German WW2 bomb leaves giant crater in field

[muriel_volestrangler]

The blast, at 03:52 (01:52 GMT) on Sunday, startled residents east of the German city of Koblenz and left a crater 10m (33ft) wide and four metres deep in a corn field.

A photo taken by a drone later revealed the impact of the night-time explosion.
...
But, on close inspection of the site, bomb disposal experts decided it was "with almost absolute certainty" a World War Two bomb. They believed it was a 250kg (550lb) bomb dropped by a plane.
...
Officials say it is not unheard of for detonators to decompose to the extent that the bomb goes off by itself.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48746557

('German' as in 'dropped on Germany' ...)

[Historic NY]

1. The bump in the night...

the WWI battlefields still hold a nightmare of unexploded shells and mines. The mines consist of tens of thousands of lbs. of explosive buried in tunnels underground, some took years to dig.

[link:https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-great-war-clean-up/3009456.article|]

[link:https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/biggest-blast-before-atomic-bombs-messines-world-war/|]

At Messines 19 planted mines went off, some of it didn't its tonnage of explosives remains underground .

I was there last yr, there is a farm directly above one of these sites today. someday....someday.

[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_(1917)|]

[TexasProgresive]

2. Interesting, but not weird.

There's unexploded ordinance in battle fields all over the world. I have heard that they're parts of France that are off limits because of WW I ordinance. I remember an unexploded V2 rocket was found in an English harbor a few years ago. The explosives become more unstable the older they are. Lucky the farmer did not trigger that thing when he was working the field.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I haven't heard of them going off spontaneously

In the middle of the night, in the middle of a field, this does seem to have been 'spontaneous'.

[TexasProgresive]

4. This bomb was probably an allied bomb

Many used delayed fuses or were intended to become mines that would be set off by slight tilting or magnets used by those trying to disable it. The ground could have shifted enough to set it off or the detenator became so unstable from age that a breeze blowing across the field would do.

Here's a link to an interesting wiki article on unexploded ordinance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance