Unexploded Ordnance at Brownsville,Wa

[porman]

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/une...rina/822574442

[sbu22]

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 ......

[High Wire]

Yikes!!!

[dhays]

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

http://www.khq.com/story/38981075/un...ear-bainbridge

[dhays]

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

[dhays]

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

[porman]

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.

[GoneFarrell]

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!

[AlaskaProf]

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...

[ghost]

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?

[porman]

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.

[dhays]

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?

[markpierce]

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.

[Lepke]

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.

[angus99]

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/...n-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]

[psneeld]

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...

[GoneFarrell]

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.

[dhays]

Originally Posted by GoneFarrell

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.

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.

[HopCar]

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.

[Civilitas]

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.