Danger UXB!

[The Inspector]

Beat on one with a rock, I'll be WWWAAAAYYYY over there upwind watching

[Mike Halbrook]

Old bombs can be more dangerous now than when they were new. Old smokeless powder becomes unstable with age, and especially heat. Bombs are designed to go off under very specific circumstances and none other. That is part of why there is always so much unexploded ordnance. The older a bomb becomes, the less safe it becomes. One of the P-40Cs in Russia exploded during recovery killing several people, and a American Civil War collector was killed a few years ago by a naval mine that still had the original black powder in it. Never treat an old bomb with anything but the utmost respect and fear.

[JDK]

JDK,
I was just using that metric as a focal point because I figured someone would eventually ask, and it also points out that even with intense training, group bombing, and the vaunted NORDEN bombsight accuracy wasn't what you would expect.

Better to say that with altitude bombing, the absolute best anyone could achieve was accuracy of a large city block; hence the RAF's 'Cookie' bombs were known a blockbusters to propagandists as they were meant to level a city block. (Bearing in mind city blocks are a new-world concept, unknown in wartime Europe excepting Valetta, of course.)

All this as Cubs asked:

I wonder what the original target was? Doesn't sound like a general purpose bomb to me.
Anchored ship? Google didn't turn up much.

The target would be the level of 'the city / docks / river' (as the aiming point); no-one was using cookies, a high-altitude use blast bomb, for pinpoint targets. This also assumes the scant details we have are correctly pointing at a cookie.

I make no claims to being an expert on Bomber Command or the USAAF's bombers, but the starting point (which I don't have) would be to see what raids were made against that city. That would also give the objective.

Unfortunately, while there's some truth in the Inspector's comments, I suggest they're too general to be of use and are also carrying myth and inaccuracy. As this is the Warbird Information Exchange, here's a few comments:

it's very difficult to see specific aiming points or indexing items like buildings in the middle of a dark night when the sky is full of unseen fighters and buckets of flak

Which is why they were using ground mapping radar (H2S) and bombing on target flares, RAF Bomber Command systems handed off to the USAAF in Europe enabling USAAF bombing through cloud with the former as H2X.

The standard British bombsight wasn't the best and was very fiddly to make operate correctly, so a fair amount of night bombing was on the 'that looks right enough, bombs gone'.

Most bombsights (including US ones) used at that altitude delivered similar results - the training and quality of the crew (not their valour) having as much to do with accuracy. Pickle barrels were always safe from 15,000 - 30,000 ft. Generally the RAF Bomber Command bombed on a visual item, such as a river bend or identifiably point, or on earlier fires - the latter causing the problem of 'creepback'. The RAF's bombsights, if you want to be accurate were easier to set up and use but were less theoretically accurate than the complex but effective Norden - which was not as effective, as you've said, as was claimed in propaganda at the time anyway.

since the RAF flew single sorties and not tight formations,

Again, not quite. Bomber Command flew a 'bomber stream' aiming to concentrate the effort over the target in a limited period and a limited area. Concentrating the stream developed an almost fish-like 'safety in numbers' from preditation, and to a degree, worked. The difference in size and time and accuracy on target between the 8th AF's box formations and Bomber Command's bomber stream doctrine was not as polar as people might think.

The Germans figured out how to minimize damage by erecting two sided concrete structures in a gridlike setup miles from a city and lighting big, smokey fires,

The British developed the 'Q Site', a dummy airfield or city for the Germans to bomb in 1940-41 - there may even have been W.W.I antecedents. How effective they really were overall is difficult to quantify, much being wartime self-congratulatory 'we're cleverer than them' back patting. Certainly many were bombed on both sides, but others never bombed at all.

It wasn't until much later that outfits like the famous 617 Sqn using Mosquitos became 'pathfinders'

617 Squadron 'The Dambusters' were not a Pathfinder unit, not acted as pathfinders, but were used on specialised raids as a precision or expert unit. They flew Avro Lancasters, not Mosquitoes (although on a handful of raids a Mosquito was used by the CO).

The Pathfinders became a Bomber Command group of a number of squadrons, responsible for marking targets accurately, and as a raid progressed, updating the information to keep a raid focussed, rather than getting dispersed.

and used specific to the day, colors of flares to outline targets just ahead of the bomber streams and 'on target' accuracy went up, the pathfinders were instrumental in pin pointing the launch rails and control buildings for V-1 buzz bombs

Pathfinder TI ('target indicator') coloured markers didn't outline a target but were used as specific relative aiming points, rather like the Vietnam FAC Willy Pete rockets were used; hit the colour / smoke, or hit a point relative to (1,000 yards west of.. etc.)

