Bomb shuts down London City Airport

It’s like US drone attacks in the middle east. It’s now called “double tab” - first they bomb a target (or a wedding, etc.) and after some time bomb rescuers.

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Oh they do it … a lot actually

Even now, 70 years later, more than 2,000 tons of unexploded munitions are uncovered on German soil every year. Before any construction project begins in Germany, from the extension of a home to track-laying by the national railroad authority, the ground must be certified as cleared of unexploded ordnance. Still, last May, some 20,000 people were cleared from an area of Cologne while authorities removed a one-ton bomb that had been discovered during construction work. In November 2013, another 20,000 people in Dortmund were evacuated while experts defused a 4,000-pound “Blockbuster” bomb that could destroy most of a city block. In 2011, 45,000 people—the largest evacuation in Germany since World War II—were forced to leave their homes when a drought revealed a similar device lying on the bed of the Rhine in the middle of Koblenz. Although the country has been at peace for three generations, German bomb-disposal squads are among the busiest in the world. Eleven bomb technicians have been killed in Germany since 2000, including three who died in a single explosion while trying to defuse a 1,000-pound bomb on the site of a popular flea market in Göttingen in 2010.

Read more: There Are Still Thousands of Tons of Unexploded Bombs in Germany, Left Over From World War II | History| Smithsonian Magazine

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This is a fairly regular occurrence throughout the UK. But the London-ness of it focuses the media like nothing else.

This is the map of bomb dropped on my home town (Plymouth) and we are still dredging/digging up duds.

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The Met and London City Airport put the word out so that when the airport closed, anyone who’d actually seen their posts WOULDN’T assume it was terrorists.

The press realised that they could put “Bomb” in a headline and get more clicks, because people WOULD assume it was terrorists.

They intend to explode it off Shoeburyness, so presumably it will go off. The Naval Commander said that they had a call out every 18 hours, and over 60 German bombs a year.

There are tonnes of bombs in the SS Richard Montgomery sunk near to Sheppey that are apparently still a viable threat.

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Total war.
The gift that keeps on giving.

This.
Sadly, far too many people are not aware of it.

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Oddly, Carlisle wasn’t targeted much, despite there being a munitions factory nearby.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/43/a4157543.shtml

MY grandma was evacuated from Carlisle (she was sent to live with an aunt rather than a random family). For some reason my great-grandma thought it was a good idea to send her to the suburbs of Glasgow.

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