London City Airport Shut as WW2 Bomb Found in Thames

There&#x27;s a lot of this stuff around! About 10yrs ago, my dad caused a lengthy shutdown of the channel tunnel after a piece of metal (he&#x27;d assumed it was a machine gun barrel) he picked up on the Somme battlefield was found in the boot of his car during a random search. It was a live WW1 mortar. They closed the tunnel and detonated it at the terminal.<p>As farmers work on the fields in northern France they regularly find artifacts from the war and just toss them aside as an annoyance.

There is a WW2 shipwreck [1] in the Thames estuary that apparently still has 1400 metric tons of explosives aboard. Remaining explosives include 286 2000lb bombs.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SS_Richard_Montgomery" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SS_Richard_Montgomery</a>

In Germany, around 5000 bombs from WW2 are discovered and disarmed or detonated each year still. Most of these don&#x27;t make news. Some of them make it to regional news when they need to evacuate parts of towns or cities for safety. Other than that, this massive effort is mostly under the radar.<p>edit: the number I remembered was lower than the actual count.

The last time that this happened in London was 2-3 years ago:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.standard.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;london&#x2F;army-explosives-experts-prepare-to-defuse-and-detonate-500lb-wwii-bomb-dug-up-under-bethnal-green-a2463316.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.standard.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;london&#x2F;army-explosives-exper...</a><p>&quot;The bomb is 10ft from my flat on the other side of a wall and I’ve had so many parties here if it was going to blow up, it would have done so by now.&quot;

Here in Germany in an average large city we get this every other week or so. Luckily so far these duds don&#x27;t seem to self-ignite after more than 7 decades in the dirt.

There&#x27;s a great book about this phenomena, &quot;Aftermath: The Remnants of War.&quot; Apparently unexploded ordinance in Europe from WWI is very common because trench warfare lasted for years and, due to relatively primitive manufacturing techniques, mortars, bombs, etc. often failed to detonate. That explains a lot of the comments below about French farmers getting killed by ancient munitions<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Aftermath-Remnants-Landmines-Warfare-Devastating&#x2F;dp&#x2F;067975153X" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Aftermath-Remnants-Landmines-Warfare-...</a>

Here in Hong Kong last week, two different American 1,000 lb. bombs were found a couple days apart during construction on reclaimed land (Wan Chai), dropped during the Japanese occupation. Presumably, they fell in the shallow bay, sank in the mud, and were later covered by lasdfill as one of the densest populated areas on earth expanded.

If you’re in to this kind of stuff, I recommend “Aftermath: The Remnants of War,” by Donovan Webster.

A related recent post: &quot;Bomb Sight – Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16141839" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16141839</a>

This thing seems to happen once in a while and all the times I can remember the bomb is safely disarmed, which obviously is the best outcome.<p>Does anyone know how long ago it was that one of these things actually unintentionally exploded?

During WW I, what is now American University in Washington, DC, had a chemical warfare station. Once the war was over, the unit disposed of the ordnance using standard operating procedures: they dug holes, rolled the shells in, and filled the holes. About 70 years later, when the fields around AU had been developed with expensive houses, people (including I think the Korean ambassador) started finding the shells in their gardens. A lot of money has been spent since on the cleanup.

there&#x27;s a lot of it about. We sometimes hear sea mines being blown up the Royal Navy, or hear about them being caught in fisherman&#x27;s nets. Must be way worse in Germany.

Where I grew up in Scotland the problem was ww2 mines (the spiky kind you see in submarine movies).

Maybe they should leave it shut.<p>This airport means that a good share of the east londonders have to live their lives under noise so the 1% can get to their meeting a little bit more easily.<p>To me it&#x27;s an example of social oppression.