50,000 evacuated due to RAF cookie

[NutLoose]

German evacuation for WW2 bomb disposal in Augsburg - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38430671)

Not the type of cookie one wants for Christmas.

[skippedonce]

A real Christmas 'cracker'!

[Vzlet]

I hope all goes safely and quickly. Augsburg is a gorgeous city, and I thoroughly enjoyed two tours there in the 70s and 80s.

It looks like they're taking no chances of undersizing the evacuation zone:
http://arkhive.de/schutzzone-25-12-2016.pdf

[DON T]

Seems strange that in the photograph the emergency services are carrying two crates of beer down the street:rolleyes:

[Basil]

Seems strange that in the photograph the emergency services are carrying two crates of beer down the street:rolleyes:
Prioritising ;)

p.s. Sorry about that folks, we're speaking to our fuze manufacturers!

[November4]

A comment from the Daily Mail site....

It's OK, we don't want it back.

[TBM-Legend]

Missed the railway yards by a mile or two....

[onetrack]

Kudos to those highly skilled and brave engineers, who took the gravest risks in dismantling the three detonators of a 1944, 4000lb "cookie-cutter" or "blockbuster" bomb.

The corrosion over 72 years of lying buried deeply underground would be substantial, and despite being a former military field engineer, it's not a job I'd like to be handed.

Here's U.S. military test film from 1942, showing the testing of the blockbuster bomb. They were so-called due to their ability to flatten a city block if exploded at ground level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CiAr0ulR18


Here's video of an actual blockbuster in a museum, and the DH.98 Mosquito that carried it.
There's nothing sophisticated about the later 1944 models - they were just a cylinder packed with 3000lbs of Amatol and 3 detonators to ensure detonation.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX7-7L1kWOg

[MPN11]

Nasty stuff. It's a good job the Germans concentrated on 'tactical bombers' to support their Army, rather than following the rest of us with our 'heavies'. And it's good to recall that our philosophy started with the HP 0/400 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_Type_O) ... "Sueter requested "a bloody paralyser of an aircraft" for long-range bombing".

[Basil]

onetrack, would I be correct in guessing that the shock wave advances at about M1.0 but the initial speed of the fragments would be in excess of M10.0?

[ShotOne]

Don't forget MPN the German war plan didn't involve following, or fighting "us", rather their capabilities were directed firmly at their "red" enemy. That said it's one of the war's mysteries why their Heinkel 177 heavy bomber project was such a fiasco. Even a modest fleet of nazi heavies and the threat or actuality of London being flattened may have led to a de facto truce in bombing cities. Top marks to whoever got the job of defusing this bomb!!

[Chugalug2]

SO:-
Even a modest fleet of nazi heavies and the threat or actuality of London being flattened may have led to a de facto truce in bombing cities.
Well they certainly missed a trick in not being able to reach all the relocated T34 factories in Siberia, I'll agree. Not clear though what difference it would have made to London with the Luftwaffe being short of heavies. The problem was that they were mercifully short of everything, especially with the launch of Barbarossa. A strong force of Heinkel 1-11s retained in France would have given us even more sleepless nights than pertained pre D-Day. Thankfully they were needed elsewhere, and as ever in far greater numbers than there actually were. Goering was second only to Hitler himself in ensuring ultimate Allied victory. :ok:

In the meantime, much sympathy to the good people of Augsburg for their spoiled Christmas. As has been pointed out it could have been a disastrous one instead had it not been for the skill and courage of those who made this cookie safe.

[Vzlet]

Looks like they earned a special Holiday nightcap!

https://images.scribblelive.com/2016/12/25/96ae4af1-5cdc-4fd6-a799-6d9392f0e4b2.jpg

(Roger Flakowski, Christian Scheibinger und Martin Radons)

[Onceapilot]

Amazing work! Great pic. looks like the 3 guys are each holding one of the remains of the the 3 fuzes. Having done quite a lot of dismantling of buried machinery, I am surprised that they can remove the fuzes, it must require some fairly aggressive use of force, not the stethoscope and plastic tweezers we imagine? How about all the talk of explosive decomposition and sensitivity? Or is that all rubbish when you are dealing with explosives that have lain for 70yrs at around 10 degrees centigrade?
Good job done!

OAP

[Vzlet]

These threads look to be in at least fair shape. (Nonetheless, I suppose one takes a deep breath before tugging on the wrench!)
https://images.scribblelive.com/2016/12/25/59a29565-3b99-4b9d-b9b3-f69abf229f93.jpg

(As a note, the images I've posted are from the augsburger-allgemeine.de site.)

