Thats a big bomb.
Posted on 08/30/2017 11:54:58 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - Some 70,000 people in Frankfurt will have to leave their homes this weekend in one of the biggest such evacuations in post-war Germany, police said Wednesday, after an unexploded World War-II bomb nicknamed "blockbuster" was uncovered.
The operation on Sunday will allow for the safe defusal of the 1,400-tonne British bomb, which German media said was nicknamed "Wohnblockknacker" (blockbuster) during the war for its ability to wipe out whole streets or buildings.
The unexploded bomb was discovered on Tuesday during building work a stone's throw from the Westend Campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt, police said in a statement.
Officers are guarding the site and there "is currently no danger".
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
You know it.
“1,400-tonne”? I’d like to see the plane that could carry that!
Another idiot hired as a journalist.
When I was stationed in Germany 1979-1981 they were still finding bombs all the time then. They’d excavate parking lots etc. to get em out. Stunned it still goes on.
Hard to believe though that 70,00 people would need to evacuate.
It just seems impossible.
Just wait until they see the old WW II guy they bring in to defuse it. ;-)
Blockbuster bomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb
This would be a 3,000 pound bomb, 4,000 pounds including casing.
That is not chicken feed!
I post that because of an issue with portraying decimal places ... a “1,400” tonne device to many Americans would look like one thousand, four hundred tonnes, or roughly 3 million pounds. For Brits “1,400” is correct though.
Thats a big bomb.
“When I was stationed in Germany 1979-1981 they were still finding bombs all the time then. They’d excavate parking lots etc. to get em out. Stunned it still goes on.”
When I was stationed in West Berlin during the 60’s they routinely found unexploded bombs. Just about every weekend they would detonate them in a nearby forest sometimes shaking our dwelling.Sometimes old bombs would detonate just about anywhere in the city much to the chagrin and grief of unfortunate construction workers.
A Mark 82, or 500 pound bomb has a killing radius of 80 meters or nearly a football field and that would most definitely be a danger close mission were you just outside that area. If they are really uncertain about the bomb, a block may be reasonable. I wouldn’t want to be within a block of a 500 pounder, and I was 200 meters away once, if I didn’t have to be. Much too close.
I do not know what size bombs we dropped on Germany but I do know the Germans had 1000kg they dropped on GB. That would be over one ton. If they had it we likely had something similar. I know when we dropped 1000 pounders, you could not be in the grid square.
And if it is a 1400 pounder, why are 70,000 people being evacuated?
As much as 30% of the ordnance dropped on Germany didn’t explode. Buried 20 feet or more, it’s still there, becoming more unstable and dangerous as the bomb casings corrode. They expect to be removing it for another 50 - 100 years. They may never find all of it.
Thanks, I forgot that the Europeans swap decimals and commas. I was about to comment on whether European ‘journalists’ come from the same pathetic programs used to ‘train’ American ‘journalists’.
“Stunned it still goes on.”
Towards the end of the waa, we were sending in something like 7,000 sorties per day. I’m more surprised about how rare the finds are now.
Brits write their numbers mostly like we do. With a comma for separating billions, millions, thousands, and a period separating decimals.
Mainland Europe does write using the comma as a decimal separator, but they would not use the extra zeroes behind it. It would stop at 1,4. It would not be written 1,400. The writer screwed up.
A tonne is equivalent to 1,000 kg. It should be 1,400 kg, or 1.4 (or 1,4) tonnes, not 1,400 tonnes. The bomb in the link at post 7 shows it to be a 1,400 kg bomb (3,000 lbs). I think, as also noted above, the writer is a moron.
Danger, UXB
“Clockstopper ON!”
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