| 14Bore | 18 Nov 2018 4:39 p.m. PST |
link
Mine field was found near Krasnaya Gorka using make shift explosives in 1941 |
| 14Bore | 18 Nov 2018 4:40 p.m. PST |
link
Mine field was found near Krasnaya Gorka using make shift explosives in 1941 |
robert piepenbrink  | 18 Nov 2018 5:14 p.m. PST |
Ask the Egyptians how many they lose each year--especially around El Alamein. And the French still turn up WWI shells and mines. In certain parts of France, the military runs a regular route every spring, to pick up what everyone hopes are dud shells and mines turned up in the planting and left by the side of the road by farmers. As late as 50 years after the war you'd still lose a farmer to mustard gas every now and then, ploughing too deep in lowlands. Relatively easy to start a war. Stopping the killing can be incredibly difficult. Which is why I prefer mine to be on a tabletop. |
| 15th Hussar | 18 Nov 2018 5:34 p.m. PST |
A squad of us were always on secondary alert status in case we had to pitch in and help if UXB's or mines were found in any sort of quantity in the Ludwigsburg-Stuttgart area circa 1974-76, though we were just additional support, safety-crowd control people in the case of UXB's. If I recall correctly, a few mines were discovered in the general locale and one UXB betwixt greater Stuttgart and Ulm during that period, but nothing that couldn't be handled by the Bundeswehr and para-military. |
| Thresher01 | 18 Nov 2018 5:56 p.m. PST |
The real danger I suspect, are all the thousands of unexploded bombs, yet to be found, and dug up, in Germany and surrounding countries. Every once in a while they evacuate whole neighborhoods to unearth and defuse or remove them. Those "cookies" there are certainly not your everyday treats. |
| robert piepenbrink | 18 Nov 2018 6:11 p.m. PST |
Oh, yes. The UXB problem is far greater in Germany than anywhere else. They were more heavily bombed, and by more explosives relative to incendiaries than Japan, and after the war there was nothing to be done but to pave over a lot of them. People had to have homes and places to work. But mostly, bombs are an inconvenience and expense to get rid of, while mines and shells just go right on killing a few people at a time, year after year. Anyone remember that trendy DC region neighborhood which turned out to have been built over WWI chemical munitions? |
| Dn Jackson | 18 Nov 2018 10:39 p.m. PST |
And its not only bombs and landmines that still kill. In 1955 a mine dug under German lines in 1916 and filled with explosives, was set off by lightning. From what I have read there are still several mines that never went off in that area. link link |
| Patrick R | 19 Nov 2018 2:33 a.m. PST |
SS Richard Montgomery, 1500 tons of high explosives in the Thames estuary … link |
| skipper John | 19 Nov 2018 9:10 a.m. PST |
Now that… was one heck of a lightning strike!! |
| Major Mike | 19 Nov 2018 11:43 a.m. PST |
In the Pacific region, unexploded ordinance is a problem, especially that of Japanese manufacture as they have become know to be very unstable. One group searching for the remains of lost aviators even has a resident explosive expert to deal/or not with anything they come across while searching. |
| 14Bore | 19 Nov 2018 2:49 p.m. PST |
Dn Jackson fascinating article |
| Dn Jackson | 19 Nov 2018 11:15 p.m. PST |
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