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© KYODORunway closed at Japan airport after dud shell explodes on taxiway
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WoodyLee
This is a daily event in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, and Gaza. a reminder of how ugly our world was and still is.
kurisupisu
Are bombs really discovered ‘often’ at the airport?
Miyazaki airport is not the place to be…
garypen
*"...officials found a hole with a diameter of 7 meters and a depth of 1 m on a taxiway."*
Wow. That's pretty big. The photo doesn't do it justice.
リッチ
What poor airport construction if the land was not properly prepared in great detail. Whoever built it should be paying some serious fines as well as compensating travelers affected.
SeriouslyCreamy
a better photo showing the true size of the crater. According to Asahi Shimbun it was a "U.S.-made 500-pound bomb".
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15450024
Yubaru
Unexploded ordnance is still being found in France and other European countries from the Napoleonic wars. Not to mention WW1 and WW2.
Your assumption that the explosion was due to "poor airport construction" is so far off the mark it's ludicrous, and sounds like someone playing arm chair quarterback thinking they could do better!
UXO often buries itself deep into the earth, and with Japan constantly shaking, that UXO could have easily remained hidden from detectors, and managed to wriggle its way back to the surface over time.
Same thing has happened, without the explosion, but sometimes WITH it, down here in Okinawa. A few years back on a national highway construction project a front end loader hit some UXO and it went off, blowing the windows out of a elderly care facility, and taking the eye out of the shovel operator.
The construction of the Hwy was done with due diligence, but SOMETIMES things happen, and no matter how many fingers you point to find "blame" it's just an accident!
Get off the high horse!
4123
according to newspaper, unexploded U.S. bomb disposal in Japan are still over thousand times per year, over 7000 tons unexploded bombs are still under ground in Japan.
Neurozoo
Then it was not a dud if it exploded, the delay timer was just set to 79 years.
nandakandamanda
Yup, definitely not a dud. Just lying there, biding its time.
Norm
Dud?
My understanding of English leaves me to believe that an old bomb that actually explodes is not a dud.
Please correct me if I misunderstand.
Agent_Neo
@Norm
If it doesn't explode when dropped, but explodes later when some have forgotten about it, then it's an unexploded bomb.
Norm
Thanks — that makes sense.
It was a dud at the time it was dropped, but wasn’t, for whatever reason, a dud today. Glad to know that it didn’t cause any injuries.
kurisupisu
Some posters here disagree about not wanting to go to an airport where bombs are often found-hilarious
1glenn
UXB, a high danger of exploding at a later time.
Dud, most likely will not explode at a later time.
Still, high explosives are dangerous from inception until explosion or dismantling.
I was told the story by a witness of a stack of 500 pound bombs, with detonators not yet installed, which exploded on the runway of a base in Britain during WW II. Several soldiers were killed, and three B-17s destroyed, by what were supposed to be safe high explosives.
BakaFugu
Kinda shocked that earthquakes don't trigger these more often.
Desert Tortoise
The airport was built during WWII. It was an IJA Kamikazi base during the war. The Allies bombed daylights out of it.
Desert Tortoise
Explosives decay over time becoming more likely to explode. In WWII nobody had the kinds of modern "insensitive munitions", meaning energetic materials the don't explode from exposure to fire but instead just burn, and are not subject to "sympathetic detonation", meaning they don't explode due to a sharp shock or the concussion of an explosion nearby. Insensitive Munitions are a recent advance born in response to two big naval disasters on USS Forrestal (1967) and USS Enterprise (1969) where bombs were exploding in a big flight deck fire. WWII era explosives are lot more sensitive to heat and concussion and get worse as they age.
There is an old Liberty Ship S.S. Richard Montgomery that ran aground on a sand bank on the Thames Estuary that could not be completely unloaded before it eventually broke in half and sank. It still has over 1,400 tons of ordnance on her and could explode at any time. According to a BBC News report in 1970, it was determined that if the wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 300 metres (980 feet)-wide column of water and debris nearly 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) into the air and generate a wave 5 metres (16 feet) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (population circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. News reports in May 2012 however, including one by BBC Kent, stated that the wave could be about one metre (3.3 feet) high, which although lower than previous estimates would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements.
French farmers still encounter old chemical munitions from WWI from time to time and the Brits are still digging German bombs out of the ground in London.
Desert Tortoise
That sounds like a fish story. A 500 lb bomb exploding on a runway would not affect aircraft parked on a ramp. The damage would look like what you see in the image of the Japanese airport taxiway. They just don't have that big of a blast radius. It would have to have exploded on the ramp with the parked aircraft to do that kind of damage.
Politik Kills
Good thing we have so many bomb experts in JT comments!!
Moonraker
"Good thing we have so many bomb experts in JT comments!!"
Well, I for one am happy we do. I like to learn stuff too.
Pukey2
And one country connects all these cases. And not one single dollar from that countryto help. Rather, plenty of dollars to make new bombs.
Desert Tortoise
Are you sure about that?
https://vn.usembassy.gov/fact-sheets-unexploded-ordnance-uxo-removal/
https://apopo.org/what-we-do/detecting-landmines-and-explosives/ma-partners-and-donors/
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-helps-to-remove-landmines-left-behind-after-wars-in-southeast-asia-/7041176.html
Yubaru
One does not negate the other and both can be facts as well. Also in most cases it is not a matter of someone forgetting about it either, it's about it not being found.
It is both a dud and unexploded bomb at the same time, until it isnt, which includes when someone or something causes it to explode. Then the "dud" becomes live.
Brian Wheway
@dessert tortoise, your quite right about that shop wreck, it's quite a dilemma for the government, no one wants to touch it, it's so unstable, it's a case of when will it go off rather than if, there has been talks about how to extract the bombs and explosives. Also in France the Brits dug several long underground trenches underneath the German front line, there was around 7 or 8 underground holes dug and packed with several hundred tonnes of amilnitrate, two of these never went off, one did in the 1970s when a lightning bolt hit a pole which triggered it to explode, another is still active very near a farm house, it just goes to show how much UXB there is around, not just in Japan but all of the world, thank goodness no one was hurt
voiceofokinawa
Two days ago, a dud shell dropped by the U.S. air force during World War II was excavated in a dense residential area in Shuri, Naha City, Okinawa. It's said that it'll take 100 more years until all U.S.-dropped dud shells are excavated from the island.
The U.S., of course, doesn't have any responsibility for all these, but it can't simply disregard the fact that Okinawa is still suffering from the effect of the war that took place 79 years ago. Thus, the U.S. must endeavor to reduce its excessive military footprint from Okinawa. For starter, close Futenma and return the land with no strings attached.