American Reacts To 80 Jahre nach dem »Feuersturm«: Unterwegs mit den Kampfmittelräumern

[@Pjalphareacting]

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[@duke6321]

Honestly now? Was your comment really that the bombs, because they are so deep in the sandy soil, could possibly come from the First World War? Wow, that's strange. But you already know that there were no bombing raids on cities in World War I and there were no bombers that could carry 1000 pounds of bombs? To be honest, I am subtly shocked by so much ignorance about World War II and this crude theory.

[@blaumupi]

It is assumed that 10% - 15% of all bombs dropped did not explode! In Germany, if you are planning a building project, you have to clarify in advance whether there is any suspicion of explosive ammunition. In the first step, American and British WW2 aerial photos are analysed to see whether bombs were dropped and, if so, to see whether unexploded bombs are visible. In the second step, the suspected areas identified by aerial photo analyses are then searched with sensors. The unexploded bombs lie at a depth of 2 m - 15 m, depending on the soil.

[@ChriDDel]

The Fotos where military secrets for a long time. I think the brits gave them to Germany around the 2000th.

[@michaelh.907]

I live about 2 km away from the shipyard in Kiel. Some month ago there was a controlled explosion of such a bomb. Even here houses and windows were vibrating and the noise was also like just beside. I dont want to know how much more it must have been in the direct area. So , everybody , who thinks "It cant be so dangerous" , think about it. And when the police wants to evacuate for that time , follow them

[@steffenstelldinger9999]

Bombs from WW1? 🤔 In World War I, grenades were thrown from (biplane-)planes rather than carpet bombing cities.

[@arnodobler1096]

Yes, but mines in the Baltic and North Sea from WW1.

[@arnodobler1096]

Moreover, it did not take place on German soil.

[@walkir2662]

Part of Belgium is still uninhabitable due to it, and other areas just find WW1 UXO on the regular.

[@arnodobler1096]

@@walkir2662 I guess these are more artillery shells though, right?

[@Roberternst72]

Actually, there were some Zeppelin raids and the Gotha long range bombers… and on the Entente side the Handley Page Type O… but their payload was nowhere near WW2 capacities, and neither was their range.

[@morbvsclz]

Still really common to find bombs. You can regularly read on the News that for example a train line has to be closed for a day because a bomb was found next to (train lines were high priority targets). But it does also happen that blocks have to evacuated for bomb defusals and the people get temporary shelter in school buildings and gyms. In rare occasion people still get killed by them. I remeber a case from years ago were construction workers were killed, because an excavator hit a bomb during contruction work. When I was a teenager ~20 years ago we could not use our local lake to swim for one summer, because divers had found unexploded bombs and they searched the entire lake for weeks and weeks.

[@decnet100]

The german language expression for this kind of work, which doesn't quite translate to English I believe, is "das gehört gemacht". As in, "it's necessary to be done", also "it deserves to be done", and "it's ethically right to be done". Basically, at every little company I ever worked at, that's the end of the discussion, we're doing the uncomfortable thing - because this "gehört gemacht".

[@derfailer3434]

My grandpa in Dresden was going to go to an event by bus but they had to turn around and evacuate because a construction worker found a bomb. The next day the same construction worker found a second bomb at the same place. He was lucky not to get reckt on the job. In Munich a few years ago they found a 250kg bomb in the center of the city and they evacuated a whole block. They had to detonate the bomb on spot but made a few mistakes and a shit load of windows got blown out and a few peaple got injured from flying glass.

[@Attirbful]

when he says the temperature reached 800-1000 degrees, he means Celsius. 1000 degrees Celsius are about 1800 degrees Fahrenheit…

[@boelwerkr]

In many regions of Germany the soil is quite soft, clay and sand. Rocks ground up and put down in the last ice age by glaciers. Such soil is more like very stiff mud than hard rock. So bombs slip into the ground like diving in "high friction water". They can end up quite deep and far away where they hit the surface. In some cases bombs dropped on a street dove underground beneath existing buildings. Often not all bombs where dropped on a city, or the airplane had problems ah had to return, then they would drop the bombs on fields and sometimes small towns.

[@jensschroder8214]

In Belgium, WW1 , miners dug tunnels under enemy positions and filled them with explosives. In wooden boxes and with paper wrapping. Not all mines were detonated. One is said to still be under a farmhouse to this day. Hence the term mines.

