B-29 and its bomb load

World War II finished almost 60 years ago. You would think that this would be a long enough time for any dangers from it to have dissipated. The problem was that so many munitions were dropped, shot, and placed, that some of them are still a threat to people today. There are still unexploded munitions being discovered from that era and those munitions can still explode. Much rebuilding has been done since the war and the population has spread out even more making those unexploded munitions even more dangerous since they may be under population centers.

In 2002 German police had to evacuate 13,000 people. Not one but two unexploded British bombs had been found near the city of Hanover. The bombs were 500 pounders and the safest way to get rid of them was to explode them, which they did. It seemed that the bombs didn't explode on impact because they had delayed action fuses which didn't function correctly but were unstable, which made moving the bombs very dangerous.

Not all bombs that are found were dropped and didn't explode. This year 2004, a cash of 80 Japanese bombs from World War II were just found in China. The bombs were found in Heze City in Shandong province. It seems that a drainage channel was being dug when the bombs were found. The Chinese said that the bombs were arrayed in an orderly manner. The bombs were rusty but the Japanese characters were still visible on the bombs.

In 1999 a man was walking along a lake in Florida. He was looking for artifacts when he found one that he hadn't bargained for. An unexploded mortar shell was partially exposed. The shell was of the type that was commonly used in World War II. He called the sheriff's office and when they saw the shell they sent a team out to detonate it. But how did a mortar shell get into a lake in Florida? This could not be explained.

B-29s dropping bombs

In 2000 about 2,000 people had to be evacuated from Bexleyheath, Kent in England. A 1,000 pound unexploded bomb had been discovered. The bomb had been dropped by the Luftwaffe in World War II. It was discovered when workers began to build a new shopping center in the town. The British government admitted that it knew of at least 100 other unexploded bombs which lay all around London but had no intention to disturb them unless they became unstable.

In 2002 a garden in Surrey, England, behind a house was the site of discovery of a unexploded bomb. This caused 500 residents to have to spend the night away from home. The army had to disable the bomb because exploding it would have wrecked part of the town. The bomb was disabled and moved.

Many unexploded bombs are being found in Berlin, Germany. This is understandable since over 50,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city. As new construction continues more bombs are found. The city has a war-materiel removal office and when they are not getting rid of unexploded bombs they spend their time looking over aerial photographs of Berlin from World War II, trying to determine where unexploded ordinance might be found. It is quite simple in a way, the more bombs dropped in an area, the more chance of finding unexploded bombs. In 1996 24 bombs were extracted from the ground or exploded.

In 2002 an unexploded bomb was found at, of all places, the Portsmouth Naval Base in England. 400 people had to be evacuated from their homes and the bomb was taken out to sea and exploded.

There is much unexploded World War II ordinance not only on the land but under the water. Many sunken war ships lay under the waves all around the world. In some cases their unexploded shells lay scattered all around the wrecks visible to divers. Even cargo ships may have contained bombs or shell when they went down. How much of a hazard these shells are remains to be seen. The sea water is very corrosive and may destroy the shells ability to explode much faster than those bombs and shell the fell on land unexploded.

There are so many World War II bombs around that haven't exploded that they have been given a name. UXO stands for unexploded air-dropped ordnances, and even to this day agencies are trying to figure out where they are most likely to find these bombs. Why is this such a big deal? The reason this is still serious is the fact that the allies alone dropped over 1,000,000 bombs in World War II and over 10%, or more than 100,000, didn't explode. This figure doesn't account for all the bombs dropped by the Axis powers. Even if we have recovered 75% of them by now, over 25,000 are still buried somewhere presenting a hazard for those near them. Some of the bombs had long delay fuses. It is estimated that about 8% of all bombs dropped had them and these still could go off spontaneously.