On duds

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,825836,00.html (http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,825836,00.html)


The Journal of Mine Action, an academic publication, estimates that half of the ordnance dropped during the war failed to explode. That means that for every bomb crater photographed from the sky after a bombing raid, there's a dud that may still be embedded in the ground and could still blow at the slightest movement. WWII bombs have killed dozens of people in the last 20 years, and cost untold millions in economic damage as offices, schools and train lines are shut down while bombs are removed.

[Platapus]

Dud rates are complicated to calculate. First of all, one has to agree on what constitutes a dud. Just because a piece of ordnance did not function does not necessarily mean it was a dud. Dud rates also varied widely according to the type of ordnance.

It is counter-intuitive but non-functioning ordnance is more commonly a greater danger than dud ordnance. :yep:

Early cluster bombs used in WWII had high individual sub-munition dud rates. Aerial mines were notorious for dudding out.

Artillery rounds had a lot of duds but this has to be taken in the context of how many rounds were fired. Percentage wise it was not all that high, but in raw numbers, pretty high.

Aerial GP bombs with impact fuzes had about a 20% dud rate but that rate could vary widely between the make of the bomb and what specifically it impacted.

Rockets, either ground or air launched, probably had the highest percentage of duds if my tech school memory serves me. Around 30% if I recall correctly. Been a looong time since tech school.

Of course what I have been reading about the MK 13 torpedo, that ordnance may hold the record for percentage of duds.

Naval ordnance was a different and restricted block in EOD school.