Digging up relics in Germany

[jagjetta]

World War II-era Bombs Litter Germany
By Kristen Allen

The earth shakes briefly in Berlin's Mittelheide city park, and a cloud of rain-soaked dirt rises in the woods. Police have just detonated a football-size antitank grenade from World War II.

More than 60 years after the war's end, removing unexploded bombs, grenades and artillery shells remains a full-time task for police and private companies across Germany. It's an occurrence so common that police explosives experts Thomas Mehlhorn and Joerg Neumann can joke about their delicate job as they sift warm pieces of shrapnel from wet dirt reeking of sulfur.

"When the weather isn't as bad as it is today, of course this job is fun," Mehlhorn said. "It beats writing traffic tickets," Neumann said.

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For those who want the whole story, I posted it with pictures at:

http://www.militarytrader.com/Default.a ... 47Articles

John A-G
Iola, WI

[phylo_roadking]

Its a problem ALL over Western Europe - there's still a 500lb german bomb known to be under....the SCHOOL playfields at my old Primary school! Deep and stabilised in the clay.

Its been ages now since I heard of any - but I remember 25-30 years ago a spate of old WWII mines still getting caught in fishing nets around the UK, strays outside or just over th edge of official fields that were never trawled for after 1945. Eventually their chains rust through and.....

An increasing problem HERE in Northern Ireland is from the vast stocks of munitions sunk in the Beaufort Dyke, a sea trench between Scotland and Ireland, at the war's end. However, winter tides have started breaking rottem cases open and individual rusted munitions are being washed ashore along the coastline. Old flares and phosphorous bombs so far.....but there was a significant amount of Mustard Gas munitions of all types dumped there too.....

[PaulW]

A former RN dive-officer I know was nearly killed diffusing WW2 mines off Leith in the earrly 60's. 2 fellow sailors were killed.

[sebastian]

Belgium is also littered with ww2 bombs,mainly allied,also on the belgian coast they monthly find bombs,also on construction sites around cities,its a common thing these days,just like in the west-flanders where the farmers find bombs on their fields everyday,they just put the bombs on the corners of their fields and the belgian anti-bomb squad(DOVO) goes on a weekly base around these fields and picks the old ww1 era bombs up,crzay world

[sniper1shot]

Watched a TV show that was documenting Berlin as they revamp the city.
These private companies use WWII recce pictures taken after the bomb runs and can find where a bomb didn't detonate.
With this rough picture they can usually find the bomb...dig it up or blow in place and the new building is built.

At the end of the show (Don't quote me here) they said that Berlin has enough work for 10 companies for the next 50yrs.

Heck, they are pulling full AFV's out the rivers and marshes in Russia still.

[Richard Schoutissen]

Its a problem ALL over Western Europe.....

There's lots of them to find here in the Netherlands, German and Allied, a while ago I 'found' an unexploded British 25 pounder mortar shell at 30 cm depth.

[fridgeman]

I had myself a very close encounter with such "relics". Years ago i was an organisator of christian youth summer camps, and we made a walking trip
in the Westerwald (a big forest and place of a few WW2 battles). Some of the younger kids ran through the woods near the walking tracks the all the time, and suddenly one kid proudly showed me a rusty thing he found, and he asked: can i play with "this" ? I recognized it in a half second as a german Stiehlhandgranate and took it away from him. Police were called and they took the explosive to destroy it.

[sniper1shot]

Nice.

[sebastian]

its exciting and scary at the same time,i wonder how much more is lying there in those woods.....

[Patrick]

I once read a book - I believe the author's name was Donovan Webster - devoted to the subject of clearing out leftover ordnance from WWI and II. It might have been called "Remnants of War" or "Aftermath" or something like that.

A very interesting read about the lives of the Frenchmen who deal with it. The frost/thaw cycle forces up old artillery shells and in the spring, farmers pile them up to be carted away. Even though the outsides are rusted, the insides are still relatively clean and dangerous. They feared gas shells the most. They used to make a huge pile of them in the English Channel at low tide and then blow them up at high tide. They stopped due to environmental concerns.

He mentioned that most unexploded ordnance in France was from WWI. Things were too fast moving in WWII for appreciable amounts of unexploded shells to accumulate.

[sniper1shot]

I watched the same show.