The late-war Bomber Command had what was arguably the most complex and sophisticated system to attack the targets that has ever been developed, if measured on the number of people and types of equipment involved. Accuracy was sacrificed on a doctrine basis, not that they couldn't hit a precision target, but that they were not asked to - the merits or otherwise of that is another debate.

The watershed in the Bomber Command from a completely ineffective and massively inefficient random bombing campaign that does match some of the Inspector's statements above, was the 1941 Butt report that blew away the self-deluding reports and confirmed that the claims of target damage were as bad as the critics had stated. However, after that, there was a process of continuous improvement to the extent that by 1944 Bomber Command could, and did, obliterate targets the size of a small city, as well as ports, marshalling yards etc. with a range of bombs much greater in capacity and potential effects than used by the USAAF.

None of the above is to slight the efforts of the US bombers in Europe; it was a remarkable effective and costly effort that shouldn't be underestimated. But while the story of the 8th AF is probably well known to most WIX members, while as discussed above the equally important achievements of Bomber Command are often misunderstood and misreported. They all deserve accurate understanding, IMHO.

Butt Report:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Report

Pathfinders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_%28RAF%29

Bomber Command history:
http://www.rafbombercommand.com/
http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/background.html

Regards,

[CDF]

Interesting points JDK, as always

Your penchant for Wikipedia quotes not withstanding Creep back is a phenomenon not always discussed (authors italics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepback

WMMV

[JDK]

Excellent addition.

EDIT: More details on the Key forum here: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showth ... p?t=113552

[The Inspector]

Maybe it's just semantics, but if you send aircraft out singly heading towards the same target, whether it's two aircraft or twenty two thousand aircraft, if they aren't close enough to provide overlapping mutual support then 'school of fish' or not, pretty much they are on their own like tourists seeing the Coliseum in Rome, they may all be going the same direction, but they are not a truly cohesive group, just a loose mob sort of going the same place.

617 did do pathfinder or target marking sorties for the squadron's Lancasters using Mosquitoes against V-1 sites according to 'The Dambusters' by Paul Brickhill.

[JDK]

No, Inspector, not semantics, just accurate. Given we chastise the mass media for over-generalising on our topics, it won't do for us to do the same.

I hope I was clear enough in the original post, but the Pathfinder Squadrons - 8 Group, Pathfinder Force, PFF) did not include 617 - I mentioned the use of the Mosquito for target marking (on a couple of occasions, and also IIRC a Mustang also on other/s) but their equipment was Lancasters and they did not mark targets as one of the Pathfinder units for the rest of main force. To suggest otherwise based on the occasional use of a Mosquito is incorrect.

The USAAF's mutual support boxes were the best answer unescorted bombers could have against fighters in daylight raids, but the RAF had tried and discarded the idea in in 1940 (see the Battle of Heligoland Bight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... %281939%29 - the discussion of the raid and post-raid assessments is excellent, and I'd hope, thought-provoking there) and later tried to dissuade the USAAF from following that tactic. It is to the USAAF airmen's credit that they did as well as they did, but even so it was recognised that the vital support and protection was long-rage escorting fighters, famously coming in with later P-51D models, and latterly, those operating independently to the bomber raids - support, but far from being in the same formation.

That is not the only form of mutual support.

In the case of Bomber Command, the defence to be overwhelmed was the German ground radar directed night fighters, and given that the Germans had the defence arranged in 'Boxes' in the Kammhuber Line directing a set number of night fighters, putting through each box as many bombers as was possible in as short a period was the best method at night to overwhelm each box and provide mutual support. And neither side was playing a warlike '"blind man's buff", but were both operating what was the world's most sophisticated systems of what we now call Electronic Warfare and the related countermeasures to each advantage attained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammhuber_Line

Mutual fire support at night was simply not possible until 1944 when the gun laying Radar (Automatic Gun Laying Turret, AGLT, codenamed 'Village Inn') system was being introduced, but saw little action by then. Of course, even then, night formation flying of heavies was not regarded as a good or useful idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... ing_Turret

However when operating in daylight, Bomber Command did, on occasion undertake formation flights with mutual gunnery support.

It was far from your picture of each bomber wandering it's own way to target (or near enough) as each pilot and navigator felt best.

However, your picture is quite right when considering the very early RAF efforts of 1939-41, essentially prior to the Butt Report.

But it is not, I'd suggest, an accurate picture of the remarkable high-technology and electronically active night Battle of Berlin - and so forth of 1943-5.

As ever, it's an interesting discussion when we gather and check data - much of the above is items I've re-found, I hope the otherwise overlooked stories may be of interest to all.

Meanwhile, back on the original tipic, it was a Cookie, and it has been defused. On Key, someone noted: "No, but anything is possible! Already Sky News have reported in their headline that the cookie has been detonated, whilst the article reads defused, and Channel 4 stated that the bomb was going to be diffused - which really would be worth seeing!"

