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60,000 Germans Evacuate While Officials Try To Defuse a WWII Bomb (abc.net.au)
More than 70 years ago the UK's Royal Air Force dropped an 1,100-pound bomb on Germany. They just found it. An anonymous reader quotes ABC:
Residents in two German cities are evacuating their homes as authorities prepare to dispose of World War II-era bombs found during construction work this week. About 21,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes and workplaces in the western city of Koblenz as a precaution before specialists attempt to defuse the 500-kilogram bomb on Saturday afternoon (local time). Among those moved to safety are prison inmates and hospital patients. Officials in the financial capital Frankfurt, meanwhile, are carrying out what is described as Germany's biggest evacuation. Frankfurt city officials have said more than 60,000 residents will have to leave their homes for at least 12 hours.
Failure to defuse the bomb could cause a big enough explosion to flatten a city block, a fire department official said. "This bomb has more than 1.4 tonnes of explosives," Frankfurt fire chief Reinhard Ries said. "It's not just fragments that are the problem, but also the pressure that it creates that would dismantle all the buildings in a 100-metre radius"... Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb.
Reuters notes that every year Germany discovers more than 2,000 tons of live bombs and munitions, adding "In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys."
Failure to defuse the bomb could cause a big enough explosion to flatten a city block, a fire department official said. "This bomb has more than 1.4 tonnes of explosives," Frankfurt fire chief Reinhard Ries said. "It's not just fragments that are the problem, but also the pressure that it creates that would dismantle all the buildings in a 100-metre radius"... Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb.
Reuters notes that every year Germany discovers more than 2,000 tons of live bombs and munitions, adding "In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys."
is it a 500kg bomb or is it a 1400kg bomb... you cant have a 500kg bomb containing 1.4Tonnes of explosives...
Somebody set up us the bomb!
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
one 500kg bomb in Koblenz, and a second 1.4 ton bomb in Frankfurt. (Bad title by editor... saying one bomb.)
"In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys."
When I was a kid in the 1970's California, we had to build our own pipe bombs.
There are two bombs, and TFA confuses them a bit. There's a 500 kg bomb in Koblenz, and a 1,800 kg aerial mine in Frankfurt. Which, obviously, is the one with 1.4 tonnes of explosives.
Looks like it isn't just Hollywood trying to turn old franchises into blockbusters this year.
"Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb."
I hope it is defused and not diffused
Twinstiq, game news
Britain is not moving away from Germany, it wants to leave the EU. There are 26 more states beside Germany in the EU (not counting the UK).
That's what happens when you upset the Brits. Keep it in mind during the Brexit negotiations: it happened when you Krauts became too uppity, it can happen again.
What'll happen - the British will drop more dud bombs? I suppose it could be a problem if you happen to be right underneath one as it falls...
#DeleteChrome
Yep, that's right.
Americans and English didn't think of that when dropping this shit.
aaaaaaa
it happened when you Krauts became too uppity, it can happen again.
Well, you can try to give the Americans a call for help again, but I don't think that they will save you from the Krauts this time around.
They will be busy cleaning up after Harvey and building a Wall . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...a second 1.4 ton bomb in Frankfurt.
Someone put a bomb in someone's hotdog?!
Yes. But PETA already filed charges against the animal abuser.
There was a live piece of ammo in my neighbors garage when I was six years old. It was about 50 mm in diameter and I picked it up to look at it. I found a live round in the desert near a former aircraft firing range that I took and soaked in water for two days, then wrapped in wet paper and put in the trash. Me and my dad found some blasting caps in an abandoned trailer at the Hauser geode beds, we threw one into our campfire and it blew all the wood 2-3 feet away. He threw them into San Diego bay on his way to work on a ferry.
The bomb is a British Blockbuster - so called because one could flatten an entire city block.The bombs are the origin of the term..
They were giant cylinders filled with explosive,with no streamling and no tailfins. When dropped they tumbled randomly through the air so there was no kind of accuracy with them. Dropping one on anything smaller than a city was pointless. Essentially they're weapons that were purpose-designed to be dropped on cities and to kill civilians.
Not to worry, we can afford to take 10 minutes out of our busy days to dust off the Germans again.
Rural Belgium has this same problem, but from WW I.
Haha! "...diffusing the bomb." Get rid of it by spreading it in the air? Abruptly, or gradually?
Wordings like this come from the same clueless copy editors who order crowds to "disburse." See we have the UXB team spreading the bomb debris in the air, and the German townspeople responding by tossing money aloft.
Especially when either some guy with a whip and a fedora hat is involved ... or the bomb squad!
Defusing it would be preferable.
"Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb."
If they are not careful, they will indeed diffuse the bomb. I hope that they defuse it instead.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All 1800Kg unexploded Blockbusters so far:
This is a stupid question, but is there something you could do to scan for these? e.g. use something like a hand-held metal detector, but bigger?
You could always try a jackhammer.
I think I saw a Bigs Bunny cartoon with a similar premise.
The practice is indefensible, regardless of what you think of the point of view of the people you are dropping the bombs on. What you are engaged in is justifying an immoral act by saying the other guy is worse. You're still immoral for defending the practice. Blowing up little children because their parents might be Nazis is bullshit and I hope that in your heart of hearts you know that.
Ever wonder how the Catskill Mountains got their name?
We have the same problem here in Canada from WWI and WWII. There's large stretches outside of bombing ranges where they still find munitions and such. Then you run into problems in places where they had munitions factories, Ingersoll, Ontario had one for WWI and WWII. The town itself was also used in training for house-to-house searches, when they were training people for D-day. So every once and awhile, in the older parts of town people will find booby traps in the walls(non-functional) and so on, when they do renovations, along with training landmines in their backyards and so on.
Funny thing, was Ingersoll had a better layout compared to a european city then say Woodstock at the time, which is why the canuck military liked using it. Plus there were multiple rivers, streams, creeks, park areas, that all emulated european cities because the population had a lot of people who'd come over after WWI.
Om, nomnomnom...
I knew a guy who was in a bomb disposal unit in the Belgian army.
Apparently chemical ones are the worst. They have to identify what it is (not easy when the paint's fallen off and it's encrusted with a century's worth of rust), move it to a secure lab, then release the contents, in a sealed chamber, into a substance that will neutralize or absorb the poison.
If they don't find any more they might be finished in about 2030. But they keep digging them up...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
US Armed Forces HQ in Frankfurt was pretty much build around the bigger bomb.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
During WW2 some elements of the UK government were keen on dropping mustard gas on Germany (the RAF was less keen due to handling issues), so it used to be in the UK up until the late 90s that every now and then a farmer on land that was once an airfield would turn up an dump of it.
Not really a surprise. You find nasty piles of heavy metal dumps all over the place here in southwestern ontario too, or tailings contamination because it was used as backfill in an area or other things. Not really much you can do in a lot of those cases, where I used to live in Woodstock was about 1km from 3 garbage dumps. 2 of which were less then 140m from one of the tributaries of the Thames River. House were built on them back in the 1960's and 70's, then came the problems with methane seeping, then came the serious problem where the dumps were causing radon seeping and they had to devise some method to cut down on pools of radon gas forming in a couple of the low-laying parks.
Om, nomnomnom...
If they had a way to detect explosives from the air, they would be flying planes looking for active terrorist cells rather than unexploded WW2 bombs...
They also wouldn't publicise the fact they had such technology, as it would cause those active terrorist cells to devise new ways to hide their explosives.
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