Unexploded Ordnance at Brownsville,Wa

Naval Technology estimates there are still about 1/4 million WWII "leftovers" still out there. Don't know if this is one of them, but ......

Yikes!!!

Unexploded Mine in Puget Sound?

https://m.facebook.com/KING5News/#_=_

http://www.khq.com/story/38981075/unexploded-device-floating-in-puget-sound-near-bainbridge

That is in Mohalo’s neighborhood. Better be careful out there Bob. Who cares about rocks when we can run into these?

Sorry I missed this post when I posted mine. Maybe a mod can move or delete my post.

TV news says it's 1 1/2 miles South of Agate Pass and being towed. Don't know where they're towing it to. I'm kind of looking forward to a big explosion. Just kidding.

One more reason for me not to cruise around at night....BOOM!

But yeah, its still out there, this stuff, land and sea. Amazing nobody snagged it with a net since WWII.

I used to help get rid of land-based stuff like that. Helped pay for the boat!

Just south of Juneau, near Taku Harbor, there is a chart note referring to an unexploded depth charge. One can only imagine Ensign Dumas explaining to the captain...

Years ago, like maybe 20, we dove on at least 5 spots that noted ordinance disposal on old charts, but not new ones. Never found anything interesting, in fact, nothing at all.

That was a fricken mine! Got to wonder who suddenly pulled that puppy from its mooring! We used to drift dive agate pass (damned aggressive dogfish there)and Rich Pass(hey that sounds like a ferry!), explore the old submarine towers, but we never once played around any old abandoned mines! Never heard of our waters being mined. Knew they had sub nets, but mines? That changes everything. What’s the proper anchor around Bremerton? Plastic Rocna?

Well, the news just said they exploded the mine about an hour ago. Didn't hear anything at Blake Island. Still no word on where it came from.

The video of the explosion showed the bridge over Agate pass in the background, so it would have been hard to hear from Blake.

Did the US Navy mine the approaches to Bremerton in WWII?

If they've been bouncing around the seas for over 70 years, I wouldn't expect the mines to explode. Still, running into such an object would likely damage a boat's hull.

They don't say exactly what it was. A mine is about the only floating ordnance.

All the passages guarded by the coast artillery had mine fields. The mines that I know of were triggered from land. They were said to have been swept up in 1944 when the batteries were closed down. We didn't have vast fields of mines like Japan did. We were still sweeping their inland sea in the 1960s.

The military disposed of all sorts of explosives in the ocean long after WWII. Sometimes ships being decommissioned often disposed of ordnance while still at sea. In 1969, they loaded a Liberty ship with old ordnance, towed it about 25 miles off Cape Flattery, and the destroyer I was on got to shoot it until it blew up. Many shells and bombs looked to have survived the blast, judging by what was flying thru the air. We were about 8 miles away.

Unexploded ordinance is not just a west coast thing, apparently. In 2012, an unexploded 75 mm shell was found on the grounds of Worton Creek Marina. This is just across the Bay from Aberdeen Proving Ground. When our boat was there and they were testing, Stella would shake a little with every detonation.

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012...llery-round-found-at-a-marina-in-chestertown/

One estimate says there are 100,000 unexploded mines worldwide:

Old sea mines still have plenty of spark

Love the final sentence: “Any ship can be a mine-sweeper—-once.”

As for old shells not detonating (from Wiki):

Although comparatively rare, unexploded ordnance from the American Civil War is still occasionally found and is still deadly 150 years later. Union and Confederate troops fired an estimated 1.5 million artillery shells and explosive cannonballs at each other from 1861 to 1865. As many as one in five did not explode.[36] In 1973, during the restoration of Weston Manor, an 18th-century plantation house in Hopewell, Virginia that was shelled by Union gunboats during the Civil War, a live cannonball was found embedded in the dining room ceiling. The ball was disarmed and is shown to visitors to the plantation. In 1999, a Civil War cannonball fell from a large tree in the yard of country music singer Jimmy Dean's home overlooking the James River, where it had been lodged since the battle of Chaffin's Bluff.[37]

In late March 2008, a 44-pound, 8-inch mortar shell was uncovered at the Petersburg National Battlefield, the site of a 292-day siege. The shell was taken to the city landfill where it was safely detonated by ordnance disposal experts.[36] Also in 2008, Civil War enthusiast Sam White was killed when a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball he was attempting to disarm in the driveway of his home in a Richmond, Virginia suburb exploded. The explosion sent a chunk of shrapnel crashing into a house a quarter-mile away.[36]

Through the 90's they were still finding bombs on the beach just a few miles north of Atlantic City.

