Did you just hear something?
Last night, my wife called her friend over in Schwabing (Munich) to have a bit of a chin wag and a catch up as they haven’t spoken to each other in quite a while. Anyway, near the start of their conversation, the phone line momentarily cut out. Did they think anything of this? No, why would they? Well, when you consider what caused the line drop, you would have thought that at the very least, her friend should have reacted a little differently…
It was an almighty explosion.
Yeah, you can see how they missed this little bang.
The culprit was an American World War II bomb dropped in and around 1943, but the 250kg (550 lb) device failed to detonate on impact. Instead it just lay there until the other day when construction workers inadvertently dug it up – I bet they ran like buggery when they came across this little find.
Two and a half thousand people were evacuated from the immediate area while the experts dealt with this device, but because of its unusual detonator, they said that it would be suicidal to attempt to move it, so instead they’d deal with it in situ. Hmmm. Yeah.
Although it was surrounded with sandbags to minimise the effect of the resulting pressure wave, some bright spark from the Fire Brigade thought that adding 36 cubic meters of straw over the bags would help too. In theory yes, but unfortunately the explosion was a little bigger than they had bargained for and the bang resulted in flaming straw raining down onto the rooves of nearby homes - which then suddenly went up in a blaze. Bit of a cock up, that – and somewhat of an all round disaster when it came to the amount of property (homes, businesses and cars etc) that were accordingly damaged last night.
Several properties close to ground zero (as it were) were entirely gutted by the mysterious, hot, flamey stuff that spewed from the exploding bomb. How utterly surprising because this just isn’t what you’d expect from such a device. Perplexing in deed.
You really couldn’t make up stuff like this.
“Did you hear something? I thought I heard a flea fart…”
UPDATE:
Here’s a video of the event, shot from across the other side of the town. Despite the distance, it’s still an impressive bang – it’s also in HD, so don’t forget to set the video to that whilst viewing.
Here’s another, low res this time…
This one shows you the resultant devastation, plus the explosion – if you can speak French or German, fine, if not, still fine as the images speak for themselves.
And if you’d like to read an actual news item on this story, please go here.
Unfortunately it’s the Daily Mail, but they have some nice pictures.
Its just a miracle they found it and were able to deal with it. Imagine what would have happened if a large mechaincal digger went in there dug at it and KABOOM!
Yeah, I dread to think what could have happened.
Holy heck! That was FDR’s practical joke on Hitler that went bad and for too long.
wow ,brown trousers time,what about those not informed ? you know sat quiet evening in with the telly and boom ,you would leave the sofa sharpish
Imagine the guy on the pneumatic drill who discovered it :O
and having just watched “the Producers” im curious older folk having flash backs?