Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: K Frame on October 13, 2020, 04:58:29 PM
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The Poles found an unexploded British Tallboy Bomb in one of its main shipping canals. They attempted to disarm it by deflagrating the explosive charge (basically setting fire to it in a controlled manner).
Didn't work.
Result was a big boom...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54522203
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No video? In this modern age? That's just sad.
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But it's so pretty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMfR5UBp-TM
Brad
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Seems like a really good time to be using an ROV.
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But it's so pretty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMfR5UBp-TM
Brad
How many fishes were harmed in the making of that video? ;)
bob
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"No boom today. Boom tomorrow."
Correction: boom today.
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<Insert Polish joke here>
Oh wait, its 2020. Nevermind.
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GET THE NET! Free, floating fish, for days! :O
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Not as big a splash as I thought there would be although they may have partially burned out the Torpex filling prior to the rest of it detonating.
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There's a lot of UXO in watercourses all over Europe.
Yet people still do magnet fishing in canals and ponds and so forth. They're looking for stuff to sell for scrap or even stumbling onto something that's salable as a collectable.
And some do it to find guns they hope can be restored to functionality.
And some do it just for the lulz.
One story out of Germany, IIRC, was that this pair of magnet fishers kept finding explodey-bits and pulling them out of the water and then calling the local cops/fire to deal with the item and filming the incident. The cops finally told them to knock it off. From the cops standpoint they'd rather there be potentially live ordnance in the water than risking a bad result in deactivating stuff that's been brought out of the water.
So yeah, don't go messing around with that stuff.
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"There's a lot of UXO in watercourses all over Europe."
There's a ton of UXO all over Europe, not just waterways. In the countryside. In the middle of cities. Peoples gardens. Hell, there was a story some years ago about a woman in Russia who was having her house repaired and the repair guy found an unexploded bomb under the floorboards. Oh yeah, she said. That came through the roof and floor. My Father just repaired everything and we forgot about it.
On the magnet fishing, this morning I was watching a video of a guy magnet fishing in Germany in a fen (it was tagged as a related video when I was watching the Tallboy in the canal go boom). He dragged up an empty 20mm shell, an empty 37mm shell, a live 7.92 rifle round, and the magazine body for a Flak 38 20mm gun, probably from the same gun that fired the empty 20mm shell he found.
The whole time I was thinking... He's going to latch onto something that's going to take his head off...
Speaking of UXO, there are still significant portions of the French countryside, especially in the Verdun area, that are off limits -- from World War I -- due to the staggering numbers of UXO underground and the huge toxicity of the soil, water, and plants from all of the heavy metals and chemicals. The French dept. of the Interior group that works to clear UXOs figures it will be centuries before those areas are recoverable... if at all.
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Yeah, despite the fact that in reality there is a finite amount of UXO it is essentially an infinite amount because of the rate it is found and disposed of.
And people and animals are always going to be stumbling upon it.
Many years ago in a magazine there was a short account I read of a French farmwife who step out on her porch to call her husband to lunch just as he on his tractor plowed up an aerial bomb which then went off and that was the end of him.
And this was in the 80's in a field that had been cultivated for decades after the war so you might think the bomb would have been found by then, but no. It was always there and as things do, it somehow worked it's way into a position to be exposed.
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"And this was in the 80's in a field that had been cultivated for decades after the war so you might think the bomb would have been found by then, but no. It was always there and as things do, it somehow worked it's way into a position to be exposed."
Google Iron Harvest.
Couple hundred tons of ordnance turn up every year, a lot of it in areas that have previously been declared "clean."
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It's still an occasional problem in the U.S. with civil war shells.
https://wynninghistory.com/2017/10/05/deadly-souvenirs/
But soon after a battle:
Explosion of a Shell – Henry Burrier, a German living in Bentz Street, above Second, visited the recent battlefields last week, and brought away three unexploded spherical shells. Upon examining them on his return home, he discovered that they were surrounded by rims of lead (which confined the charge of powder in the shell) and the wise conceit entered his head, to put the shells in the stove and melt the lead off. No sooner had he it upon this economical idea, than he placed them in the stove and went about his business, expecting to find the lead melted off upon his return.