Every good Nor'easter would uncover some more.

The bird watchers would get all riled when we would transport FT Dix EOD types out there and land the helo on the beach. Cant imagine how they would feel if one ever went off near one of them...

I suspect this mine was moored at depth to defend against submarines approaching the harbor, and the chain or cable finally rusted through. Stuff like that at depth doesn't get much movement from surface waves.

I have learned to ask around for local knowledge/history about places not anchor.


French/Belgium farmers still plow up unexploded ordnance in former no mans land regions. They come to the surface like field stones in freeze/thaw cycles. Occasionally they go BOOM! French tourist agency won't talk about that. But most are just stacked up in a barn and collected by the military for disposal. A few were WMD (mustard agent). Those are the ones we helped get rid of.

GoneFarrell said:

I suspect this mine was moored at depth to defend against submarines approaching the harbor, and the chain or cable finally rusted through. Stuff like that at depth doesn't get much movement from surface waves.

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That was my thought as well however I honestly don't know what anti-sub defenses were used during WWII in Puget Sound. Despite having lived and boated on Puget Sound my entire life it is always surprising to me how much history I'm not familiar with.

If you’ll please allow a little thread drift. I have a civil war canon shell that I don’t think has been made safe. I bought it almost fifty years ago from an antique store. I assumed it was safe as there was a hole drilled in the end. Later research has led me to believe the hole was for lighting the fuse, not for taking the powder out.

I’d like to get the powder out but if I can’t figure out a safe way to do it, I’ll have to give it to the bomb squad and let them destroy it. I’d hate to destroy this historical artifact.

Any ideas? There is a guy in Tennessee who drills them but I don’t know how to get it to him with out driving it myself.

The (almost) funny coincidence is the Navy’s Undersea Warfare Museum is literally right up the road from there in Keyport, WA.

U. S. Naval Undersea Museum | Keyport, Washington

It is an interesting, free museum. If anyone is ever travelling along Route 3 north of Bremerton, it makes a great stop.

Civilitas said:

The (almost) funny coincidence is the Navy’s Undersea Warfare Museum is literally right up the road from there in Keyport, WA.

U. S. Naval Undersea Museum | Keyport, Washington

It is an interesting, free museum. If anyone is ever travelling along Route 3 north of Bremerton, it makes a great stop.

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I was thinking the same thing. I've never stopped there but it is one of the things I'd like to do this winter via boat.

HopCar said:

If you’ll please allow a little thread drift. I have a civil war canon shell that I don’t think has been made safe. I bought it almost fifty years ago from an antique store. I assumed it was safe as there was a hole drilled in the end. Later research has led me to believe the hole was for lighting the fuse, not for taking the powder out.

I’d like to get the powder out but if I can’t figure out a safe way to do, it, I’ll have to give it to the bomb squad and let them destroy it. I’d hate to destroy this historical artifact.

Any ideas? There is a guy in Tennessee who drills them but I don’t know how to get it to him with out driving it myself.

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Wish I could help, Parks. I live in Tennessee but my record with unused ordinance hasn’t been so good. When I was younger and stupider (first grade) my parents found me on the back porch throwing a very large live machine gun round against a brick wall—I was told it was 50 caliber, but can’t substantiate. I got it from a fellow student who got it (stole it) from his brother who was in the military. My father went, well, ballistic, returned it to the brothers’ parents, reamed all of them thoroughly and raised hell with the school I attended.

I’m proud to report that today I’m much smarter and would only throw such a projectile against a carpeted surface .

Wow Angus, you and I have a lot on common. I found a fifty caliber shell next to the railroad tracks near my house. I tried to set it off by throwing it against the track. My Dad dropped it in the Miami River.

