World War II bomb forces evacuation of 20,000 in Cologne

Crazy that something this big can still be laying around. Imagine if some kid had been playing and accidentally set that off.....talk about major destruction.

I do have a question about this kind of thing though. If one this large did happen to go off and kill 10-15K people in a town, would the country that dropped it way back then still be held responsible today?

Source

BERLIN – Some 20,000 residents in the western German city of Cologne are being forced to evacuate their homes after authorities discovered a 200-kilogram (440-pound) bomb from World War II. Schools and kindergartens remained closed and dozens of ambulances were on the scene to evacuate residents of a nursing home.

The deactivation of the bomb, which was found near Muelheim bridge crossing the Rhine River, was planned for Wednesday afternoon. City officials said in a statement that during this time the river would be closed for shipping and the air space would be closed too.

Even 70 years after the end of World War II, unexploded bombs are still found relatively frequently in Germany, generally during construction in major cities.

Cologne was a regular target for Allied bombers during the war

Link to BBC story on it and some quotes.....seems it was American made they believe:

Source

City officials said in a statement that during this time the river would be closed for shipping and the airspace would also be closed.
The bomb was found on Friday during preparations for the construction of a pipeline, according to local media.
It is believed to be an American design and was buried 5m (16ft) underground.
A 1km exclusion zone was set up around the spot where the device was found.

I bet the excavator that found it puckered his hole about as tight as it could go when he realized what his bucket hit.....

a reply to: Vasa Croe

Nice to know...I visited Cologne with my parents when they visited me in Germany in 2001. We arrived in Cologne via a cruise up the Rhine River from Mainz. I'm sure we were quite close to it, if we didn't cruise past it.

War sucks...and its remnants do, too.

They're being found on a less regular basis, but they are still being found in the U.K. One was recently found near Wembley Stadium and the whole area was cordoned off, but to evacuate 20,000 people, wow.

A remnant and reminder of bad times, but it appears we have learned very little from history.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe
Link to BBC story on it and some quotes.....seems it was American made they believe:

Source

City officials said in a statement that during this time the river would be closed for shipping and the airspace would also be closed.
The bomb was found on Friday during preparations for the construction of a pipeline, according to local media.
It is believed to be an American design and was buried 5m (16ft) underground.
A 1km exclusion zone was set up around the spot where the device was found.

I bet the excavator that found it puckered his hole about as tight as it could go when he realized what his bucket hit.....

The article says they believe it was of American design. Makes sense since we supplied most of the war materials to all allied nations.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

that is a quite small bomb :

1000 , 2000 and 4000lb bombs were common in WWII and the RAF had upt 12000lb bombs used against specific targets

originally posted by: Greathouse

originally posted by: Vasa Croe
Link to BBC story on it and some quotes.....seems it was American made they believe:

Source

City officials said in a statement that during this time the river would be closed for shipping and the airspace would also be closed.
The bomb was found on Friday during preparations for the construction of a pipeline, according to local media.
It is believed to be an American design and was buried 5m (16ft) underground.
A 1km exclusion zone was set up around the spot where the device was found.

I bet the excavator that found it puckered his hole about as tight as it could go when he realized what his bucket hit.....

The article says they believe it was of American design. Makes sense since we supplied most of the war materials to all allied nations.

Americans made T 34 tanks?

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: Vasa Croe

that is a quite small bomb :

1000 , 2000 and 4000lb bombs were common in WWII and the RAF had upt 12000lb bombs used against specific targets

Might be small, but they evac'd 20K people over it....if that many were in danger if it went off, that would be a really massive casualty count.

a reply to: pikestaff

I spoke of war material "supplied." Not produced in countries.

Large amounts of arms and material was supplied to Russia.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

Might be small, but they evac'd 20K people over it....if that many were in danger if it went off, that would be a really massive casualty count.

They evacuated a 1 km radius, this being in an urban area, that racks up the "refugee count" quite quickly. Only very few of those are actually in mortal danger of course. You evacuate a large area because of possible shrapnell and rock rain, and because of secondary effects that could prove harmful - heart problems, ear damage, shattered windows, falling wall decorations etc. It is simply a protective measure to avoid any and all physical harm.

A bomb of that size wouldnt kill 10-15000 thousand even if they were sitting right around it.

There was a 1000lbs bomb deliberately detonated not long ago near Frankfurt. It had a 1000 meter exclusion zone as well. Due to it being beside an Autobahn in the country, only 160 people had to be evacuated.

With bombs you have to consider all the modern building with glass everywhere and just the most basic thing of covering their arse incase of an accident and also with more modern gas / electric supplies etc theres probably more risk of the disruption caused so in theory if it went off and blew lord knows how many windows/set off gas fires/ turned off power to people who need its for medical reasons etc at the same time it could be a right pain

shame there is no way to trace the plane that dropped it for a history project i would love to know if this
was launched from a B17, B25, Wellington a Lancaster or something else.
there is a massive amount of history wrapped up in relics like this.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

he RAF had upt 12000lb bombs used against specific targets

The largest bomb the RAF used was the Grand Slam " Earthquake Bomb" at 22,000 ilbs.

en.wikipedia.org...

Last week a larger part of southern Hannover/Germany had to be evacuated due to a large WWII-bomb.

About 30.000 people had to stay away/awake till 3 o'clock in the morning. That was the largest evacuation since '45.

Apart from the direction explosion hazard of these bombs, there's always the danger that the shockwave would break windows, send up bits of rock high up into the air, where they come hurtling down elsewhere and hurt or kill someone. We've had that happen when buildings were being demolished with explosives.

originally posted by: ShayneJUK
shame there is no way to trace the plane that dropped it for a history project i would love to know if this
was launched from a B17, B25, Wellington a Lancaster or something else.
there is a massive amount of history wrapped up in relics like this.

Is there? 1,5+ million tons of bombs were dropped by the UK and USA on Germany alone. That is somewhere north of 5 million bombs. Thats like ascribing historical significance to each belt buckle, button and stray bullet buried somewhere in a warzone.

a reply to: Vasa Croe