Old but deadly 500-pound World War II bomb found in Chonburi

[SpankTheLing]

Let's no let the facts get in the way of a good story. I am not disputing the fact that you were there, just the technical facts of the incident that are questionable.

The amount of people making uneducated, uniformed and quite frankly ridiculous statements is astounding.

Not trolling. Just challenging the ridiculous.

Edited April 4, 2014 by SpankTheLing

[Tanlic]

They won't rest until they charge the charger who charged the bomb and then they'll drop the case...and Boom!!!!!

[dighambara]

i certainly hope they are wearing safety vests in case the bomb goes off

ROTFLMAO - VESTS...!!!

It's part of the job - one mistake = DEATH...

[jerome2]

they beter call the bomb scapers in Lao or Cambogia

[sunshine51]

The 500 pounder found in the pond should be relatively easy to

remedy. Just place 3 PE4/C4 (same stuff) blocks on the old bomb,

sandbag said bomb completely with a few layers of bags, clear the

surrounding area of inhabitants by at least 1000 meters and detonate

the charges. Big bang, bunch of water & sand tossed about, pond

gets a new dimension added to it...everybody gets a show and it's

all over.

A few layers of sandbags would have zero effect on blast or fragmentation safety distance. You would be looking at in excess of to 2.0m of sandbags or earth to significantly affect blast and fragmentation distances.

Thanks for the technical details. I'm not an EOD tech however I have colleagues

in the HALO Trust & MAG who are. And I'm familiar with your other posts concerning

UXO disposal...again thanks. When that 2000 pounder was discovered there were

3 back-hoes digging and piling good old red Southeast Asian clay all over it and the

charges used to eventually detonate the old bomb. I was with the lad who fired the

charges...in a hole a kilometer & a half away...filming the entire operation. Brought

back too many memories of "Danger Close" airstrikes we'd call in to save our butts

as we'd try to beat a hasty tactical withdrawal to the rear instead of being over run.

Sometimes we'd get an opord up to do a BDA before the bombs were dropped.

We would be in position and wait a while...sometimes our position was a little too

close or either the Buffie's navigators were off a fair bit...either way when it rains

heaps of 1 ton GP bombs from 12 or more Buffies....the Earth moves and one

gets plastered with clay and everything else heaved up from the strike and you

can't hear a thing for a while after it's all over. Then we'd take a walk into the

impact zone and see what's left...other than everything looking kinda greyish

brown & blown to bits you'd be surprised at just what didn't get vapourised....

that was the scary part of the job...especially when CAS or TAC Air was at

least an hour away.

Sometimes we'd get a call that some friendly village received a bomb or two

"by accident" and have to blow whatever we found in place. We were not

doing "Humanitarian UXO clearance" per se....that's in your manuals right?

We were doing combat clearance...first locate the device(s), then relocate

the villagers (sometimes very difficult), set charges on the bomb(s), connect

with detcord, cover the bombs with earth as much as possible (depends also

on the time of year and we never had a backhoe or bulldozer to assist so this

was accomplished by hand, shovels & manpower), ensure friendlies are still

a safe distance away then detonate the charges. Afterwards we'd put in a work

order of sorts for the engineers to reconstruct the village we pretty much

destroyed....but saved 100% of the population.

I have a heap of respect for anybody in EOD, after all it's not a job you can

cock-up and try to get it right the next time is it?

[MrKidno]

An example of Shrapnel from AZON (first guided bomb) found near Hell Fire Pass (dropped by allied bombers on 3 tier bridge sometime late 1944) You can imagine the effect this chunk of burning hot metal would have travelling through the human body. Perhaps it's time to start educating everyone here about these UXB's with a campaign much like they use in Laos and Vietnam?

It's not shrapnel, it is a fragment of a bomb casing.

Ok, to be more precise, it's a Fragment from the casing of an AZON bomb.

[freedom4life]

Seven years in Thailand and never heard of WWII bombs being found, now 4 in a week in widely separated places, what the heck?

Most people who live in Thailand all their life have never heard of WWII .

That's a place I want to live...