PSA: old bombs are dangerous bombs. If you find something you suspect may be unexploded ordinance, contact the police or (in the US) regional ATF office. Many of the compounds used in older explosives (e.g. TNT) grow more unstable as time passes, actually increasing the change of accidental detonation
Case example: while I don't remember all of the details (it was 15 years ago), there was an exhibit in a small museum in my hometown that had several civil war era percussion fuse cannon balls. An explosives-certified agent at the local ATF office heard that one of the curators would occasionally show children visiting the museum how neat they were, since they would warm up when you shake them. Ends up they were still live, but that the explosive had degraded; a little more energy (say, from dropping it after shaking it for a while) could have set the charge off, killing or seriously injuring the kids at the exhibit. They were safely destroyed, but it stuck in my mind as a cautionary tale not to screw around with old ordinance.
Indeed. It would hardly be more clear if a little flag popped out reading "I am still dangerous." I wonder what sort of misunderstanding causes a person to think this is reasonable.
It struck me as ridiculous when I heard the story, but I can somewhat see how it happens -- first, civil-war era means that it is /old/, which makes it seem less dangerous unless you know about the age->instability relationship with explosives; second, it looks like an inert ball of iron, so there is nothing that really screams 'hazardous' to an uneducated viewer.
I imagine most of them are in the ocean somewhere, still, plenty of WWII ordnance is found all over the world, always good to remember that things like this are possible.
Off-topic: Do we really need all the "Diabolical plan", "Wicked weapons" spiel. This isn't a 1940s comic book. It was a war and all sides were up to this sort of off the wall stuff ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb for example ) as well as more conventional ways of killing people.
I had to laugh at that part, as well. Sure, a B-24 is a "Liberator", and B-17s were, uh, friendly???
I think they meant to write "desperate", rather than "diabolical", for a plan to blow random holes in the countryside. Not that I would want to be under one when it came down, regardless of country of origin.
In Japan, a very crowded country, it might have seemed effective to drop bombs at random - killing people at random as a terror campaign. But California is mostly empty space. Making random black spots on remote pastures and empty hillsides has a lesser effect on moral.
I think it likely that the Japanese command were merely profoundly ignorant of the living situation in America including population density.
As I recall there was no expectation that the bombs themselves would cause any significant casualties. The intention was for them to start forest fires, which would hurt US civilian morale and require manpower to put out.
One of the clever things that Ian M. Banks did in his Culture series was naming military ship classes. So rather than "Liberator", he had "Torturer", "Gangster", and "Psychopath" classes of ship.
Those names make me think more of British ship names[1], which tend to be more aggressive, which makes sense given Bank's nationality. Also the background of The Culture trying to be taken more seriously by other civilisations who thought they were too soft. A sort of "We might be soft, but we can make machines that definitely aren't".
Plenty of WWI ordinance being found, now a hundred years on. Much of it still dangerous, and as recently as March of 2014 two people were killed by a WWI bomb in Belgium.
Nice way to start a WWII article
"Those who forget the past are liable to trip over it."
Especially considering that "the past" doesn't exist and that history is written by winners. It changes according to current political needs and in this specific case western history is us-centric and russians were just "passing-by" when in fact it was mainly thanks to the russians that germany was defeated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Casualties says it all.
Related to the article:
These japanese bombs are surely interesting for geeks but saying "evil geniuses" is a bit overstating as, to me, they seem as a desperate attempt to hurt US inland.
Of course then you have to remember that USSR were allied with Nazis before and at the start of WW2, invaded Poland to start WW2 in 1939 together with them (ok, 16 days later, but the invasion was still taking place), and only started fighting Germany after Hitler betrayed and invaded them in 1941.
So USSR made it possible to start WW2 in the first place, then when it backfired they managed to defend (with big industrial help from the west), and then hit back.
Good for them, but expecting gratitude from people they invaded, mass murdered, "liberated" and then occupied till nineties is just bullshit.
Also USSR casualties really shouldn't be labeled as "Russians". Russians were +- 50% of population of USSR and the fighting mostly took place on Polish, Ukrainian and Belarussian territory, so I'd say it was at most 50% Russians and 50% other nationalities.
I won't take a definite stance, but would probably agree with you that the USSR had a bigger role defeating Germany than the US/UK. However, I would contend that "casualties says it all" is the wrong way to look at it.
The Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder ill equipped to deal with war (ex. having two soldiers share a rifle during the battle of Stalingrad). I haven't looked, but it would be more interesting to see total german casualties on the western and eastern fronts. And further more, how many of those casualties were caused my the miserable russian winter vs actual combat.
> Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder ill equipped
That is simplistic (and largely wrong) view fueled by propaganda and post war "Winners (or current cold war combatants) rewrite history) OP is talking about.
The German invasion of USSR caught them completely off guard, without the organization or material needed to fight. Reeling they did what they had to (sacrifice hundreds of thousands) to save Moscow, and buy time to move production east and organize a real defense. It was a heroic sacrifice and amazing military victory to survive the blitzkrieg.
Later in the war USSR had the most of everything planes, tanks, artillery, and still men. Arguably the best tank of the war, one of if not the best ground attack plane.
During the later winter offensives it was the Germans who sent their troops ill prepared for war. And all the Hitler no retreat orders led to many german meatgrinders.
First, they expected huge casualties. That is part of my point. Manpower was one of their only resources at start of war. The leaders and the people made the tough decision to sacrifice them to stay in the war. Unlike two previous victims of Blitzkrieg.
Second, those weren't universal. Only used in specific circumstances (as your link states). And IIRC, largely done away with later in the war after USSR production caught up and they won strategic initiative.
Please. Had USSR had the territorial situation of Poland (Germany to north and west, german allies participating in invasion south and east) it would fall just as well.
No point in sacrificing hundreds of tousands of lives (which BTW Poles did in 1944 in Warsaw Uprising anyway - bad mistake of Polish government).
BTW a lot of USSR early problems with German betrayal were self-inflicted (red terror disposed of big part of educated officers for example, also Stalin prepared invasion of his own - there was infrastructure prepared to attack, not to defend).
You see, even a sentence like "The Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder" to me seems SO unfair and driven by a deeply conditioned mentality - please, don't take this personally and I don't really mean to offend -. While lack of organisation and proper equipment was a fact, they also were fighting a war in their own country. Which is quite a different story than just sending people abroad having an entire nation supporting you. This is something nor the US nor the UK has ever faced during their whole "modern" history.
Those two soldiers sharing a rifle in the US would have been called heroes and would have had tens of movies covering their stories. But as they were Russians, they were just two poor unlucky men sent against their will to the meat grinder while probably they were soldiers well aware of giving their lives -trying to- protect their people.
It's this basic lack of respect which is hurting me and that just confirms how history is the result of books written and approved by the current political power.
To me, casualties say it all as they are the only real indicator of the suffering of a country (which goes well beyond propaganda). Also consider in such situations the line between official soldiers, unofficial militias and lone fighters is just a matter of definitions and asking "it was winter or a bullet?" is just the wrong question.
You could invert it and consider on which front the Germans suffered the most losses - clearly the Germans suffered the majority of their casualties fighting the Russians.
Reading German biographies you often stumble across accounts of people being threatened with a stint on The Eastern Front or discussing how to avoid going east. The Germans certainly disliked the Eastern Front most.
Arguing over who had the bigger role seems foolhardy to me. The masses of Soviet manpower were critical to defeating the Nazis, as were the masses of American war equipment (which the Soviets used extensively). Take away either one, and the war looks much different (and much, much worse).
After the single lethal attack in 1945: "Several Japanese civilians have visited ... to offer their apologies for the deaths that took place here, and several cherry trees have been planted around the monument as a symbol of peace" [1]
As far as wars go I would say that a scattershot plan designed to cause forest fires in order to distract the enemy is about one of the most benign things they could have come up with given the technology at their disposal. Interesting as the bomb itself is, the article seems to be unnecessarily polemic.
Case example: while I don't remember all of the details (it was 15 years ago), there was an exhibit in a small museum in my hometown that had several civil war era percussion fuse cannon balls. An explosives-certified agent at the local ATF office heard that one of the curators would occasionally show children visiting the museum how neat they were, since they would warm up when you shake them. Ends up they were still live, but that the explosive had degraded; a little more energy (say, from dropping it after shaking it for a while) could have set the charge off, killing or seriously injuring the kids at the exhibit. They were safely destroyed, but it stuck in my mind as a cautionary tale not to screw around with old ordinance.