[@germankitty]

A few years ago, construction workers found THREE British bombs pretty much in the center of downtown, leftovers from a carpet-bombing of the cities in our industrial hub (the Ruhr area) in 1942. The city had to evacuate over 11,000 (!) people in a 1km radius, including two of the biggest hospitals, a children's hospital and two senior citizens' homes. Thankfully, the bombs could be defused and removed without damage or injuries. It was the biggest event of that kind so far, but minor cases come up several times each year; they barely make the news anymore.

[@katii1997]

We underestimate the danger of ww2 bombs because (as far as i know) there aren't any cases of them exploding while being defused nor did any undetected bomb explode yet. in cologne for example multiple bombs are found in a day or week sometimes and my only thought is "i hope imy train /the train tracks is not effected by it so i get home on time" and "i hope it's not in my home area so i don't have to evacute bc that would be f*ing annoying"

[@madhatter9322]

I live in Cologne. On average, we have bomb alerts 20 times a year, where areas within a radius of 500m are evacuated. Cologne was bombed 262 times, and a total of around 1.5 million bombs (from stick incendiary bombs to blockbusters) were dropped on the city. Cologne was so destroyed that there were plans to rebuild the city further north. Operation Millennium was carried out on the night of May 30-31, 1942. We call this operation "the thousand bomber attack." 1,047 bombers flew to Cologne, of which around 870 reached their target. The idea was to create a firestorm like in Hamburg, but this did not happen in Cologne due to the way it was built.

[@ralfschmidt5770]

Thank you so mich to put forward such a sensible aspect of WW2. War is a complex multidimesional desaster.

[@martindonat3249]

in the 17 years i live in hamburg i was evacuated 4 times ,and a few more times were i wasnt allowed to leave my home , the first time something like that happens , its quite unnerving and exiting ,but it gets old real fast

[@realulli]

19:31 what shocked me most in the video isn't the pictures of burned people, it's the stick incendiary bomb the ordnance removal guy showed. Reason for that: when I was a small child, I found something looking like that during a walk in a forest near Munich (my hometown). My mom told me, "it's an unexploded bomb, it's dangerous, leave it alone and come along!". I later rationalized this was some piece of rebar and mom just didn't want me to bring garbage along. Now I see this - I might have been playing with an actual incendiary bomb! I don't know what became of the bomb, I was 3 or 4 at the time. I remember it was somewhat heavy, but not too heavy for a 4 year old to handle, roughly hip height when stood on its end (from my PoV). I assume my mom reported it somewhere and it was disposed of.

[@Groffili]

Several people have commented that there had been no arial bombings in WW1. That is not correct. There had been, on both sides, but the scale was a lot smaller. For comparison: German airships and later bomber planes dropped about 300 tons of bombs over England. England in return dropped some 600 tons on German targets. In WW2, almost TWO MILLION TONS of bombs were dropped on Germany.

[@Attirbful]

WW II bomb defusing takes place in Germany about 5000 times per year… It is almost normalcy. Especially in older and bigger cities which were heavily bombed and quickly rebuilt after WWII. Whenever new buildings or infrastructure are being built, one MUST make sure that no bombs are underneath the new structures….

[@alexanderpracher6753]

In WW1 was no bombing in Germany. Only a few bombs where dropped by "Zeppelins" Airships in England. Alltogether 51 raids, about 6000 small bombs, with about 600 dead and 1500 wounded civilians, most in London and some Cities in South England. And very rare bombs from Airplanes around all Europe (also Germany) in small amounts and very small weight (10 kg or less). The most bombs from Airplanes where used against the Enemy Army close the frontline.

[@DJone4one]

2:00 He said there were bombs in the bunker that had already been defused. The detonator or something similar has been removed, but the explosives are still in the bomb. Hence the reference to a secret bunker. 4:50 My mother was still a child when an aerial bomb hit the house. Fortunately it was an unexploded bomb.

[@robertheinrich2994]

in vienna, we have a similar situation. there have been similar but smaller bombardements, although not from british or french, it was harder to reach. furthermore, at constructions, they sometimes find ammunition from first world war and actually old grenades from the second turkish siege (black powder hand grenades). suddenly, you have our military that is tasked with bomb removal and archeologists at the same time working on something from the past.

