Munitions & Rules

The FAL in Cuba: Left Arm of the Communist World?
Forgotten Weapons

I'm a bit of a sucker for FAL automatic rifles. While I do like the way they look, I think I like them because they are exotic, as in I have never seen one in person.

At the end of the video Ian is going to demonstrate shooting one of these rifles in full-automatic mode, but he can't show us because of YouTube's rules. I would kind of like to see that because Ian is not a big guy and the FAL shoots a 308 cartridge, which is substantial.

Then we have this video by Demolition Ranch where he was demonstrating just what kind of things YouTube allowed regarding automatic weapons:

Youtube Legal Gun Content...
DemolitionRanch

Okay, YouTube has rules, the government has rules and your friends have their own rules. Rules change. I'm not too worried about the rules.

Anyway, the business about the freighter blowing up in Havana harbor piqued my interest. Another case where the CIA might have been sticking their fingers in. Nice thing about explosions, any evidence pretty much gets obliterated.

La Coubre explosion 4 March 1960

On the page with the image I found this block explaining the rules governing the inclusion of this photo. Awful lot of legalese.

Licensing

	This work was created in Cuba and is now in the public domain because its term of copyright has expired. According to Cuban law #14 and subsequent amendments, copyright terms in Cuba are the following:
Type of material Copyright has expired in Cuba if... Copyright has expired in the US if...¹ Photographs Used more than 25 years ago First published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities and used in Cuba before February 20, 1972 Anonymous works (not photographs) Used more than 50 years ago First published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities and used in Cuba before February 20, 1947 Corporate and government works Never (perpetual copyright) Published before 1929 (95 years ago) All other works More than 50 years has passed since the 1st of January following the death of the author a) Published in Cuba without compliance with US copyright formalities, author died before 1947 or b) Published before 1929 (95 years ago)
Note 1: For a file to be hosted on Wikimedia Commons, it must be in the public domain in both Cuba and the United States.
¹ For a work to be public domain in the United States, its copyright must have expired in Cuba before Cuba joined the Berne Convention on February 20, 1997.
Note 2: Notwithstanding the conditions set above, the state of Cuba may decide to transfer to the state the copyright on works when the copyright term for the creator of it has expired, as set by the 48º article of Cuban Copyright law. Such works would not be free of copyright, and may be deleted at any time. English ∙ Español ∙ 日本語 ∙ русский ∙ 中文（简体） ∙ 中文（繁體） ∙ +/−

WW2 Strikes Again

Debris from the explosion at Miyazaki Airport (The Asahi Shimbun/Getty)

Aljazeera reports: Suspected WWII bomb grounds Japanese airport

Apparently it had gotten tired of being ignored and decided to make its presence known. Creepy / scary.

I just posted about old WW2 bombs still being found in Germany.

WW2 - The war that keeps on giving

B-24 being loaded with bombs in preparation for raid on Germany in 1943

Stu gives us a run down on the evacuation of part of a nearby village in preparation for an attempt to deal with a newly discovered WW2 era bomb.

Seems I've heard other stories about this sort of thing, which got me to wondering just how often it happens, so I asked Google, and the first page of results gives us of nine incidents (9!) so far this year. The war ended 80 years ago and we (all us peasants) are still paying for it. You might think we would learn something, but I doubt it. The blowhards continue to spew lies and the great mass of people (who run on emotion instead of reason) will continue to believe their bullshit.

Germany: Authorities disposing of unexploded WWII ...
26 Sep 2024 | 08:49 PM UTC. Germany: Authorities ... Authorities conducting WWII bomb disposal ... Authorities are disposing of an unexploded WWII bomb on Susanne-Ihsen-Strasse in Kaiserslautern late Sept.

Germany: Authorities to dispose of unexploded WWII ...
Authorities to conduct WWII bomb disposal operation in Paderborn, Germany, Sept. ... 25 Sep 2024 | ... Germany: Authorities disposing of unexploded WWII ordnance in Kaiserslautern late Sept. 26 · 26 Sep 2024 | 09:33 AM UTC.

Evacuation is due in Bielefeld after discovery of World War ...
Sep 12, 2024 — Germany: Large explosion rocks venue in Cologne city centre. September 16, 2024. An explosion has occurred in the centre of the German city of ...

WWII bomb to be detonated next to Tesla's plant in Germany
Jun 27, 2024 — O) , opens new tab factory in Gruenheide, just outside Berlin, will be detonated in a controlled manner this weekend, according to local media.

WWII bomb at Frankfurt Airport detonated safely
Jun 7, 2024 — A phosphorus bomb dating back to the Second World War was found by construction workers on the airport's grounds, according to police.

Residents return home after WW2 bomb explosion
Aug 20, 2024 — Residents have been returning home after a 500kg wartime German bomb was destroyed.

Disposal crews remove WWII bombs found in German town ...
Apr 4, 2024 — Specialists defused two American World War II-era bombs Thursday near a decommissioned train station outside the Bavarian city of Amberg.

Huge unexploded WWII bomb discovered in Germany
Apr 4, 2024 — The discovery of the half-tonne device in Cologne's Rhine River during construction led to shipping closures and evacuations.

UXO-related incidents in Germany and Austria over ...
A WWII bomb exploded at a construction site near a West German town, killing a man and injuring eight others. The explosion occurred after a digger accidentally ...

Tried and True Redux

Details emerge of blast that killed Russian blogger:

War reporter Vladlen Tatarsky may have been killed by an improvised explosive device disguised as a statuette, Kirill Makarov, the youth policy minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russian media on Sunday. Tatarksy died on Sunday in an explosion while hosting a live event for his supporters at a St. Petersburg café.

