Historic Preservation Fails - Bomb Blunder

Bobharbison · **Joined:** Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm **Posts:** 3011

...and you thought Asbestos was bad.

Quote:

Apparently when Lincolnshire County Council were widening the road past RAF Scampton’s main gate in about 1958, the ‘gate guards’ there had to be moved to make way for the new carriageway. Scampton was the WWII home of 617 Sqn, and said “gate guards” were a Lancaster…and a Grand Slam bomb.

When they went to lift the Grand Slam, thought for years to just be an empty casing, with an RAF 8 Ton Coles Crane, it wouldn’t budge. “Oh, it must be filled with concrete” they said. Then somebody had a horrible thought …. No!….. Couldn’t be? … Not after all these years out here open to the public to climb over and be photographed sitting astride! …. Could it? …. Then everyone raced off to get the Station ARMO. He carefully scraped off many layers of paint and gingerly unscrewed the base plate.

Yes, you guessed it, live 1944 explosive filling! The beast was very gently lifted onto an RAF ‘Queen Mary’ low loader, using a much larger civvy crane (I often wonder what, if anything, they told the crane driver), then driven slowly under massive police escort to the coastal experimental range at Shoeburyness. There it was rigged for demolition, and when it ‘high ordered’, it proved in no uncertain terms to anyone within a ten mile radius that the filling was still very much alive!

Full story here:

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2015/11/ ... ally-live/

dinwitty · **Joined:** Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:18 pm **Posts:** 2226

run!

can't resist tho off topic..

who woulda known...its like some displays of some civil war cannons are out there but a pile of cannonballs does nothing.

Bob Hall · **Joined:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:37 am **Posts:** 152

Note that the article says the event was supposed to have taken place in 1958 and the newspaper "hopes it isn't true".
May end up like stories about trainloads of gold in Poland......

isaksenj · **Posted:** Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:24 am

Hey, it's happened in New York's Central Park, too:

"NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A dangerous and historic discovery was made in Central Park on Friday afternoon.

Parks workers came upon a live cannon ball, loaded in a cannon that is getting refurbished, CBS 2’s Lou Young reported exclusively.

The loaded artillery piece was one of two Revolutionary War-era cannons being stored at the park’s Ramble shed near the 79th Street transverse. Preservation workers for the Central Park Conservancy called police about mid-day after opening up the capped cannon for cleaning.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/01/11/ ... tral-park/

eze240 · **Joined:** Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:29 am **Posts:** 319

Hmmm.....I'd be really concerned of it had a fusing device in it....otherwise, yes it is explosive material, but it's not like it will explode at the slightest touch....
You would have to burn it or really work at it to make it go off...even after a few years...
The press and the gov't tend to over react to these situations...

dinwitty · **Joined:** Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:18 pm **Posts:** 2226

A lightning strike can do wonders...

Trainlawyer · **Posted:** Sun Nov 08, 2015 11:48 am

From "The Handbook of Military Oxymorons" (Ammunition)(Artillery)(Demolitions)(Explosive)Safety -It isn't.

The teaching point here is probably that the failure to pay attention to detail (i.e. 'someone else can deal with it later.') has the potential to come back to bite. Misplaced WWII Ordnance was found fairly regularly around former military installations, especially in Great Britain, well into the sixties.

If you actually have to work with the stuff one of the rules of thumb is that the older it is the less stable it its. Less stable does not mean 'more inert'. You have to assume that it can blow and that this can happen even without the proper detonator. No fuse is a good start but it does not mean SAFE. Working with ammunition and explosives you do everything that you possibly can to minimize the risk, however it is inherently dangerous.

Back in the middle of the last century when I was a young Lieutenant I had to take a course in basic demolitions. Our instructor was a crusty old Warrant Officer leftover from WWII. His parting words to us were, "Gentlemen, you have all passed this course. I've done what I can to provide you with the necessary skills to rig charges and cut fuses. Just remember that if working with high explosives doesn't scare the living crap out of you, then you haven't really been paying attention."

Note: This is why seeing Torpedoes on display worries me - its quite easy to believe that this little wad of red waxed paper is a harmless artifact.

GME

Mike Swanson · **Posted:** Sun Nov 08, 2015 7:22 pm

Indeed. Even "stable" chemical compounds break down after several years, especially if stored under less than ideal conditions or if they're simply misplaced somewhere and forgotten. Explosive/pyrotechnic compounds are even worse in this regard, and only an idiot or someone who has no understanding of explosives would believe otherwise, much less permit the conditions which would allow someone to find out the hard way. The same procedures that apply to the safe handling of firearms also applies to explosive/pyrotechnic devices; just as one should always treat a gun as loaded and therefore dangerous if handled carelessly, one should treat any explosive device carefully and assume that Very Bad Things Will Happen if one fails to do so.

HudsonL · **Joined:** Mon May 24, 2010 10:22 am **Posts:** 548

A couple of times over my RR Museum years I have ended up with coffee cans full of Torpedoes, the 1st time I didn't know what to do, so I called the local Bomb Squad, they were very happy to come over and pick them up, they told me that anytime I had things that could go bang that I wanted to get rid of please call them and they would be glad to come and get them.

-Hudson

eze240 · **Joined:** Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:29 am **Posts:** 319

My point is more to how we react to such things....
Today, the media is largely composed of morons, who are looking for a sensational, dramatic story....they have no clue what the difference between a drop tank, a practice bomb, the real thing, etc is.....
If we panic everytime someone finds something, then we will bring more "regulation" on ourselves....we must be very careful how we handle such things.
Yes, I am quite aware that various explosives deteriorate over time......
I assume that many are aware that our military still has some ww2 era ordnance of various types, still stored.......where do you think shells for 16" battleship guns, used until the '90's came from?
We will, from time to time, be hearing about stuff like this for many years yet....not far from where I live, a few years ago a new houseing subdivision opened.....and shortly after, people began finding live bombs and rockets in their yards......seems back in WW 2 the site was a bombing range.....and it was never cleaned up.
Just a few months ago, a lost nuke bomb was discovered by divers up on the coast, I think near myrtle beach.....
How we react to it is very important......I would be very concerned about live stuff in my yard......much less concerned about an unfused bomb on display.
That does not mean that I don't understand the thing, have no respect for it, am advocating unsafe handling, etc....

davew833 · **Posted:** Tue Nov 10, 2015 5:15 pm

Media thrives on creating "moral outrage" about anything and everything that might be the least bit controversial-- from gun control to Starbucks red Christmas, er, holiday cups. Getting people to feel "righteous indignation" about a topic will keep them visiting websites, talking about it on social media, watching TV news, reading the newspapers... (OK, well who really does the last two things any more, sadly) and of course website hits translate into eyes on the advertising and revenue dollars for the media purveyors. I try to be really careful these days about how I allow the media to make me feel about something knowing that their motives are usually not altruistic.

LeoA · **Joined:** Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:30 am **Posts:** 312

eze240 wrote:

Just a few months ago, a lost nuke bomb was discovered by divers up on the coast, I think near myrtle beach.....

That story was one of those fakes circulated through social media and picked up by "news" outlets with names that nobody recognizes.

Al Stangenberger · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:59 pm **Posts:** 650

LeoA wrote:

eze240 wrote:

Just a few months ago, a lost nuke bomb was discovered by divers up on the coast, I think near myrtle beach.....

That story was one of those fakes circulated through social media and picked up by "news" outlets with names that nobody recognizes.

A good place to check stories like this is snopes.com.

In this case:
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/warhead.asp