September
12, 2008: Yet another three unexploded
World War II allied bombs were found outside the German town of Kaiserslautern
recently. Here, during World War II, 60 percent of the buildings in the area
were destroyed by allied bombs. Many of those bombs did not go off, and were
buried in the rubble. Since then, every few years, more are uncovered. The
recent find was a hundred meters from a rail line, and 300 from a residential
neighborhood. Everything in the area was shut down for half a day, as bomb
disposal teams came in to disarm the weapons and haul them away.
World War II
era munitions continue to show up throughout Europe. Although most of the
millions of land mines were removed from Europe within a few years of the war
ending in 1945, there are still a huge number of unexploded of grenades, shells
and bombs buried all over the place. At least the mine fields were easy to
find, although dangerous to clear. But the remaining munitions were left
behind, in unrecorded locations, for some pretty simple reasons. First of all,
many bombs, artillery and mortar shells (over ten percent, for some
manufacturers) do not explode when they are supposed to, but just buried
themselves into the ground. These shells are still full of explosives, and
often have a fuze that, while defective, is often still capable of going off if
disturbed. Other munitions were left in bunkers, or elsewhere on the
battlefield, and got buried and lost. Most of these lost munitions eventually
get found by farmers, or anyone digging up the ground for construction. London
and Berlin, two of the most heavily bombed cities during World War II, still
suffer from construction crews unearthing unexploded bombs.
The problem goes back farther than World War
II. Unexploded munitions from the World War I (which ended in 1918), and the
American Civil War, which ended in 1865, are still showing up, and some of them
are still deadly. Currently, over a thousand World War II munitions are
discovered each year in Europe.
