A simple typo .. hit the wrong key, thanks for the checking. Fixed now.

never wonderd about torps but i have about gash cans and royal navy issue white cups

One of the U-47's unexploded torpedos floated up from the bottom of Scapa Flow in September 2002, though it was missing its warhead. It was identified as belonging to the U-47 after being intercepted by a Royal Navy tugboat when the torpedo drifted close to shore, then detonated by a bomb disposal squad.

not all pistols were mech. in type alot of the
'mines"you see in movies with the little horn's or nodes sticking out were chemical ...glass filled with acid ...so whats to foul?.unless the glass is broken or the seal compromised it's going to just be a dumb seamine

Sorry Snuffy. I might have come across as being a "know-it-all." That wasn't my intention. It's still amazing though. Do they have rules for visitors at Civil war battle sites about dangerous areas because of unexploded ordinance? If that is the case, wow.

I guess there would be a time that this is not an issue back in history. What I mean is, for example, during the war of 1812 they probably did not have encased explosive shells. Didn't they just use cannonballs to cause kinetic damage. Or maybe they did have hollow balls that would explode with a fuse. SOmeone with more knowledge could probably enlighten us.

When I was younger, I spent quite a bit of time camping and hunting in a forest that was a practice bombing range during WWII. Occasionally practice ordnance still turns up. One of the first things drummed into us was if we found anything like that, DON'T TOUCH IT! Civil War era stuff would be mainly black powder, while later stuff used more modern explosive which could much more readily maintain a stable state after this amount of time, especially if they are protected from exposure.

Would they have revised Prien's tonnage score up if it had hit a ship and sunk something? ;)

Now that is scary. Imagine a small ship getting wacked by a surfaced WW2 era torpedo as cakewalk mentioned. What would the legal repercussions be. Would the vessels owners be able to sue the German government for damages, etc.

How in the hell can a torpedo "float" ?

Two words: Ironbottom Sound. :o

I spent a large amount of the 1970s serving in minesweepers. Spent a fair amount of time clearing WW2 minefields. By that time WW1 stuff was thought to be safe but if we found any we didn't take chances. Even when not actively engaged in sweeping we would get called in when some fisherman caught a mine or one washed up on a beach. We found plenty of ground mines, most had been dropped from aircraft but some had been placed by subs or S-boats. Personally I never heard of old torpedoes showing up, and there must have been few thousand expended in the English Channel in two world wars.

When they made the surveys for the Channel Tunnel a special search was made all long the route for ordnance still on the seabed. They found ground mines, bombs, and shells, but I'm fairly sure there were no torpedoes.

To be absalutly honest. a WW2 torp's should be the lest of your worries. when there is a ready made Nuke laying in the thames.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/essex/content/a..._feature.shtml

Coral Sea and GBR
 

Wasn't there some talk years ago about the demise of the Great Barrier Reef ecologically being attributed to petroleum contamination, and the study of currents and wrecks put the victims in the Coral Sea battle as prime suspects (i.e. USS Lexington, Neosho, Sims, & IJN Shoho). I remember reading elsewhere that the Lex had just topped off and was 95% full of fuel oil (from Neosho) when she went down. Also, the USS Arizona wreck has been widely known in recent years as an environmental ticking time bomb. She too was very much fueled up when destroyed, and though a large portion was pumped out afterwards, the decay of the wreck over the decades has been followed and noted by park service divers. Some ideas to help prevent a major spill include building a cofferdam around the wreck, to contain any leaks. They can no longer pump out oil as the interior has been so compromised by decay that the fuel isn't necessarily in the bunkers anymore, but throughout endless compartments. No easy solution for sure, especially since its a war grave.:hmm:

Regards,
Brian

A torpedo without its warhead is buoyant. I guess that in this case the torpedo was set to run shallow and hit the bottom. Over the years the warhead detached and / or part of the heavier machinery fell out and the torpedo body regained its buoyancy.

There is a very large oil and gas refinery within the potential blast radius of the Richard B Montgomery:eek: