German Experts Defuse WWII Bomb in Rhine

Allied bombers targeted Koblenz, Germany, in 1944 and 1945, as part of a total drop of nearly 2 million tons of bombs on the country in an effort to target the industries that were making the weapons and the machines and otherwise the armed forces and their war effort. The bombing efforts were so successful in and around Koblenz that not much of the city was left after the war &#151 except of 1.0-ton unexploded bomb, of course.

Like much of the country, Koblenz was site of a rebuilding effort after the end of the war. Now a pleasant city near the place where the Mosel River and the Rhine River meet up, Koblenz was nonetheless in the crosshairs of the bomb squad yet again recently, except this time it was to finish the job started by the British plane that dropped a bomb nearly 60 years ago.

Seems the bomb fell in the Rhine River, with nary an explosion to be had. The river being rather deep, it proved a good hiding place for this little ordnance number (undoubtedly not the first or last of its kind). In fact, the bomb, the largest aerial mine discovered so far, was found in 16 inches of water, surrounded by hundreds of sandbags, revealed by recent drops in water levels in the wake of a particularly dry German November.

The government wanted to get rid of it, of course, but on their own terms, so they ordered a mass evacuation of about 45,000 people in a 1.1-mile radius around the bomb's final resting place. The places targeted for evacuation included hospitals, shopping centers, and even a prison. (The government took special care with the inhabitants of that residence hall.)

The bomb squad had a particularly tough time because the explosives housed with the detonator were adept at reacting with water over time. Why the bomb hadn't yet gone off couldn't immediately be told, probably because the focus had been entirely on the defusal process.

In the end, the bomb didn't go off and everyone was able to go back to their normal lives — which is certainly something that didn't happen in the mid-1940s.