YHK - yet another hacker news clone

The art of defusing a second world war bomb

20 points sandebert 3 hours ago 5 comments

newprint 2 hours ago | parent

My aunt lives in Hamm, Germany. It used to be a massive rail road hub and allies bombed the f* out it. The old church sitting middle of the town still carries the scars of bombing. Few years ago, during the renovation of the shopping mall, construction crew found unexploded American 500 lbs bomb in the ground. City had to evacuate a lot of people. Throughout years, there were multiple other incidents with UXO in Hamm, that I can recall. I still wonder how the 500 pound bomb been sitting in the ground so many years, right in the center of the town, right by the shopping mall and no one noticed.

dingensundso 49 minutes ago | parent

As a German living in Berlin it's still pretty normal that once in a while WW2 bombs are found during construction. Heavy bombs that didn't explode probably penetrated the ground quite a bit so when rebuilding it was probably just easier to just leave them there. That's just a guess.

There are also still bombs and grenades in the rivers. There are some magnet fishing YouTube channels where you can occasionally see them pulling up stuff like that.

msdz 45 minutes ago | parent

> so when rebuilding it was probably just easier to just leave them there. That's just a guess.

My take (equally guessed): Among the literal rubble spread all over the cities, people constructing everything back up with whatever means possible couldn’t even recognize a mostly buried object as a bomb (instead of just more scrap from a collapsed building).

So less of an active decision to not deal with it, rather one out of necessity and/or not knowing about them, perhaps?

smackeyacky 44 minutes ago | parent

It’s worth tracking down a UK miniseries called “Danger UXB” that was made in the early eighties. Not sure how accurate the actual on screen dry ice and cut the red wire stuff was but as a character study of the men involved and the danger they were constantly in it was compelling viewing. Heartbreaking too. One of my favourite TV shows

AntonTrollback 11 minutes ago | parent

Having to analyze 80 year old bombing records during new constructions adds to the long list of downsides of wars