[@NeomOne]

those bombs can't be from World War 1 cause there were not comparable Air Forces which had the opportunity to use bombs like this. The other thing is that those specialist know exactly how a bomb from the Britain's or United States look like. in World War 1 wasn't any bombardment against German cities, cause the enemy Air Force (I am a German) hadn't the capabilities to do this. And the reason why the bombs are lying this deep under the surface is, because all of the cities were bombed to the ground and the destroyed buildings lay as dusk on top of them. As the cities were rebuilt was that done on a higher level than the old surface of the structures was, another reason are rubble mountain that are untouched until today which are now something like a park or railway...

[@johaquila]

Yes, it's not well known anymore, but aviation and its use in war made massive progress between the start of the First World War in 1914 and its end in 1918. In the beginning, it wasn't clear how long it would take until planes would become useful in the war at all. (At the time there were still experiments with using carrier pigeons for aerial photography.) In 1918, planes were an indispensable part of warfare, especially for aerial surveillance. But of course all air force programs were still quite small, as it takes time to build the latest generation of planes, and to train pilots.

[@Roberternst72]

The tricky part is: the explosives can still react after 80 years. And if you are REALLY unlucky, disturbing the ground at a building site can still trigger a blockbuster bomb these days and start a slow chemical reaction that ends in one very quick, very big explosion… Here in Frankfurt two of these blockbuster bombs were found during construction work for the new university campus less than a decade ago… leading to evacuations of around 70 thousand people for 8+ hours each time… fortunately, it was possible to defuse them… (Video in German: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZPOdHWNar9nfpofeature=shared)… PS: Weird. I am absolutely convinced they found TWO blockbuster bombs only a couple of weeks or months apart, both on Campus Westend - but I can only find reports for one defused on September 3rd 2017…

[@haemmertime]

In my city a bomb was found at renovations at the train station, it was found 70cm/27 inches below the the tracks. Luckily it didn't go off in the 70 years the trains drove over it.

[@Tommieboy2009]

Its astounding how unreliable the old allied bombs were that sooooo many are still found to this day...

[@Sciss0rman]

2:21 “defused” my man ;)

[@JohnDoe-us5rq]

My late grandma always said, the worst was when she left the bunkers, because of the poor sods that did not made it to the shelters. 😢 I really hope, that nothing is hidden in my backyard. I live in a quarter near my cities' harbor and almost everything up to half a mile from my house's location was flattened. Those areas were checked for in the last 80 years, so there is probably nothing, but my house was not hit. So probably no one ever checked for duds in the yard.

[@jbbutcha]

WW2! The report/documentation video was released in 2023 by "Der Spiegel" - 80 years back, means 1943. At the beginning of the war, the planes in World War I were barely able to do more than carry the pilot. The development of aircraft progressed rapidly during the war, and by the end there were bombers on all sides. However, they couldn't carry bombs of that size, let alone dozens of them.

[@MarkusWitthaut]

Thanks for the video. Here is the explanation on why duds can be found 5 meters below surface: At first, a dud lies open on the ground. Then another bomb detonates close to the dud and throws soil and rubble on top of the dud. This is repeated several times so that the dud is covered with a thick level of dirt. In my city (Dortmund) it happens several times a year that bombs have been found and are defused. Whenever there is a bomb find, the vicinity (within the radius of 500 meters for the standard bombs) is evacuated. Roads are closed and you have to wait for several hours before you can go back into your house. According to current estimates (as of 2022), there are still around 100,000 to 300,000 tons of unexploded ordnance in the ground across Germany. Around 5,000 of these duds are cleared in Germany every year. So it will take a further 20 to 60 years to find and defuse these bombs. A much bigger issues is the unexploded ordonance in the Baltic and the North Sea. It is estimated that 1.5 million tons of conventional bombs and 0.3 million tons of gas bombs are on the bottom of the Baltic and North Sea.

[@blaumupi]

Sorry, but your explanation of the 5 m deep bombs is nonsense! Where did you get that from? Depending on the type of soil, the bombs penetrate deep into the ground if they do not explode. And since they don't hit exactly vertically, they usually make a U-shaped movement in the ground and ‘move’ upwards again. This is why most bombs are found with the tip pointing upwards.

