Posted on 04/01/2016 7:22:11 PM PDT by Morgana
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — Police in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have evacuated about 20 homes after a man mistook a Civil War-era landmine for a cannonball and took it home.
Police say as of about 4 p.m. Thursday that the U.S. Air Force Bomb Squad was looking for a place to explode the ordinance.
Police spokesman Cpl. Kirk Zaner said a Hot Springs man dug up what he thought was a cannonball near Danville. The man put the 32-pound landmine in the back of his pickup and drove about 65 miles home.
After researching pictures of Civil War-era weapons, the man called police to say he thought he found a landmine with a pressure sensor fuse. Zanier says the Air Force bomb squad X-rayed the device and found what could be explosives inside.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
It’s that damn powder of color!
I met a couple of teenagers in Swiebrooken that explored old bunkers and connecting tunnels of the Siegfried line in the area. The GI’s had blown up and fenced off the bunkers because of booby traps and they were all over grown with brush. They both had real nice MP-40’s.
I have a map drawn by a local “character” who claimed there was a tunnel from the Caribbean to a power plant lake in NW Arkansas.
He claims to have seen a soviet sub unloading Eastern European bloc troops in the area.
I was walking on a construction site south west of Franklin and found a cannon ball. It was “grape shot”, a small ball of about 3” across. They would put a number of them in the cannon at one time and shoot it off. However, I have no idea how it got where it was since it wasn’t in the area of the battle of Franklin, nor was it where the army traveled.
#BlackPowderMatters
If the internals of the mine have not been compromised by moisture, pretty damn high. If moisture has the odds are very low. If it is dry inside, it can still go boom!
“What are the odds it would go off after all these years?”
Lots of explosives have their consituent component chemicals change over time and a lot of the time those changes make them unstable.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/01/11/exclusive-loaded-revolutionary-war-era-cannon-found-in-central-park/
The NYPD released a picture of what its officers found: more than 800 grams ( 1.76369809747902 {from: http://www.tech-faq.com/convert-grams-to-pounds.html} or 1.8 pounds) of black powder still capable of firing, along with cotton wadding and a cannonball CBS 2’s Young spotted being carried in a white cloth by a Conservancy employee.
For John Moore, who is working on a book called “The Secrets of Central Park,” this is a new one.
“This is an amazing surprise. It was there for so many years and people were sitting on it when it was a loaded cannon,” Moore said.
That’s right: the loaded cannon was on public display from the 1860s until 1996 when the Conservancy decided to bring it indoors to protect it from vandalism. It was donated to the park about the time of the Civil War.
The finding was a shock to everyone involved, including tourists using the park Friday afternoon.
“Something like that, it’s surprising to be overlooked,” Denise Night said.
“It seems like some people are pretty incompetent not to notice after all these years,” Steve Night added.
In fairness, it never occurred to anyone that the cannon, which is said to be at least 233 years old, would still pose a threat. The field piece was already more than 90 years old when it was donated to the park, apparently by someone who’d salvaged it from a sunken British frigate in the East River. It was put on display at the park, and capped with concrete. No one even considered the possibility that British sailors had loaded and sealed it before their ship went down.
Gun & Cannon Safety!!! Every gun or cannon is to be considered loaded until proven otherwise.
Common as could be in Europe. Something the French deal with all the time. Farmer ploughs a field, turns up UXO.
Pinging a resident expert.
Black powder can still be a viable explosive not just as designed but because of chemical changes over time - somewhat like liquid Nitro leaking out of TNT. Will it properly make a gun go bang, probably not...will it go BOOM, hell yes.
One rhetorical question one would want to ask himself would be was there a military camp site nearby. Near by as in a couple of miles, and was their a creek, river, or fresh water nearby. My gut feeling is most units camped out near them, especially if there was a spring near the creek or river, nothing like drinking fresh spring water. My understanding is alot of Federal records exist while most of the Confederate records don't. Also my gut feeling is most of the records that do exist are probably from the Division level or at something like that. I'm not sure about military unit sizes since I get them mixed up all the time, but the big unit sizes probably exist and the smaller unit sizes probably don't. Another issue would be just because a Division headquarters were at one location, doesn't mean that it's various smaller units were at that location but were more likely spread out over a few miles from that location, and if any cannon shooting went on the cannon shooting probably went on in those far off smaller unit camps, shooting their cannons off away from the other units. Another consideration would be was their any troop movement down a road nearby, my gut feeling is the cannon units were kept close to the front of a troop movement in case their was any sniper units or skirmishing units out front that needed to be cleared out, my understanding is grape shot(I'm not sure if that is what they called it.) was used effectively to push back skirmishing units and snipers way out in front of an approaching army, and or small reconnaissance units out looking for the enemies location etc. Another possibility would be was there any training/mustered in camps that might of been nearby. I'm told I need to end this comment and get breakfast etc. so I'm going to hit enter with out any more editing etc.
Now we know the meaning of “Black power”, or, was that “Black Powder”.......?
In Germany they regularly find unexploded bombs in cites when excavating to build.
Ping
Words of advice, do not drill a hole in it to get the black powder out.
My father taught me to consider every rifle or pistol to be loaded until I personally verified it wasn’t. Should apply the same rule to Civil War explosives.
France as well as all of Europe ..... Napoleon and his sort seeded the battlefields well. Then add two world wars with ordnance and yes..... farming is hazardous duty personified over there.
In 1958 they were widening the road and needed to move things. They got a crane to move the Grand Slam bomb but couldn't budge what should have been an empty casing. They summoned the base Armaments Officer and he gingerly pried open a panel on the bomb and discovered...you guess it: all 9000 lbs of Torpex explosive.
They very gingerly moved the bomb to a "safe space" and blew it up and it did go BOOM!
A Grand Slam 22,000 lb bomb:
Gate guards at RAF Scampton:
Holy smokes, look at the post after yours!
That’ll be hard to top, from a single item of UXO standpoint.
Cool !
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