Cleaning up after WWII (2017)

https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/cleaning-up-after-wwii/

by dredmorbius • 2 years ago

95 24 2 years ago

wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com

Semi-related discussion, in which this link was mentioned: "How WW2 bombs across the Pacific are found and destroyed, decades after war" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41314166#41354620>.

_glass• 2 years ago

I had to sign off that I am not concerned of the likely undetonated bombs underneath my home when buying my apartment this year. In Hamburg, Germany, there are so many bombs still under buildings, because buildings were put on top hastily.

imp0cat• 2 years ago

Just a few days ago, a refinery had to be shut down and evacuated because an old unexploded WW2 bomb was found.

https://www.ogj.com/refining-processing/refining/operations/...

lostlogin• 2 years ago

The bombing of Hamburg is a shocking event. The scale of it was so immense that it was used as a justification for nuclear attacks on civilians. The argument being ‘What’s the difference? Tens or even hundreds of thousands die in either event’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_...

dredmorbius3• 2 years ago

The GI and his wife pictured about a quarter of the way through this piece are likely Ernest Kreiling and his newlywed bride Jean Vonachen, who toured post-war Europe in 1947, revisiting locations he'd fought in during 1944-5. Their photography ran in Life Magazine:

<https://www.life.com/history/where-it-happened-a-former-g-i-...>

I suspect this is another image from the sequence of the pair on the tank: <https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/04144747/...> (from the Life article above).

openasocket• 2 years ago

Super niche nitpick: the photo is not of a tank. That appears to be a StuG III, which is not a tank. There is no turret, the gun is just fixed in the hull, with a couple degrees of freedom. Originally intended as a sort of mobile fire support for infantry, eventually got some anti-tank capability. They were not part of the Panzercorps by the Wehrmacht, who saw it as a specialized form of artillery.

dredmorbius3• 2 years ago

Thanks for the nitpicking!

yu3zhou4• 2 years ago

To this day, bombs from World Wars are being found in Poland. Recently, a renovation of one of important roads in Gdańsk was stopped because they found a WWII bomb in the ground

dEnigma• 2 years ago

Regular occurrence here in Austria as well. Funnily enough back in school when we watched "Der Untergang" (Downfall), we were escorted out of the movie theatre by policemen right after the movie ended because they'd just found a big WWII bomb nearby at a construction site.

Ylpertnodi• 2 years ago

Hitler rants....about creppy ordinance. Und fisch.

3D30497420• 2 years ago

Especially common here in Berlin. They found several bombs when building the Tesla factory recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_...

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

Planes, too; a German bomber that crashed 81 years ago, as well as an English aircraft were dug up recently in my country: https://www-omropfryslan-nl.translate.goog/nl/nieuws/1671228...

high_52• 2 years ago

WWII??? We haven't managed yet to clean up after WWI! For example, nearly every day unexploded munitions are found on the former Isonzo frontline.

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

This is one reason why cluster bombs are banned (albeit that's ignored) and why anti-personnel mines should be banned (there's the Ottawa treaty but the bigger forces like the US, Russia, China, India and Pakistan have not signed it). As an alternative the US's ATACMS rockets have a variant with tungsten shrapnel, which has been used against Russian force gatherings and transport columns like a giant shotgun blast but without the leftover unexploded ordnance.

kjs32• 2 years ago

There are parts of France that are simply off limits because the volume of UXO left over from WWI was deemed too much to even try to clean up: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/zone-rouge.html

high_52• 2 years ago

Imagine then having a forest fire in zone rouge: https://www.businessinsider.com/slovenia-wildfires-set-off-h...

bsoles• 2 years ago

I had an engineer friend in an eastern European country who had a contract with their army to build automated equipment to dismantle artillery shells from WWI still in stock at their armories. So, yeah, we still haven't cleaned up from WWI.

pimlottc• 2 years ago

Holy cow, I had not heard of this one-man German manually guided rocket before, the Bachem Ba-349 Natter:

Rocket-powered, it took off vertically from a launch pole, and was guided at near-transonic speed by an autopilot. At the last moment, the pilot took over and aligned the nose, which was filled with unguided rockets, at an enemy bomber. After the one-time attack, the Natter split in half. The engine parachuted down for re-use, the nose section was discarded, and the pilot (who was “spit out” of the open nose by inertia as the tail section parachute opened) separately parachuted to safety.

Truly a weapon of desperation. Imagine being asked to climb into one of those things...

Only 36 Ba-349s were built and only one flew one time, killing the pilot.

kjs32• 2 years ago

That's batshit crazy, but it could be worse[1]. At least the Nazis could say "well, you got a chance you'll live".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_MXY-7_Ohka

ciconia• 2 years ago

Prefabricated steel matting was used by the Allies in both Europe and the Pacific, usually for aircraft runways but sometimes as road reinforcement.

Hehe, I got some laying next to my driveway, for use in muddy situations. Here in France you can still find them here and there.

Cleaning up after WWII (2017)

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