[@MarkusWitthaut]

​@@blaumupi No need to be sorry. I got my information from a friend that used to work at the Kampfmittelräumdienst (Explosive ordnance disposal service) here in NRW (Northrhine-Westphalia). As mentioned in the original video, the Royal Air Force (RAF) used mainly three types of bombs against civil targets. Neither of these were design for bunker busting (these expensive bombs were used for other purpose). So a dud lies typically on the surface. That's why it makes sense to have a look at the reconnaissance photos which were take the day after a bombing night. Check the video at 12:25. There you can see tiny specks showing the duds. The vast majority of these duds have been defused while still on the surface. However, it can happen, that these non-defused duds are covered the next night like I explained above. What happens today is that If you do some construction you have to perform this scanning of old aerial photograhps from your construction ground. There is a longer video form Quarks about the Luftbildauswertung which explains this better at 30:00 from kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnvNkoemncuYi8k. The expert is looking for small craters showing bombs that hid the ground but didn't espolde. If there is a suspicion of a bomb the Kampfmittelräumdienst comes and search with magnetic detectors if there is metal in the ground. If so, the possible bomb is careful excavated. Usually, they do not find bombs but other pieces of metals. If the excavation shows a bomb, then the area is evacuated and a bomb de-fusing expert tries to defuse the bomb. In rare cases, the bomb is brought to detonation on side. May I ask the source of your information?

[@blaumupi]

@@MarkusWitthaut first, no need to explain me something! The detection of explosive ordnance using aerial photography has been my job for 25 years! 😉🤭 And again sorry, but then your friend told you nonsense or you have understand something totaly wrong! If your friend were right, you would only have to look for 5 m - 10 m high hills! Or do you think that the terrain would have been filled up by 5 metres everywhere? If a bomb is dropped from a height of more than 4000 metres and does not detonate, then it does not lie on the surface but penetrates deep into the ground! The only thing that can be covered by the earth ejected by other bombs are the impact holes of the unexploded bombs.

[@MarkusWitthaut]

​@@blaumupi Thank you for your reply. But I beg to differ, that I like to give further explanation if my statements are labelled as nonsense. I have described my understanding of the situation of unexploded WWII bombs in Germany, which is based not only of information from a friend but is backed-up by some public documentaries by German public television and information from official sources dealing with "Kampfmittelbeseitigung" in my home state. After a bombing in WWII German cities looked desolated: You had crates next to hills of rubble (with potentially some duds in them), next to crates filled with rubble and this was surrounded by ruins of houses. Millions of people were in need of housing. So there was no systematic scanning of the hills for bombs or scanning of the rubble filled crates. It would have been obvious to look there but there was no time to do so. Because the next bombing could happen the next night and many Germans were in the Army. So the ground was leveled and houses, roads, railway tracks etc. were erected about this ground. This happened even after the war. Hence those hills and filled crates are gone. So Germany is doing in now with the analysis of aerial photography. Nevertheless, not for all areas photos from the day after bombing raid are available. It happens occasionally that construction workers find bombs when excavation construction sites. Furthermore, during WWII and in the years after Germany did not have access to allied aerial photography. I seem to remember, that these photographs have been made available as late as the 1980ies to German officials but I cant't find a source.

[@blaumupi]

@@MarkusWitthaut please stop explaining me the situation during and after WW2 or the history of using allied aerials! PLEASE! Nothing new! again: that stuff is my job! To your first post: "Here is the explanation on why duds can be found 5 meters below surface ... " When bombs get coverd by debis of destroyed houses and later all was levelled, then the bombs don't lie 5 m (or more) under the surface! The rubble is only the reason that some (a few) bombs lying close to the surface were not found quickly! The rubble is not the reason why bombs lie 5 m - 12 m below the surface!

[@horstkollmeyer6654]

Shouldn't we humans around the world learn from this? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it. The wars are also the lesser problem, as they only happen over relatively short periods of time, the consequences for flora and fauna are much more serious. Only that is what the perpetrators no longer experience and that is the problem with the egoism of a few who act as arsonists worldwide. And it's so simple, just respect the other, live and let live.

[@HenryLoenwind]

And still, 80 years later, none of the allied nations has acknowledged their warcrime of deliberately killing children (and other non-combatants). No matter how triggered they were by Germany's bombings, that doesn't make responding in kind (or, actually, several orders of magnitude more strongly) right.

