[Milsurplus] UXB in Gemany / Smithsonian, Feb. 2016

[Hubert Miller]

Picked up a Smithsonian magazine at the grocery tonite and i find it has 
besides an article on the Holy Land archeology,
an article of possible interest to some readers here. Cover date Feb. 
23, 2016:

"Bombs Away - Seventy years after World War II, German experts are 
racing time to defuse tons of U.S. ordnance that
hasn't exploded - yet."

I wasn't aware that Germany had a bomb disposal agency, the KMBD, altho 
it should be no surprise, as France has such,
as i posted here a couple years back. Apparently the scariest potential 
danger is unexploded time-delay fuze bombs.
If they stayed stuck head down, the time fuze would usually work as 
designed. But if the bomb burrowed and was deflected
and ended with its head end at some degree of vertical, the chemical 
fuze did not work. In that case, the firing of the bomb is delayed
for decades as thin time-delay disks age, become brittle, and finally 
crack and break - without the bomb even being moved
or jostled. It says three KMBD technicians died in 2010 when they were 
near a bomb that fired this way. The delay-fuze bombs
apparently also have an anti-tampering device to trigger the fuze, 
increasing the puzzle factor.

Probably not a good job for me. I set a tool down and a minute later 
can't find it and then upend my teacup looking.

I recall living for a while with my aunt and uncle in Mannheim in the 
mid 1950s. I went with my aunt one day to visit someone
in the hospital. On the way home, the streetcars were detoured.  A crane 
was  lifting some huge battered-looking bomb out of a pit in the road.
via: Hue Miller
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