[clunckdriver]

Well done you three! Now go have your Christmas diner and a good stiff drink! Its a strange world when one of my kin may have dropped that beast, and now we are congratulating you, maybe there is hope for us yet!

[mr fish]

would they have sprayed WD/40 or similar into that thread?

FISH.

[longer ron]

Great pic and well done to the EOD guys :)

[cornish-stormrider]

Indeed BZ boys
Hope you get a beer for your efforts

[Onceapilot]

Another good pic Vzlet. Yes, it does look in good shape! But hey, that is an explosive detonator that contains unstable picric crystals and would kill you if it went off! Crazy guys.:eek:

OAP

[Basil]

They weren't wearing proper bomb disposal protective clothing. ;)

Just as well the fuzes lacked 'Vorsprung Durch Technik'

[Basil]

Another good pic Vzlet. Yes, it does look in good shape! But hey, that is an explosive detonator that contains unstable picric crystals and would kill you if it went off! Crazy guys.:eek:

OAP
Very good point but, I guess, when they'd unscrewed them, they guessed they weren't suddenly going to go.
Personally, I'd have gently disposed of them ASAP.

Hope the Christmas celebration with their families was enhanced by their bravery.

[Tankertrashnav]

Reminds me of the episode of Auf Wiedersehen Pet when they find an unexploded bomb on the building site.

Oz (proudly) "That's a British bomb!"

Herr Ulrich "Yes, it did not go off."

[clunckdriver]

I wonder if our "three musketeers" would care to write a short account of just how they accomplished this very dangerous piece of handy work? Again, well done!

[NutLoose]

They weren't wearing proper bomb disposal protective clothing.


One doubts you would be able to find the street, let alone the team if it went off, so rather a pointless exercise in donning it.

[Fareastdriver]

I think the little caricature at the end of Basil's post explained that.

[Wander00]

Well dine to a group of very brave men. Lost in admiration

[Pontius Navigator]

I wonder what the evacuation area would have been for a bigger bomb, the 8000 or 12000?

As an aside, I read a translation of a German intelligence report. They correctly named the 12,000 lb bomb but did differential between the HC bomb and the Tallboy.

They said it could be dropped from low level, 50 feet or more or high level at 20,000.

[Onceapilot]

I wonder if our "three musketeers" would care to write a short account of just how they accomplished this very dangerous piece of handy work?
I am interested as well clunck. The secrets of bomb disposal can be hot property. However, in this type of case, I presume that the knowledge is unclass. I do wonder though, whether they use some method of disabling these fuzes or, if they rely upon the effects of time to degrade the function? It would seem to me to be pure folly to disturb a viable fuze unless it was disabled, which is what I expect they actually did before removing them from the bomb. Brave men!:D

OAP

[Tankertrashnav]

Purely as an aside, I notice that fuze appears to be the preferred spelling on here, whereas I would use fuse myself. I have seen an old buttons where fusiliers was spelt fuzileers, but that was from about 1780. Has the 'z' spelling come back?

[Danny42C]

Early in the "Blitz" (September 1940) a large German UXB was found close to the foundations of St.Paul's Cathedral. A Bomb Disposal team led by Lieutenant Robert Davies (RE) dug down, found it, dug it out and took it away in a truck for disposal (it does not seem to have been de-fused !!).

At the time, my Civil Service "Line Manager" had been a Sopwith Camel pilot as a Captain in the RFC. His comment at the time: "I'd give that. bloke a whole bucketful of VCs !" (Same applies to these three lads, IMHO).

Later, Davies was awarded the George Cross for it. (Wiki has the story: Google "Robert Davies (GC)").

Two months later, I volunteered for aircrew duties in the RAFVR (but I'd already made up my mind to do that anyway).

Danny.

[Always a Sapper]

TTN, wouldn't know, but for what it's worth as an RE when wearing the Combat Engineer hat and playing with bang I always used the spelling Fuze. But when wearing the Electrician RE hat I always used the spelling Fuse to describe a device used to prevent bangs!

Either way, the team that did that job certainly had some gonads. Wonder if we could claim on the warranty and get a refund from the fuze manufacturer as they didn't work as described back in 1944?

[ShotOne]

Going back to the fuse (or fuze), didn't this bomb have three? Were fuses particularly unreliable at that time or was it a "design feature". I have read that some fuses were deliberately set on a time delay to hamper clear-up operations. If that's the case here, this one worked especially well!

[Pontius Navigator]

One German bomb had an anti-tamper device which activated as the pistol was unscrewed. The RAF bomb disposal man calculated that if you could unscrew and extract the pistol faster than the pistol could activate the fuse . . .

