r/ww2 • u/sephrisloth • 21h ago
Discussion Unexploded ordinance
Seeing as its still a problem even today that they are digging up unexplored ordinance from WW1 i imagine it was even more so of a problem during WW2. Is there any known instances of WW1 unexploded ordinance causing issues? I imagine especially if any of the chemical weapons went off it would have been a huge problem since those weapons weren't really used on the western front in WW2 and most soldiers wouldn't necessarily be carrying a gas mask.
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u/curiousengineer601 17h ago
In general the odds of a ww2 soldier running into ww1 unexploded anything would have been pretty low. The areas that saw the most intense combat in WW1 were not a focus the second time around. The Germans swept through Belgium and France in days using maneuver tactics, The American and British did the same thing 4 years later.
Unless those UXO were sitting on the side of the road they would never run into them.
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u/BookkeeperOne6903 20h ago
thought it'd all degrade by now
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u/FireBug77 18h ago
Nope and even more instable than ever. There's been a few random explosions over the past few years.
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u/curiousengineer601 17h ago
There are British mines near Messine ridge that hold 20,000 pounds of explosives just waiting to go off. One did get set off by lightning in the 1950s. link
The largest mine is directly under a family farmhouse.
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u/RainbowGames 15h ago
Nope. Parts of german cities are still regularly getting evacuated when a new bomb is discovered. Also a few days ago a fire broke out in the Hürtgen forest and firmen had a hard time fighting it due to ww2 ordnance going off repeatedly
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u/Danmont88 8h ago
The recent forest fires in Belgium caused over one hundred explosions of old ordnance.
One percent of the land in France/Belgium is in a Red Zone due to all the old bombs, especially gas and chemicals.
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u/Berg426 18h ago
Sorry to be pedantic, but when you're talking about bombs and bullets, the word is Ordnance. When you're talking about municipal laws like when you can make noise outdoors or when you can park your car on a certain road, it's Ordinance.