Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 1000 lbs american bomb discovered closed to my office

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary day of the battle of the bulge's launch.

Meanwhile, in the afternoon, workers of the intercity water department, building a water treatment station along the river Meuse in Namur, discovered a live 1000 lbs WWII american bomb next to a railroad bridge as they were digging the ground, just 500 yards away from the office.

Fortunately we have skilled and experienced bomb disabling services.

They transported the bomb in a nearby stone pit and blowed it around 16.30 PM. Traffic was closed on a huge part of the city, railroads and a large speedway section and bridge.

I bet the workers have been lucky ... as well as every one around the spot ... Such a bomb is probably quite devastative.

Is it verboten to say "cool" in this case? Glad nobody was hurt. I expect they saved quite a bit on the normal explosives at the quarry.

The workers were quite lucky indeed. WW2 era explosives become quite unstable and/or unpredictable over time depending on the environment they were stored in.

Your welcome.

dang shame it did not explode when it was supposed to.

glad you and your town are safe now though.

Glad that thing didn't go off and everybody is safe.

I was just watching the bomb people in Laos clearing ordinance from the countryside. We dropped a few million on Laos during the Vietnam war. They showed cluster bombs. Little baseball sized explosives. People farming and doing construction are hitting them. I always wondered why they never made bombs out of material that would degrade faster.

Oh, by the way, my Uncle Domenic was there. He was in an anti tank unit. He said it was very cold. I have his uniforms and it amazes me how thin his wool coat is. I don't know how they did it.

It is amazing how many unexploded munitions are found in Europe each year.

Experimental kinetic-effect bombs have been made of solid concrete. Kinetic-effect weapons are very effective. I once had a boss who had been the Chief Structural Engineer on the V-2 rocket at Peenemunde. In an effort of extending the range of the V-2, he proposed eliminating the 1,500 pound warhead and tests confirmed the increased range of about 50% (from 200 to 300 miles). Hitler vetoed the idea, even though the bomb damage was equal to missiles with the warhead.

Tests at a Nevada test site have including GPS guidance for excellent accuracy and the kinetic effect leaves minimal collateral damage.

I work on an installation where chemical weapons were produced between WWI and WWII. They are still finding old chemical ordinance around here.

My dad's neighbor was a construction contractor who did work on base here. I can remember when one of his crews dug up a bunch of old mortar rounds that were found to contain mustard gas. It happened just down the road from the building I was working in at the time.

Quite a few concrete bombs with GPS packages were dropped in Iraq. CAS in the city with one allows you to take out a home with no damage to the rest.

A friend of mine is farmer in the Marne, France. He regularly finds unexploded ammo, including "Yperite" shells when working in his fields.

Quite common in Belgium too but not usually in town area as yesterday.

WWII was the beginning of serious air to ground strike strategy and civilian casualities were numerous.

The bomb retreived yesterday results from an allied attempt to stop the german retreat in '44, trying to destroy the bridges accross the River Meuse. One particular bombing operation was supposed to destroy the railroad bridge that side of Namur but unfortunately completely missed the bridge and hitted an inhabited district of the city which was totally destroyed with 205 civilians killed.

I've met the mayor's administration chief today, he explained the bomb was hitted with an heavy excavation vehicle (heavy hydraulic shovel) that cutted through the shell so the explosive was directily visible and in contact with ambient air. Those workers have been quite lucky but the most self controlled man was probably the truck driver that took the bomb to the stone pit.

Explosive fillers are pretty stable and extremely insensitive to shock. Note that impact of dropping merely crunched the casing. If for some reason the fuze wasn't fully seated, there isn't all that much danger. If a fuze was cut by the shvel you could get an explosion. If it was not fully seated, then it would only be the trigger,not the main bomb. Only explosive used on battlefields I never cared to deal with was picric acid and that you find in shells and mines. Very bad ju-ju.

If it was on target, it must have been dropped by the American 100th. Good shooting, boys!

When I was studying chemistry I had a lab class in one of the older lab rooms. During an inspection they found a beaker with a very large chunk of picric acid under one of the fume hoods. Its scary stuff...very shock and temperature sensitive.

As a bomb or mine filler, it reacts with a cast iron casing when it has been wet to form a supersensitive explosive salt where the body meets the explosive. Don't sneeze!!!!

Surely glad nobody got hurt. Would be a shame to blow op a bunch of Belch at this late date.

BCR

good report, gv. glad everything was ok.

In fact the whole bombing missed the target and hitted the town ... I guess bombing and accurate weren't words you easily mixed in the same sentence at this time Maybe the one found yesterday was the closest to the target or maybe it is not the original bridge ...

My major professor in graduate school used picric acid in a solution that made the exoskeletons of insects transparent. There was a glass jar of the stuff on the shelf right over where I did my research for about 5 years. I never messed with it but was told it was no problem as long as it stayed wet. Evil ju-ju is an understatement from all the reports I heard about it.