Accordingly he loosened the pistol and then fastened a drive belt from his motorcycle to the pistol. The bike drive was engaged and the pistol flew out - so I was told :)

[Onceapilot]

TTN, yes you would be quite correct to use "fuse" for domestic electrical protection devices. However, explosive-train detonators and similar weapon initiators are generally termed "fuzes". Blame the Romans!:ok:

OAP

[MPN11]

TTN, wouldn't know, but for what it's worth as an RE when wearing the Combat Engineer hat and playing with bang I always used the spelling Fuze. But when wearing the Electrician RE hat I always used the spelling Fuse to describe a device used to prevent bangs!
....
Distinction noted ... I shall try to remember that! ;)

[Royalistflyer]

I seem to recall that all old 1950s RAF manuals used fuze as the spelling.

[Tankertrashnav]

Well it's been an education. I'll stick to changing fuses and leave fuzes to those who know what they are doing!

[ACW599]

In his book 'Braver Men Walk Away', Peter Gurney -- who was Head of the Explosives Section of the Met's Anti-Terrorist Branch until retirement in 1991 -- refers to 'fuzes' throughout.

[tdracer]

I seem to recall that even after the fuze is removed, 70 year old high explosive has a bad habit of becoming somewhat unstable.
So was removing the bomb from the site an issue? And what do they do after that - take it to a remote location and blow it up?

[onetrack]

(Basil) - onetrack, would I be correct in guessing that the shock wave advances at about M1.0 but the initial speed of the fragments would be in excess of M10.0?Basil, as a general rule of thumb, the metal fragments from a munitions explosion travel at between 3 and 5 times the speed of the shockwave.

[onetrack]

tdracer - Many types of explosive are quite stable over a long period of time - however some types do decompose into more unstable forms and become very dangerous to move after decades of inactivity.
Amatol is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate and is therefore relatively stable. I won't go into the fine details, there are too many suspicions raised if you access anarchy sites, and instructions on composition and manufacture of explosives. :(
Yes, the de-activated bomb is removed from the site and taken to the likes of a weaponry range for destruction by a suitable small initiating explosive.

The important factors are precisely identifying the model of munition, obtaining the technical specifications of the munition (nearly all types of military munitions specs are still on record) - and most importantly, identifying any "anti-handling" devices that are likely to have been fitted. "Anti-handling devices" are those devious devices designed to kill anyone trying to de-activate the munition, and they can be exceptionally dangerous.

In SVN, M16 anti-personnel mines ("jumping jacks") were often placed in the ground with a hand grenade set below the M16 casing with the pin removed.
The fly-off handle of the grenade would be retained in position, thus keeping the spring-loaded striker from initiating the activation of the grenade.
Unwary sappers would de-activate the M16 fuze (a relatively simple operation), then lift the M16 from its resting place in the ground, and "BOOM" - the unwary sapper was often seriously injured, and occasionally killed, by the grenade going off, once the pressure came off it.

[Pontius Navigator]

One track, same era, same effect, was a Mills bomb or similar in a drinks can. Picked up as FOD

[Octane]

I believe the Vietcong would defuse an unexploded USAF bomb, light a fire underneath it and capture the resulting liquid explosive (possibly Ammonium Nitrate but I don't know) to use in their own devices...
Ammonium Nitrate is very stable on it's own, but detonate it.....

[PPRuNeUser0139]

BBC 4 has on old (1974) programme available about Bomb Disposal..
BBC iPlayer - Tuesday Documentary - The Bomb Disposal Men (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00jvcm0/tuesday-documentary-the-bomb-disposal-men#group=p00hl622)

2pCNnRZUMmk

[November4]

And although fiction Danger UXB was based on the memoirs of Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, Unexploded Bomb - The Story of Bomb Disposal

hoaV-4uGBc4

[NutLoose]

Thank you folks, this has turned into a really interesting ( and educational ) thread.

[Slow Biker]

Just a pedant's question: are they fuzes or pistols? My thinking is pistol, but I can't remember the type.
PN is on the right track with the motorcycle story. There are tools that can be used remotely to remove a fuze/pistol. The IGOL (I Go On Living) dates from WW2; it is a circular device that is clamped to the fuze and two sprung 'hammers' are operated by a long cord (very long!). The IGOL was superseded by the Rocket Wrench. Imagine a Catherine Wheel clamped to the fuze and fired by two 0.5in electrically fired cartridges mounted opposite each other. The fuze is spun out and a bungee attached to a stake pulls it clear. The German EOD guys are hugely experienced and no doubt had their own methods. I just hope it was not the way an American 20lb Frag bomb was tackled when uncovered at Gutersloh. As per the protocol the German EOD was informed and were escorted to the site. I did not witness the render safe as when one of the men produced a hammer and chisel I found I had urgent business a couple of hundred meters away. But it worked, and I expect they had done it dozens of times.

