WW2 bomb explosion in Germany

[merdock]

Hi,
If thats one bomb just think of the damage if the SS Richard Montgomery went bang?

[Asbjoern]

Todays newspaper tells a completely different story on the bomb... while first it was denied that it could have been a "Luftmine" they are now sure it was a Britisch build 4000 lbs mine ... and todaay they wrot it was no so common to cover them with concrete. anyway, the spliters brought up the truth...

Jens

[Josh Cowell]

Makes me sad and mad to see lives lost like this. In 2010 3 bomb disposal crew were killed too. Very sad.

[Totenhead]

If it was a British Blockbuster bomb it would have been encased in a very large lump of concrete !

If you look at the aerial photograph, perhaps there is a blockbuster bomb crater visible towards the top left of the picture ?

[Frankenland-Dan]

See Wiki;

An unusual dry period led to low river levels in the Rhine in December 2011 exposing a 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) blockbuster in the riverbed near Koblenz. A radius of 2 km (1.25 miles) around the bomb site (containing about 45,000 people) was evacuated while the bomb was defused.[8] Another unexploded blockbuster was found in Dortmund in November 2013, requiring the evacuation of 20,000 people from the area.[9]

Someone should have known better – block of concrete being jackhammered???

[Totenhead]

Would a Blockbuster bomb have caused more damage than that has been seen at the site ??

[Hoss]

They couldn't pay me enough to do that job...

December 4th 2011
The size of the British bomb in particular required that 45,000 people, half the population of the city, be evacuated from the 1.8 kilometre exclusion zone in downtown Koblenz by Sunday morning. Each household received a leaflet advising residents to lock their homes, close their windows, lower the shutters, and leave the area carrying only any medicines they might need. Shelters were set up in seven public schools and all the patients in two hospitals, seven nursing homes and the inmates of the prison were moved out of harm’s way. Sunday morning authorities went door to door hustling any stragglers out of the exclusion zone.

This evacuation is the biggest bomb disposal operation in Germany since the end of the war, and there have been many. The Rhine is full of bombs. There are estimated 3,000 unexploded bombs lying in wait under the topsoil of Berlin alone. Construction workers regularly stumble on bombs, and despite their age, these explosive devices can and do still kill. Last June three bomb disposal experts were killed and two injured during an attempt to defuse a 500-kilo World War II bomb unearthed in the construction of a stadium in Göttingen, and another three died a few months later while defusing a bomb in Lower Saxony.

The three meter-long (10 feet) RAF “blockbuster” is the largest unexploded bomb found in Germany, and explosives in the detonator react with water over time becoming more volatile. That means there was a very real possibility that the blockbuster could have gone off, taking the experts and the center of the city with it, hence the exclusion zone. Of course today it was raining.

They used a crane to build a damn out of sandbags around the bomb, then they pumped the water out, leaving the bomb exposed and defusable. They successfully defused the larger bomb first, then they defused the American one. The German smoke grenade was destroyed in a controlled demolition, which sent up a dramatic jet of water and smoke. Everything went according to plan and nobody was harmed.

[Hoss]

1

[Hoss]

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[Frankenland-Dan]

“They couldn't pay me enough to do that job...”

that’s ok, just stay in bed – the brave will keep you safe and sound!

[Jean-Loup]

"that’s ok, just stay in bed – the brave will keep you safe and sound!"

Yes of course, the human species os made of only two kinds of people, those who stay in bed, and those who defuse bombs