Posted on 07/28/2018 8:24:09 AM PDT by ameribbean expat
In Germany, firefighters are now encountering a new challenge: WWII-era ammunition being set off by the flames.
Firefighters used a tank to tackle a blaze near Berlin, as fears over WWII ammunition explosions mounted. Tens of thousands of unexploded bombs and other types of ammunition are still hidden beneath cities and in forests across the country, which regularly results in evacuations as specialists work to defuse the still-lethal war remnants.
In Sweden, meanwhile, authorities on Thursday opted for the unusual measure of using bombs themselves. Aiming to cause a lack of oxygen in the wildfire's center, the country's military used a fighter jet to drop explosives on a forest stretch near the county of Dalarna. Officials acknowledged that the method was only used as a last-resort measure for what they called a "worst-case scenario.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
All those "refugees" Frau Merkel imported should be made to go out and fight these fires - just to show their appreciation AND to collect their welfare checks.
Years ago, it was reported that Al Queda’s training manual advised setting forest fires as one kind of terror attack. It seems that wherever there are Muslims, there are fires, but that is never mentioned, even when the cause is said to be arson.
Where were these Fire Fighters during WWII? Hitler could have used them.
Hardly a new experience.
French and Belgian farmers are still ploughing up unexploded ordnance from WWI. There are whole sections of land around Verdun that are still off limits due to artillery duds, heavy metals and chemicals.
Wait? The Germans still have an operational tank? Who knew?!
And who can we expect is setting all these “wildfires” in Europe and here in the western states?
This is a creative approach. I wonder how a MOAB would affect some of these huge wildfires we get?
Seems it would be worth it if someone were to develop an autonomous metal detecting drone. They could have fleets of them mapping the fields of Europe searching for buried ordinance.
Would be a great way to possibly iron out some autonomous vehicle software bugs.
I confess, this made me smirk. Just thinking, “German Ingenuity” isn’t all it’s been touted to be...else they would have a tech system designed to locate and remove the ammunition BEFORE 73 years had elapsed. Or maybe they’ve been too busy taking care of refugees and performing other benevolent works...
Exactly. European cities routinely have EOD 1st responders to add to our more typical police - fire - EMT lineup.
They are only NOW experiencing this challenge?
> Wait? The Germans still have an operational tank? Who knew?! <
Don’t get too excited. It’s possible than the tank has a broomstick for a cannon.
Nobody goes into the impact area of Grafenwoehr in the BRD to fight the fires. They see the direction it is moving and move to keep it from getting out. Son summers we pulled all HMG tracer ammo from belts and limited or eliminated shooting illumination rounds. There is stuff in there from the 30s.
Trump’s fault. He’s driving AGW to unheard of levels that’s just now hitting Germany.
/s
Exactly. Remember the clueless lady tourist in Austria last month who found an anti-tank round on a hike, took it back to her room, cleaned it off then took to to the airport to take it back home.
There is still plenty of war crap laying around and buried all over Europe.
“French and Belgian farmers are still ploughing up unexploded ordnance from WWI. There are whole sections of land around Verdun that are still off limits due to artillery duds, heavy metals and chemicals.”
And people are still killed and injured by that ordinance well into this century.
Doing the best they could. The US used bombs with delayed fuses to discourage firefighting efforts.
I forget the exact mix, but most of the bombs dropped on Germany were incendiaries. Typical raid would consist of a pathfinder with the best navigational equipment dropping incendiaries to mark the target, next high explosives to break windows, creating ventilation, and expose flammable roofing materials then waves of incendiaries. The British bomb loads were even more heavily weighted with incendiaries than the Yanks. Payback is a witch. For every ton of bombs dropped on Britain during the blitz, the Allies dropped over 350 tons on Germany.
During WWII, The Japanese launched several hundred balloons equipped with incendiary devices from Japan. The balloons were supposed to float across the North Pacific ocean to the Canadian and American Northwest coast, descend and start fires in the forests. These balloons did make the trip and some were found as Texas. More of a nuisance, than a real threat, the last balloon bomb was launched in April 1945.
I am watching “The Lost Evidence” on Quest tv (free over the air) where the Russians were in Berlin in WW2. The amount of ammunition fired must have been enormous let alone all the bombs dropped from aircraft during the war. Now add a forest fire to some unexploded ammunition.
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