know piece of trivial information may prove vital down the road. You also don't know how long in the future a current piece of critical information will stay critical.

When our house was built, the water company workers spend a day digging on the side of the road to search for the fresh water pipe, but they could not find it. A retired neighbor walked by and told them, that the road has been straightened and one bend removed 10 years ago. As their map was not updated, the actual pipe was 5m from where they were digging. Trivial piece of information missing.

close04[2 comments hidden]
> Bomb disposal is a dangerous job but, Hambley told me: “Knowledge dispels fear.”

In some places bomb disposal technicians are only allowed on the job for a limited time. Then they move to the "back seat" and consult or assist from far away. Because with years of knowledge and experience comes the kind of confidence that doesn't apply well to unknown devices rusting in the ground for close to a century. Misplaced confidence is dangerous.

Does it work the same way in the UK?

KineticLensman[hidden]
> Then they move to the "back seat" and consult or assist from far away

Probably not. The article mentions two active bomb disposal soldiers whose rank is Major or higher, and a colonel who oversees operations. This seems like a standard military career progression, not specific to the EOD regiment. In the armoured infantry, for example, a company commander (i.e. a Major) might still fight as a dismount, delegating a sergeant to stay in their vehicle to command it.

Also note that in the British Army, soldiers of all trades often move jobs every couple of years, sometime returning to a particular organisation but now with a higher rank.

robotmay[hidden]
I read this article yesterday and it’s the latest in a long line of really enjoyable real world stories from The Guardian lately. In a world where it seems harder and harder to get people to engage with long-form content rather than just clickbait, it’s nice to see some organisations still publishing good quality articles.
tom89999[hidden]
Yes, that’s pretty normal here. After the war ended, a lot of it was disposed of by the public, and there’s still much more waiting to be recovered from rivers and ponds. Before anything can be built, it must be verified that there is no longer any ammunition in the ground. That’s why construction projects here sometimes take longer. But this profession has a future. And you can only make a mistake once.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Steve44[hidden]
A few years ago I stumbled across a little museum called Brenzett Aeronautical Museum on the south coast of England. It was ram packed with a varied mix of exhibits, including quite a lot related to bomb disposal, which you tend not to see in the larger and more curated museums. It was also manned by some exceedingly knowledgable and enthusiastic people who were more than happy to chat about the exhibits.

I think it closed for a few years but seems to have reopened. Hopefully it's still got the eclectic collections and the knowledgable staff.

One of the many interesting exhibits was some pipeline and information about Operation Pluto; that was for getting fuel over to France following D-Day.

https://romneymarshhistory.co.uk/pluto

https://www.rmwcollection.co.uk/

https://aviationmuseum.eu/Blogvorm/brenzett-aeronautical-mus...

dwd[hidden]
As noted in the article, unexploded ordinance can turn up anywhere.

An unexploded shell from a WW2-era live firing range was found the other day in my area - far from any war zone.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-04/wwii-shell-detonated-...

egorfine[hidden]
"Thanks" to russia's war in Ukraine we know very well how modern buildings withstand 250, 500 and even 1000kg bombs. This may help reduce the exclusion zone, as a 250kg bomb is not nearly destructive at 400m. Not to be messed around with anyway.
thorin[2 comments hidden]
I've seen one of those little robots before. My friend found what looked like a hand grenade while breaking up concrete/brick work in a house renovation. We called the police and fortunately we live right near to a Royal Engineers base with a bomb disposal team. They came out in their van and brought out the robot to have a look then picked it up and took it back with them in the van.
roryirvine[hidden]
The current models are much fancier but until 2019 they were using various variations of the old Alvis Wheelbarrow, which dated all the way back to 1972!

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/collections/remotec-wh...

They were a fairly common sight on the streets of Belfast in the 1980s/90s, where carrying out controlled explosions on unattended vehicles proved to be a remarkably effective deterrent against illegal parking...

goodcanadian[hidden]
As other commenters have pointed out, finding unexploded bombs is still a fairly regular occurrence. Here's a controlled detonation from 2021 in Exeter:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-devon-56257366

alexpotato[2 comments hidden]
> By 9pm the cordon had crept up to 600 metres, encompassing a further 500 homes, cleared block by block by police officers.

I was recently reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book about gun violence.

One thing that really stood out:

Most European countries have MORE police per capita than the US.

kelnos[hidden]
I'm sure most of them are much less militarized than the police in the US.

The per-capita number is only one part of the puzzle. This is one of the annoying things about Gladwell's work: he writes breathlessly about statistics like this, but often fails to put them in broader context, when that context matters.

askvictor[2 comments hidden]
How often do WW2 or WW1 bombs actually explode, injuring or killing people? I would have thought that, for every bomb found and defused (or controlled-exploded) there would be one that isn't detected and banged around a bit...
silvester23[hidden]
It probably depends, but for example in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, between 1000 and 2000 bombs are found and defused each year. The last uncontrolled explosion was in 2014, killing one person.
mrlonglong[hidden]
They said the last person to be killed by a WW2 bomb probably hasn't been born yet.
AntonTrollback[5 comments hidden]
Having to analyze 80 year old bombing records during new constructions adds to the long list of downsides of wars
bell-cot[4 comments hidden]
Even if every scrap of WWII bombing records had been kept, preserved, and properly indexed for that - WWII bomber navigation was nothing near accurate enough for it to be very useful. I'd figure the builders just go with their local knowledge - of how many WWII bombs have turned up, and where, and things to watch out for.

BTW, Europe has similar problems with dud artillery shells, old minefields, etc. And it's not just WWII, nor just Germany. The most infamous is probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Zone_(World_War_I)

AntonTrollback[2 comments hidden]
Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Imagine a place like Afghanistan. I assume neither USSR nor USA records are accessible for the people there. Their landmine issue is just too sad

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-3205978/Pictured-harr...

stickfigure[hidden]
Pretty sure eastern Ukraine will be worse than anything yet. Four years now slinging everything and anything that goes boom.
kjs3[hidden]
You are correct. See: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_...

The money quote is:

  Conventionally the air forces designated as "the target area" a
  circle having a radius of 1000 feet around the aiming point of
  attack . While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies
  show that, in the over-all, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at
  precision targets fell within this target area.
I went down a rabbit hole and researched this a bit when we built an EU datacenter a couple of decades ago.