Re: External Link/Members Only
I understand why people were evacuated etc.
Some poor squaddie had to drive the truck, through evacuated streets. I think we should know who (s)he is, and give a clap.
Yes, probably in the job description, do as you are told in a dangerous situation. But they also evacuated people.
Bomb disposal geeks too.
Not sure its that huge a bomb anyway - not like Tallboy or Grandslam. Interesing that we are so cagey about 500kg of old mixture. WTF do modern bombs do?
The issue with a lot of UXO/UXB is the integrity of the fuse/detonator. There were some WW2 bombs that were reliant on hard impacts with the ground to activate a mechanical delay timing mechanism, some bombs used chemical fuzes like releasing an corrosive over a piece of sheet if material that fails allowing a mechanism to fire.
After that, the explosive compounds of the time weren't a million miles removed from nitroglycerin which goes bang with a small amount of shock. The stability and sensitivity of these compounds can change over time which is why we've generally moved towards 'plastics'.
300m cordon is pretty standard (seen similar cordons for finding old grenades) and it's not just the inadvertent detonation of the bomb you have to worry about but flying debris and secondary damage to infrastructure like gas mains which can be more problematic than the initial explosion.
Modern bombs can be anywhere from 250-2000lbs, we can make harder steels (for the bunker busting aspect) and improve the precision guidance to ordnance these days so we are less reliant on 10,000lb whoppers. If we need something with that kind of devastating capacity there's thermobarics (Jungle Blaster/Daisy Cutter)