When is was 12 or 13 I found a little cylinder with two wires coming out. It looked like a blasting cap but no it couldn’t be. I threw it against a bulldozer blade several times. When it wouldn’t explode, I stuck it in one of those round fire things they used to mark construction sites. Yup, it exploded big time. Scared the piss out of me.

dhays said:

I was thinking the same thing. I've never stopped there but it is one of the things I'd like to do this winter via boat.

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I did that a few years ago. There was a short term public tie up a quick walk to the museum.

HopCar said:

Wow Angus, you and I have a lot on common. I found a fifty caliber shell next to the railroad tracks near my house. I tried to set it off by throwing it against the track. My Dad dropped it in the Miami River.



When is was 12 or 13 I found a little cylinder with two wires coming out. It looked like a blasting cap but no it couldn’t be. I threw it against a bulldozer blade several times. When it wouldn’t explode, I stuck it in one of those round fire things they used to mark construction sites. Yup, it exploded big time. Scared the piss out of me.

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Brother, is that you?

My wife and I found an air to air missile in the Abacos one time. And, a spaceship in San Sal. I'll have to look for that pix. Nothing that would blow-up, though.

Portage_Bay said:

I did that a few years ago. There was a short term public tie up a quick walk to the museum.

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Hmm, that's not where the museum was when I visited (2002, and again ~2015). If you look at the "p" in "Keyport" on that chart, then drop down to the map grid line below it, that's roughly the location. Still a reasonable walk. Maybe that's another museum? I don't know Keyport downtown at all.

Anyway, a neat place. And I still have to chuckle that a tethered mine came loose right by the museum...

ghost said:

Brother, is that you?

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Yup!

My dad armored WWII naval fighters, came back with a suitcase full stuff interesting to a 12 y.o. like me. 50 cal ammo belts and such. Somehow I still have all my fingers and toes, maybe a bit more common sense!

My farming neighbor taught me how to use dynamite to blow stumps and tight rock, same time frame. He let me pack the dynamite in cracks, backfill with water dams and such, but never let me touch detonators. Smart farmer.

We'd hunker down behind his John Deere and touch it off from the tractor battery, good times for a kid!

Kids these days miss out on a lot of scary good fun from when I was a pup.
No way a computer game compares to using energetics for their intended purposes.

Thread drift alert.....

Back in the 70's, The US Military would run ordinance via rail to Port Chicago then to Travis AFB for transport to Nam. In 1973, we had an ordinance train coming through the Roseville, CA rail yard catch fire...brake fire, I believe. It set off explosions that wiped out the Antelope, CA post office stop and surrounding homes and sent debris and bombs flying in all directions, including straight down into the ground. A fast cleanup and rebuilding of the rail yard resulted in many undiscovered explosives.


https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article145902054.html

Fast forward to 1997 and the rail yard is expanding. Crews discover what looks like a water heater buried in the ground. Eventually many bombs were discovered unexploded and the early ones were detonated on site in the middle of the night. They considered the munitions too unstable to safely transport. We could hear the concussion of the 2AM explosions from my home in Antelope 4-5 miles away.

Many homes closest to the tracks were damaged by falling shrapnel before the idiots in charge moved the detonation off site to an Army munitions storage facility. Not sure how many they ultimately found and detonated but it was significant.

Ahhhh, those crazy Californians! Gotta love 'em!

Did anyone notice a lack of marine growth on the mine. I don’t know when we switched from contact mines to proximity mines but I bet it was in the 60’s. A contact mine would have been floating for years and would be an unrecognizable hunk of marine growth. The picture I saw was showing very little marine growth. Considering this thing was found just miles from Keystone, a navel torpedo testing facility, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t an old training device that the Navy disposed of years ago that ended up in some ones garage and either by death or theft ended up in the hands of some kids who thought it would be funny to toss in the sound. I really doubt if it’s a real WWII sea mine.

Just a few years ago a building was being torn down when the contractor found 6 WWII torpedoes in the basement. The area was evacuated and a specialist flown in from San Francisco. Turned out they were old training aids and not reall but it took a specialist to figure that out.