A good article on the topic here: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2011/12/k ... -bomb.html

Regards,

[The Inspector]

Thanks for the fill-ins! about 99% of it I was aware of, but it does help others to fill in those 'yes....but...' corners, I am constantly amazed by some of the seemingly small items that turn up in posts that will click with some bit of trival knowledge I have stashed away in the compost heap I call my brain and it's an "AH HA" linking up moment for me. This has been just such an experience.

[JDK]

Thanks for the fill-ins! about 99% of it I was aware of, but it does help others to fill in those 'yes....but...' corners, I am constantly amazed by some of the seemingly small items that turn up in posts that will click with some bit of trival knowledge I have stashed away in the compost heap I call my brain and it's an "AH HA" linking up moment for me. This has been just such an experience.

I quite agree, and yes, it's amazing what there is to remember, learn and relearn. I'm certainly always getting a lot from WIX discussion, and hope my contribution does the same for others.

I'll add that when it comes to the big white birds from Seattle and stations west, I'll definitely defer to your insight and enjoy figuring out some of the ~ah~ code. I'll stand you a beer on that next time I'm in your area.

Must go, someone's standing by the free food with matches...

Regards,

[JDK]

More seriously, it would be appropriate to take a moment to think of those having to deal with all these UXBs across Europe nowadays, generations on from the war. As has been noted already, three bomb-disposal experts were recently killed in Germany, attempting to deal with another device. It is therefore great news this one seems to have been dealt with without any fallout. May they 'stay lucky'.

[The Inspector]

Indeed, whether they are dealing with Civil War or older rounds or trying to defuse an artillery shell buried in a hole dug in a dirt road in the Middle East and armed by an untrained fanatic or a field of WW2 land mines anyone who deals with unexploded armaments has my compete and total respect.
I'm just happy to see it was found and defused before it devastated several blocks of the city.

[JDK]

There's a lot of neat things about living here, but the lack UXBs in this area is one of the less obvious ones. Some of the statistics mentioned in the link I posted last above are eye popping:

Horst Lenz, 56, the regional head of bomb-disposal, thinks it could be centuries before all the lost and unexploded bombs could be cleared, "Think about it: After 2,000 years, we are still finding the occasional sword from the Roman military campaigns here," he said. Compare that to the nearly 2 million tons of bombs dropped on Germany less than 70 years ago, he added, and "we definitely have a lot more to find."

The Japanese military disposes of forty tons of unexploded ordnance each year. The US dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs on Japan in WWII. If 5% of those did not explode, then that's 170,000 tons of aerial bombs alone that remain in Japan, not even counting all the other splodey things we hurled at them. If they're only disposing of forty tons per year, that's like emptying a swimming pool with a coffee cup.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2011/12/k ... -bomb.html

The odds of things going wrong in heavilly bombed areas like that (or Malta or Vietnam, the two other 'most heavily bombed' contenders) are so much greater that they're definitely heading towards pausing for thought.

However the thing I'm now puzzled by is I can't think of an explosion attributed to an undisturbed bomb in any of these W.W.II locations - obviously there's a potential issue with post-bang correct attribution to cause, but even so, it just doesn't seem to happen. Clearly they're mostly stable until they get disturbed (bit like some WIX members) so it's a case of ignorance is bliss or don't look, no worries...

Regards

[CDF]

Clearly they're mostly stable until they get disturbed (bit like some WIX members) so it's a case of ignorance is bliss or don't look, no worries...

The failure rate of ordnance in WW2 at least is thought to be as high as 30%.

The high rate of failure among the ammunitions from 60-90 years ago is cited as one of the main reasons for such a high level of contamination. Sgt. Robert Hallam, a bomb disposal officer with the U.K. 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD), feels that so much UXO is being removed from the U.K. because of the high bombardment level during WWII. He said, “You must also take into account the failure rate of this equipment. Nowadays, we expect 10 percent of submunitions will fail and that is with modern technology at work. The armed forces of that era simply did not have as much time to deal with misfires or blinds as they would have liked.”

http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.2/features/ww2/ww2.htm

and

ZETICA COMPLETES UK MAP OF WWII UNEXPLODED BOMB RISK

http://www.zetica.com/newsletters/enews ... elease.htm

[The Inspector]

Strange twists of fate, in an online story this morning from the Associated Press, Viet Nam said that 42 thousand plus people have died from detonating ordnance since the end of combat in 1975 and 62 thousand plus have been injured. The U.S. has invested $62 Million in assistance in clearing old ordnance with approximately 16 million acres or 1/5th of the nation still to be cleared and 750 thousand acres cleared.

I recall reading somewhere long ago that by best estimates the U.S. dropped something like 20 tons of bombs per square mile on Viet Nam

[ZRX61]

Just wait until that *mine* left over from WWI in France goes off...or that Liberty ship in the Thames..