Military engineers safely detonated a giant, rusting bomb from World War II discovered in London during construction work for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Major Matt Davies, of the Royal Engineers, said his team carried out a controlled explosion Friday on the 2,200-pound German bomb, which police said was the largest found in London in three decades.
It was discovered Monday by construction workers preparing a site for the 2012 Olympic Games. Davies said that if the bomb had exploded, it would have created a large crater and sent fragments flying over a half a mile away…
Thousands of bombs fell on east London during World War II and unexploded devices are found from time to time, particularly at construction sites.
There are all sorts of leftovers from bombing civilians. In any war.
None of these undiscovered bombs have exploded in England in 50+ years, but it must still be very disconcerting to think that there was a bomb under your building for the last 67 or 68 years.
Sadly, most Americans think bombs are a magic little game-tool that excises evil people from “our” planet.
A great deal of the rest of the world has experienced the political joy of being a helpless target over the centuries. Between land mines and leftover cluster bombs, munitions factories have poured an deadly amount of future destruction into innocent fields – and each time the question is raised, governments invested in collective murder announce, “we’re just protecting our national interests”.
Vietnam has that problem too, but the locals make the best of their situation, as the farmers claim the bomb shells left over from cluster bombs are made of the best quality steel and make great hand tools.
The leftover mines, cluster munitions and bombs from various past idealogical wars though are still killing people every day.
Moss: Thanks for taking the opportunity in an unrelated thread to take a stab at Americans, but where do you think Americans came from? Ever hear of the melting pot? Envy is a stinky cologne.
Being an American I accept a responsibility for ordering the political house I live in.
Unfortunately, the stink of ignorance, of fear, of cowardice is a cloying tendril that infects those who turn away from history – as often as they turn away from responsibility for the acts of the governments they support.
The Germans have had to learn that twice. Americans – well, just keep on that well-worn path of patriotism and pride, jim.
Yup, yup. It’s useful to have patriots like #4 around to illustrate the growth and development of the latest generation of Good Germans.
The latter, of course, have worked very hard to overcome the history of their nation’s brutality and arrogance. Perhaps, some time in the distant future, we’ll hear of Good Americans.
We already have a growing number of hypocrites who won’t admit to voting for the Oil Patch Mafia, once, much less twice. But, someone out there did. 🙂
[duplicate]
#4-jlm,
I’m not sure that being envious of not getting blown up is necessarily a bad thing. You guys make the bombs and the rest of the world worries about when and where they explode. Also, coming from the same evolutionary background does not mean that you can never be blamed for anything [double negatives can be correct in english, so I hope the nit picking commenters here don’t jump on that one].
#5-moss,
“cloying tendrils”-nice lingo!
For awhile I was hanging out with Germans who briefly convinced me that the British were morally bankrupt for their insistence that Dresden civilians be massively killed.
As a pacifist, myself, I think all war is morally bankrupt.
But, the British urge to bomb Dresden is fully understandable when you read about the merciless German bombing of essentially undefended English cities fully of civilians. It’s kind of amazing that some British actually opposed it.
I mean we Americans invaded two countries and killed hundred of thousands of people over the destruction of just two of our buildings and 3,000 people (compared to 43,000 in the Blitz alone.)
#1 – they’re still finding live shells in France/Belgium from WWI – over 90 yrs old! The rate at which these are found has not changed in several decades – the Belgian armed forces sappers are steadily employed cleaning things up.
It’s one thing to find a single shell, but there are large mines of amatol buried under that area that were never exploded and their exact location is unknown – not properly documented in WWI or the maps were inaccurate. Even if found, touching old amatol is not something a sapper wants to do. Blowing in place would create a _massive_ explosion.
Uh, there is a big fucking difference between detonating and diffusing. Just wanted to point that out.
And that video was linked why? I was expecting a video showing the defusing, not some crappy music video. Get a grip.
I blame the Broadcom guy.