Posted on 07/11/2018 10:39:51 AM PDT by Simon Green
A 24-year-old American tourist caused panic at Vienna Airport when she put an unexploded World War II artillery shell in front of Austrian customs officials and asked whether the "souvenir" could be taken onboard her flight home.
Officials quickly called the bomb disposal unit to remove and dispose of the 7.5 cm (3 inch) caliber dud tank artillery shell. The incident shut down the arrival and luggage hall for 15 minutes.
Police said at no time were passengers under threat.
The 24-year-old was reported to prosecutors for negligent endangerment and fined €4,000 ($4,694).
The woman had found the World War II relic while hiking.
According to the Krone newspaper, the woman reportedly cleaned the artillery shell in her hotel room so as not to get her clothes dirty when she packed it up to take to the airport.
Dumb as a . . .
It does happen! But being an adult and carrying an unexploded bomb onto an airplane?!!!
3 inch,,,?
Unexploded dud from the article.
I’ll always remember a particular GIJoe comic from my youth. Destro tries to fire a wrist rocket and it falls at his feet. “Blast! A dud!” he declares.
Very sensible.
If she had kept her mouth shut I wonder if it would have passed security checkpoints and made it home?
“The 24-year-old was reported to prosecutors for negligent endangerment and fined €4,000 ($4,694).”
“The incident shut down the arrival and luggage hall for 15 minutes. Police said at no time were passengers under threat.”
ah I see. It wasn;t a threat yet you pulled the entire police force just for this...
I’m sure a 14 year old would know the difference. Let’s face it: there are just stupid people around.
I remember hearing of people who had found unexploded Civil War artillery shells and were using them around the house as decorations, thinking that they couldn’t possibly blow up.
Just so I have a clear understanding...
Are you saying that what she did was OK?
On at least one occasion, they thought wrong.
We are told to always assume any gun to be loaded, and to handle and treat them as such.
But unexploded munitions are to be treated as harmless if they didn’t go off when they were originally deployed.
OK, got it.
TSA confiscated a Cigar Punch from my BIL because it was made from a .44 Ca Cartridge. You pulled the bullet out and it had a punch attached. It took three Officers to decide it was a danger.
Stupid is as stupid does.
In October of 2001, the idiot passenger-screeners at Phoenix Sky Harbor wouldn’t let Joe Foss take his Medal of Honor with him on a flight - they thought it was some sort of oriental martial art weapon.
Had they known he was awarded it for shooting down airplanes, they would probably have fainted dead away.
Yes ma’am. You want to go into that field over there with a hammer. And rap it really hard on the bottom. Do that four or five times to get the dirt off it.
AFAIK the only WWII land battle in North America was in the Aleutians. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.