According to several Russian media outlets, a young woman presented a figurine to the war correspondent and blogger during the event. Her identity is unknown so far. The police have not commented on this version of events but have confirmed that Tatarsky was killed in the blast, which also left 30 people injured.

Earlier, a source within the emergency services told TASS that an improvised explosive device was detonated near the stage in the café. 

Russia’s REN TV reported, citing a witness, that the statuette blew up as Tatarsky was holding it.

Previous Tried and True

Tried and True

From Is America turning into Pakistan? by Cheryl Benard:

The man responsible for his demise was Zia ul-Haq, who became President via military coup in 1977. His turn in power ended in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, believed to have been caused by a bomb concealed in a box of mangoes.

From Blood of Victory by Alan Furst (p. 27):

He then introduced Goldbark, who rose graciously to speak just as a Turkish porter pounded on the door and hauled in a donation from Mahmoudov's grocery - a crate of fat, shiny eggplants.  ... [Explosion]

 

Crimea Bridge Bomb

Oil Train on Fire

The bomb on the Crimea Bridge set fire to several railroad tank cars and broke one of the two roadways.

Satellite image of damaged Crimean Bridge

Trepan

A parachute mine after being defused and partially dismantled by the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal Team

Posthip Scott sends us an entertaining story about a WW2 bomb squad in southern England. One paragraph talks about how they got inside a bomb:

A hole was then cut in the mine’s casing using a trepanner. This cutting tool was made of non-magnetic materials so that it could be used on magnetic mines and was driven by compressed air. After some time a four-inch circular hole had nearly been cut through the casing.

Okay, that sounds like how they cut the holes in the mine casing in the picture up top, but a treppaner? The only time I have heard that technique being used is when Stephen Maturin (the surgeon in the Patrick O'Brian sea stories) opened up the top of a guy's head to replace the damaged portion of his skull with a silver plate.

Brace and bit cranial trephine, Germany, 1701-1800

Stephen had a new "Lavoisier's trephine" and Google turned up the above image.

Trepaner
The bit at the center serves as a pivot to keep the cutting bit at the end of the arm on track.

This is probably more like the tool that the bomb squad guys used. A tool like this would normally be used in something like a milling machine, that is, a machine that could hold the tool and the target rigidly in place so that the depth of the cut made by the bit at the end of the rotating arm could be accurately controlled. It seems unlikely that they would have used an actual milling machine for this project, what with milling machines being in high demand for war production and the high probability of it being destroyed should the mine explode. I am sure the bomb squad guys cobbled up something.

The part that bugs me is the claim that is "was made of non-magnetic materials". I don't know that there are any non-magentic materials that could be used to cut through the mine's thick steel shell. I supposed you could use a grindstone of some sort, but that doesn't produce a sharp, well defined cut. And would it really need to be made of non-magnetic material? After all, the mine's casing is made of steel, and a magnetic fuse is going to be designed to react to the presence of the massive amount of steel that is a ship. So maybe the small amount of steel found in this tool wouldn't be enough to trigger a magnetic fuse, but any support and / or driving mechanism would, so those parts would need to be made of brass or wood or something similar.

WW2 UK Mine Disposal Locations

WW2Talk has some more pictures of bomb disposal activity at the stone frigate HMS Mirtle.

Harvey’s Big Bang

Vicky McDonald @Harvey's Wagon Wheel Hotel and Casino at Lake Tahoe shortly after the bomb blew up, August 27, 1980. UPI photo

Way back in 1980 a guy tried to extort a fortune from Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino by planting a great big bomb inside the building. Damn Interesting has the story. The San Francisco Chronicle also has their version.

Map of places mentioned in the story. US Route 50 is the the yellow line running from the upper right to the lower left. It is the main road through this area. The Casinos are in the upper right, just across the state line, naturally. Ice House Road is the squiggly blue line on the left. The black line goes 15 miles west from the Tahoe airport, ending five miles short of Ice House Road. Placerville is just off the map to the left.

Sign at the start of US Route 50 in Sacramento, California. It's a long road.

John Birges built his bomb with dynamite stolen from the Helms Creek hydroelectric project.

The best part of this video is the animation of this plant's operation which starts just after the two minute mark. This power plant is built deep underground between two artificial lakes. Not only can it generate electric power by letting water flow downstream, but it can also pump water back upstream. If somebody is generating power that you don't need at the moment, like a wind farm in the middle of the night, you can use that electricity to pump water uphill. Later on, when the day heats up and people start turning on their air conditioners, you can let the water flow back down and generate power. It operates kind of like a big battery. It let's you cover peak demand without having to build more power plants. It was a big, expensive project. I suspect it was only made viable by the fortunate location of the two reservoirs.

Via Posthip Scott.

The Lethal Legacy of World War II, Part II

Uncovering unexploded bombs left over from WWII is just part of everyday life in Germany. This one was uncovered on Monday in Munich when they razed the Schwabinger 7 bar.

Usually they can be defused and then hauled off to someplace safe for disposal. This one had some kind of chemical fuse, the same kind of fuse that was on a similar bomb that blew up in 2010 and killed three people when they tried to defuse it. So no, we are not going to try and defuse it, we will just set it off right where it sits.

That's 500 pounds of TNT being turned into kinetic energy. Shrapnel was thrown 300 yards, several buildings were severely damaged, lots of small fires started, windows blown out for blocks around. Preliminary estimates of damage are in the millions. Left a big hole in the ground.

Via Scott.

Update February 2016 replaced missing pictures with ones from my backup files. Never trust somebody else to keep valuable documents for you.