[@heikos4264]

I am living in a Village with around 2000 souls, during 1930 it was half of that. We are 8km away from the next small town and 5km from the radar station that was between the town and the village. Everytime when i sit on the mountainbike i see bomb craters in the forrest, two of them around 250 and 400 meters from my house (i can seem my house while standing in the closer one). They are EVERYWHERE in this forrest. The amount of small and big craters in our forrest tells me one thing for sure, THIS was on purpose and not the ridiculous inaccuracy of the norton bomb sight at fault. Bomb sight, one of the favourite excuses directly followed by wind pushed the markers off target (check out 'die Nacht in der die Dörfer brannten' for example) We were just a farming village...

[@miskatonic6210]

You can argue if responding like that was justified... it's not like the germans cared about sparing civilians. But the allies should still acknowledge this as a war crime from a modern perspective. There's not much to argue about that one.

[@tuluguag]

There were not such types of bombs in WW1. And there were no Citybombings during the first world war. These bombs didnt explode. Called "Bindgänger" btw. There are quite heavy and dig deep into the ground.

[@Roberternst72]

Uhm… there were - just on a smaller scale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Air_Force#Actions

[@melchiorvonsternberg844]

Hi Pablo! You groaned so aptly when you heard about the 43,000 British dead that the German air war against England cost. And rightly so! However, you have to remember that there were about 12 times as many casualties in Germany from the Allied air war against Germany. And the British even used the help of firefighters to ensure that the attacks were carried out in a way that caused the most destruction and casualties among civilians. And the casualties in England, of course, include the casualties caused by German cruise missiles (V1) and A4/V2 strategic missiles (with a 1 ton warhead). Just so you can properly estimate the dimensions...

[@Sven_Okas1967]

German towns are not bombartet in WW1. I live in Berlin and in Oranienburg in the north of Berlin they found every month a bomb from WW2. Greetings Sven

[@Roberternst72]

Actually… some were. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Air_Force#Actions

[@Nithrade]

Never again!

[@Mischnikvideos]

In the First World War there were only a few planes and no real bombers. In the Second World War the Americans produced heavy bombers, which were more like transport aircraft and could drop correspondingly heavy or large numbers of bombs. Even more bombs were dropped in Vietnam. Thanks to common enemies, Germans and Vietnamese have a good relationship with the Americans today. Today you are more likely to find ammunition and hand grenades from the First World War. The idea of ​​bombing cities arose in the First World War, when German zeppelins bombed London. Between the two world wars everyone experimented with it. The British used them to bomb rebellious Arabs, the Germans bombed Spanish cities as mercenaries for the future Spanish dictator. When the Second World War began it was clear what both sides would try.

[@Roberternst72]

Surprise - there actually WERE „heavy bombers“ in WW1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Air_Force#Actions

[@mweskamppp]

There was no bombings of cities in WW I. There might be artillery ammunition in some areas.

[@henryluebberstedt7819]

04:32 Germany started it all - this sentence ist a "must have" in every German documentary around WW-II. And its undoubtedly true! But when it comes to the bombing war, the scale is different. In the four days of Operation Gomorrah, almost as many civilians died as in five years of German bombing raids on England. Arthur Harris created Bomber Command, a new weapon just for one goal: the destruction of foremost houses and not factories. He called it "dehousing" or "moral bombing". At the end almost 600 cities had been bombed from big ones like Berlin down to villages with just 5.000 inhabitants (many of them class b targets). Like Pforzheim. Only four weeks before the end of the war RAF bombed the old medieval city almost completely to ashes. Within 22 minutes a third of the population died. No wonder why bombing war wasn't a topic at the Nuremberg Trails. From German perspective this massive destruction of the country architectural heritage and loss of civilians lives (around 500.000) was always somehow schizophrenic. On the one hand, you mourn the dead and the loss of the beautiful cities, but on the other hand, you are grateful that the Allies liberated you from the Nazis. But after 80 years we have a lot of other problems than the past. Today its just history.

[@camelot65]

nice idea to recap is maybe a view about the results of USA actions like Hiroshima - Nagasaki - Vietnam Agent Orange. Just for information.

[@gordondry]

5:40 WW1 ? How could a WW1 plane even carry 1000lbs?

[@LuziBeerbaum]

War is Hell... but the sound is great !