Uh-huh...
And to this day, these shells continue to startle local residents and require the expertise of bomb squad technicians.
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About 10 or so years ago a guy who had a long history of disarming shells found in Virginia was killed when one he was loading into his drilling rig exploded.
The rig was basically a large drill with a drive that would slowly advance the bit that would cut into the shell. The whole thing was attached to a garden hose that would flood the shell to keep heat and sparks to a minimum. He'd apparently done several hundred shells that way.
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The fun way to get rid of old ammo through all 3:14 of it.
LINGO NSFW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67oj92maC0 (3:14)
Judging from some of the ricochets, it's hard to get too far away.
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And Fifth Element was on last night...
Multipass!
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And Fifth Element was on last night...
Multipass!
He KNOWS it's a multipass....
And I dont care what people say- Chris Tucker was so over the top it came around back to hilarious.
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And Fifth Element was on AGAIN last night!
Multi Multipass!
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GARDEN ROCKS AND UXOs?
I thought I had seen references to the freeze-thaw cycle bringing rocks to the surface of the soil.
So perhaps this:
https://www.indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/how-rocks-appear-your-garden.php
might explain this:
(JustWarren)And this was in the 80's in a field that had been cultivated for decades after the war so you might think the bomb would have been found by then, but no. It was always there and as things do, it somehow worked its way into a position to be exposed.
...and this:
(Irwin) Couple hundred tons of ordnance turn up every year, a lot of it in areas that have previously been declared "clean."
Just a thought about the possible mechanism involved in exposing UXOs over the decades.
I originally came across the concept some years ago while exploring the "Walking Rocks" or "Sailing Stones" phenomenon in some desert areas:
(https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/gty_death_valley_sailing_stones_02_mt_140828_4x3_992.jpg)
Truly, water and ice can do some spooky stuff.
Terry, 230RN
REF:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=desert+walking+rocks&t=h_&ia=web
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And Fifth Element was on AGAIN last night!
Multi Multipass!
I am a meat popsicle.
Brad
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Anybody else wanna negotiate?
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And this was in the 80's in a field that had been cultivated for decades after the war so you might think the bomb would have been found by then, but no. It was always there and as things do, it somehow worked it's way into a position to be exposed.
soil isn't static.
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soil isn't static.
Depends on whether or not you're stuck in it.
Brad
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Aha ! Sounds like a movie I'd like to see.
https://www.thegamer.com/secrets-you-didnt-know-about-the-fifth-element/
Big Bada Boom
If you thought the explosion at the end of Korben and Leeloo’s visit to Fhloston was impressive, well, you would be right. That is because the explosion was the largest one ever filmed indoor at the time. Sure, there had been bigger ones filmed for other movies, but those were all outdoor. The explosion at Fhloston was entirely filmed on set in a studio, something which had never been attempted on that scale. The very real explosives looked great on camera, but they caused a fire which nearly got out of control. The smoke from that fire was such that it forced the evacuation of the entire building. So it was totally reckless, and probably more than a little insane, but it made for one memorable big bada boom.
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It's a fun movie. Certainly not high culture, but a lot of fun. It's one of those movies that I can watch again and again.
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Somebody posted a clip of the Anyone else want to negotiate? thing and I thought it was hilarious, so I got that one. Don't remember whether it was here, another board, or where.
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There are a lot of chuckle and laugh out loud moments in that movie.
Chris Tucker absolutely nails it as the over-the-top radio personality.
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You have no points on your license.
Brad
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You have no points on your license.
Brad
https://youtu.be/h39Ft9cmthQ
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Good God... BBC America seems to be running The Fifth Element just about every night...
It was on again last night...
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Good God... BBC America seems to be running The Fifth Element just about every night...
It was on again last night...
Advertising for Gemini Croquettes?
Face it, you have the hots for Major Iceborg.
Brad
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Odd that you should mention Major Iceborg...
I was reading Wikipedia bios about various cast members when I discovered that her father was Andrew Keir...
Who was Andrew Keir, you might ask?
He was a Scottish actor probably best known to Americans as an actor who appeared in a number of Hammer films in the 1960s... including one of my absolute favorites... Quartermass and the Pit.