Residents of the German town of Limberg woke up to a startling sight this morning: a crater in a field as large as a house. The explosion was apparently caused by a leftover bomb from World War II. Unexploded bombs are a problem in Germany and other European countries, as long-buried weapons periodically surface or spontaneously explode.



The incident took place in the central German town of Ahlbach, just north of Frankfurt. Town residents reported hearing and feeling a large explosion in the early morning hours of Sunday the 23rd, though no one appears to have actually seen it. An inspection the next day revealed a crater 33 feet wide and 14 feet deep in the middle of a barley field. Officials blamed a decomposing bomb detonator for the explosion.

Aerial view of the crater. BORIS ROESSLER Getty Images

According to the BBC, explosive ordnance demolition teams concluded the explosive device was a 250 kilogram (551 pound) aerial bomb dropped by the Allies during World War II. The bomb was likely a M43, AN-M43, or AN-M64 500 pound general purpose bomb. General purpose bombs at terminal velocity will penetrate 3-4 building stories before detonating, so it’s not surprising this bomb buried itself so well.

The M65 was five feet long and 14 inches wide, and carried a payload of 280 pounds of TNT. The bomb casing, designed to produce fragment into lethal shrapnel, was .3 inches thick. An explosive ordnance disposal guidebook describes their purpose as to destroy “steel railway bridges, underground railways, seacraft such as light cruisers, concrete docks, medium sized buildings, etc.”

The railroad marshaling yard at Limburg, 1945. Central Press Getty Images

Germany operated several facilities in the area important to the war effort, including Limburg Field and an important railroad junction and marshaling yard. Bombs dropped during the war often missed by miles. Falling at a high rate of speed, Sunday’s bomb buried itself in the soft soil and remained undetected for decades. Whoever cultivated the barley field obviously had no idea 280 pounds of highly unstable explosives lurked underneath.

Seventy five years after the end of World War II unexploded bombs are still a chronic problem not only in postwar Germany but across Europe as a whole. Such spontaneous explosions such are rare but not unheard of. Government explosives experts drill holes and look for bombs using magnetometers, searching for the signature of a bomb’s steel casing.

Still, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bombs were dropped across Europe and no one has a full accounting. A 2016 article in Air & Space quoted one German bomb specialist who believes the problem will haunt Europe for centuries, saying, “there will still be bombs 200 years from now."



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