[onetrack]

I've never forgotten the captured NVA film we were shown at the School of Military Engineering in Casula, NSW, in 1970.

This film recorded an NVA sapper finding an unexploded U.S. bomb, defuzing it - then cutting around 7/8ths of the circumference of the casing with a hacksaw, leaving around 1/8" to 1/16" (3 - 1.6mm) casing thickness - then tapping the bomb with a sledgehammer to break it apart, so the NVA sappers could dig out the explosive by hand to fabricate crude booby traps, mines and hand grenades of their own.

These blokes even had little jungle foundries going, smelting the U.S. bomb casings to form them into their own hand grenades, using their own grenade casting molds!

The incredible part about the NVA effort is understanding that the U.S. bombs not only had anti-withdrawal mechanisms designed to kill the untrained person trying to withdraw the fuze - they also often had time-delay fuzes, activated by slow-working chemicals, that would also lead to "failed" bombs unexpectedly going off, up to 144 hrs after they were dropped!

Allied forces developed their own designs of anti-handling devices during World War II. For example, the American M123A1, M124A1, M125 and M131 series of chemical long delay tail-fuzes which were used in air-dropped bombs, starting around late 1942 and remaining in service until the 1960s.
Frequently fitted to M64 (500 lb), M65 (1000 lb) and M66 (2000 lb) general-purpose bombs, these fuzes were primarily designed to operate as chemical long-delay fuzes, with settings ranging between 15 minutes and 144 hours.
The time delay mechanism was simple but effective: after being dropped from the aircraft a small propellor at the rear of the bomb revolved, gradually screwing a metal rod into the fuze, crushing an ampoule of acetone solvent contained within it.
When this happened the fuze was fully armed and the timer countdown had started. The acetone soaked into an absorbent pad next to a celluloid disk which held back a spring-loaded firing pin from a percussion cap connected to an adjacent detonator.
Acetone slowly dissolved the celluloid disk, gradually weakening it until the cocked firing pin was released and the bomb detonated.
The time delay of the fuze varied according to the acetone concentration and the thickness of the celluloid disk.
Removing a chemical long delay fuze from a bomb after it had been dropped would have been a straightforward process had it not been for the fact that there was an integral anti-withdrawal mechanism designed to kill anyone who tried to render the bomb safe.
Fuzes such as the M123 (and its derivatives) contained two small ball-bearings at the lower end which slid out of recesses when the fuze was screwed into the bomb by aircraft armorers.
The ball-bearings jammed into the screw-threads inside the fuze well, preventing the fuze from being removed. Because the lower end of the fuze was locked in place deep inside the bomb (where it was hard get at) this posed major problems for enemy EOD personnel.
Attempting to unscrew a fully armed chemical long-delay fuze caused it to split into two separate fuze assemblies.
This action automatically triggered detonation by releasing the cocked firing pin in the lower fuze assembly, with lethal results for anyone nearby.

[Octane]

The problem is in Vietnam something like 10% of bombs dropped failed to explode, at all.
Tonnage dropped apparently exceeded 5 million tons (including who knows how many millions of cluster bomblets that were notorious for failing), implying 500,000 tons of unexploded munitions, explaining why to this day people are still being killed/ maimed in Vietnam and Laos....
So I guess the enemy had lots of "dud" bombs to work with...

[onetrack]

Another SVN veteran told me a few years ago, that an average of 7 people a day were still being killed in Vietnam by unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War.
I'm not sure where he got his information from, but the article below says over 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed by unexploded ordnance in Vietnam since 1975.
If we call it 41,000 deaths, that's 1000 deaths a year in the 41 years since 1975. There's possibly quite a few unrecorded deaths as well.
1000 deaths a year is still 2.73 people being killed every day there, and it doesn't seem like the casualty rate is slowing down much.

The Vietnam War is still killing people (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-vietnam-war-is-still-killing-people)

[ericferret]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

[Pontius Navigator]

One track, during Confrontation we had 3 DA per stick of 21. Roughly #19 an #17 had 60 min and 30 min respectively. They would have been about 140 yards apart. Then #3 had a 6 hr delay. The other 18 were set for airburst. Nasty, especially given probable error of up to 2000 yards.

[RR22]

The British Ordinance collectors network (BOCN)
Has a fascinating web site and forum packed with info, and populated. by
collectors and disposal (EOD) people from around world.

A friendly site, well worth a few hours,or days in my case.

The site is down as of now,but temporarily.