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Originally Posted by CCIP
Well, I still wouldn't worry. It's still pretty minor; old mines, in fact, are certainly a bigger danger.
There's a lot of stuff out there. I mean hey, all the ships that were sunk in the war are still there.
And if you think the ocean is bad - well, all over Europe there's still cases when they find unexploded WWII bombs lodged in old buildings  |
Messine Ridge, to quote an example. I watched a documentary not too long ago detailing a plan by the British forces to build a large number of underground mines beneath the German held positions and fill them with large amounts of Amatol(spelling?) explosives, in a devastating surprise attack in World War I. The plain worked and most of the 57 or so mines exploded, killing hundreds if not thousands of German soldiers, but a handful were duds (Mark 14s perhaps? :P) and even to this day some of the mines remain intact. This only came to light in the 60's when a Belgian farmer awoke to a thunderous explosion and found one of his fields, under which had lain one of the unexploded chambers, was now a massive crater. As far as I can remember the documentary attepmted to find all the unexploded mines, but not sure if they planned to disarm them. Most of the explosives were inside leather containers which would have decayed over time and made defusing extremely unsafe.
Sorry to hijack the OP's thread! I have wondered before exactly what happens to the torpedos that miss, and how many of them are lying out there. I know that during the Gallipoli campaign in WWI, the British lost a couple of ships in the Dardanelle strait/channel but for years divers have brought up cordite from the charges used firing arty shells. They look like long, thin sticks, but once they've dried out they still ignite if you burn them
