WW2 Era 550lb found in Munich.
 

A quote from the news "
MAINZ, Germany -- Nearly 3,000 residents were evacuated from the heart of Munich late Monday night after construction workers found an undetonated, 550-pound World War II bomb."

Read about it here http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...in-munich?lite

:o

These things are always cropping up, always destroyed in a controlled explosion - does anybody know of one just going bang on its own accord? :hmmm:

Just last week a bomb from WW2 exploded in the Danube in Vienna, I will post some links to articles when I get home from work. Thankfully no ships were around.

They find dud bombs here pretty much every day so it's not really a big deal. I once even had to leave work for three hours because they had found one at a construction site 50m away from my office.:-?

I would think that at times knowing that theres still duds in major urban areas might be a bit unnerving when there uncovered.

It wasn't even urban but used to be a field in those days. I work in the middle of nowhere. The next military or urban target is several kilometres away.:doh:
I guess they have either missed their target completely or it was an emergency release.

Last week there was a forrest fire in a WW1 battlefield area. They counted over a dozen explosions. Mortar rounds mostly.
Gave the firefighters a hard time during a hard time

Our weapons of war are so effective they can kill you after sitting for nearly 100 years.I bet many unexplored bombs are ones that had been set with a delay fuse that failed to to trip.

At least in Europe there are laws that require the search of UXOs before any digging or construction is done in third world countries they have almost nothing.

I was reading some place that in Laos little kids try to find the bomblets from the many cluster bombs that where dropped over Laos in the 60's and early 70's.The reason they look for the bomb lets is because they want the ball bearings to use with sling shots and they make toys out of the metal.They lack the education to I guess to understand not to mess with the bomblets.To be fair they also mind a large number of un exploded RPG and B-40 rockets in Laos so the Communists are as harmful as the Capitalists.I understand that the cluster bombs used by the US Air Force back then had about an 80% functionality rating.That still means a lot of bomblets laying around there must be 100~150 in each canister.

Makes me wonder if there's anything left under Messines Ridge, considering the size of the craters, it would be...not good...if there was still an unexploded mine...

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4034/5...99cee363_z.jpg

There is at least one (which the location is known) of the mines still in the Messines area.

Might have also just been a concentration of troops and equipment.

Didn't Tony Robinson do some searches on lost/collapsed mines from WWI?

Just take into consideration all the small arms that would have been lost in battles when the person carrying them was killed or blown apart. the weapon itself and all of the rounds and any grenades would have been tossed about in the carnage and sometimes not found all that stuff is lying around out there somewhere as well.

There are likely millions of tons of explosives and ammo from the past 100 years or so of war that failed to go off or that got lost laying around waiting to be discovered.

I have seen on websites and on TV these groups of people in Russia and Ukraine that volunteer to go out into old battle fields and find the remains of soldiers they find lost weapons and explosives
all the time.

A 1500 kg mortar shell from this baby was found yesterday in Warsaw. (no photos yet)

Maybe August is right, but otherwise there are so many locations today in Germany were you don't see any Traces anymore of their former use as e.g. Feldflugplatz, Flak emplacements or Military Supply Areas.

Normally when Bombs were emergency released they were not armed and just dumped out of the plane.

@Schroeder when you have the Grid for Google Earth available, there is a possibility to track a former military use of the area.

I don't know, but there was another TV Documentary about the topic.

I just found the clips from the documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxG12ZYm3Q8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgknCbX3U4k

And it seems Schiphol (Netherlands) got one too

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archive...loses_part.php

HunterICX

There is a squad in Germany comparing aerial photos from bomb attacks with areas and looking for bombs, someone said they will be busy until the end of next century .. there were all kinds of triggers, some with acid some with clockwork-like devices and most with the good old contact detonator. Special air-mines, intended to burst the windows of buildings to feed oxygen to the fires and destroying the lungs of people in the open for a kilometer, had those delayed fuses intended to set off some hours after the attack, when firemen and people were in the streets again to remove the rubble.

Regarding the cluster bombs used all over the world from Kosovo to Afghanistan, when a US general was asked which percentage of cluster bombs would really explode, his answer was something like "the only sure thing is they will not stay in the air."
And lets not forget the more recently used 'depleted' uranium rounds being buried in populated areas and under crops.

From WW2 there are also still mines in the north african desert waiting .. and sunk ammunition, anthrax bombs .. all 'accidents' waiting to happen.

Latitude =52° 11' 32.8" N
Longitude =10° 25' 38.9" E

There are some steelworks nearby which would make a good target but they are a couple of km away.