Post #385
The world’s largest unexploded bomb
18th April 2004, late evening | Comments (16)
Back in January I read a story in The Daily Telegraph that I meant to share with you. It’s the story of the world’s largest unexploded bomb.
Luckily it’s in Belgium…
Farmer who is sitting on a bomb
The bomb — or more accurately mine — was the product of one of the greatest and most secret engineering exercises of the First World War. It lay half-forgotten for 80 years until British researchers were able to establish its exact whereabouts using maps of the period.
In January, 1916, thousands of British miners began tunneling out of the Ypres Salient towards the German lines on the Messines Ridge.
The plan was to plant 25 enormous mines under the enemy trenches and then blow them shortly before a major offensive, planned for the summer of that year. The operation was postponed until the summer of 1917, but when it took place the results were spectacular.
More than 1,000,000lbs of high explosive were packed into underground chambers along a seven-mile front. On June 7, 19 of the mines detonated in the space of 30 seconds in the biggest series of controlled explosions yet seen. Buildings within a 30-mile radius rocked on their foundations, and the bang was heard in Downing Street. In Switzerland, seismographs registered a small earthquake.
As many as 6,000 German troops perished in the inferno and Messines Ridge quickly taken by General Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army. The Battle of Messines was regarded as the most successful local operation of the war.
But it left a legacy: six mines were not used. Four on the extreme southern flank were not required because the ridge fell so quickly, and another, a 20,000lb mine codenamed Peckham, was abandoned before the attack due to a tunnel collapse.
The sixth, and one of the biggest, was planted under a ruined farm called La Petite Douvre. It was lost when the Germans mounted a counter-mining attack, and never used.
After the war La Petite Douvre was rebuilt by its owners, the Mahieu family, and later renamed La Basee Cour. The mine is beneath a barn, next to the farmhouse.
Amazing, eh? And the Mahieu family still lives there, apparently unconcerned by the thought of 22 tons of high explosives lying 80 feet below them.
*tick tock, tick tock* … Oh la vache!!
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Blogmarks
A collection of miscellaneous links that don't merit a main blog posting, but which are interesting none-the-less.
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
— George W Bush (9)- What WordPress is doing to combat comment spam. (1)
- Mobile web tools, from Pukupi. (1)
- Pukupi’s top 10 hints for building interoperable mobile Web sites. (3)
- The photography of E.J. Peiker. (4)
Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology.
(3)- Some handy tips for advanced Google use. (35)
- Make your own church signs, or view some real ones. (8)
- Michael Heilemann is doing a great job with his new WordPress theme; Kubrick. (1)
- I’m late to the party, but Dan has a book out. (1)
- What a crazy concept for laying out housing estates. (3)
- In San Francisco, I live here. (Try the zoom feature.) (1)
- Spider-Man reviews crayons. [Via] (3)
- Some beautiful images from photographer Greg Downing. (2)
- Lots of links, from the Link Bunnies. (1)
- Nice “when I was a child” sort of post from Stuart. (1)
- How much does SafariSorter cost? (4)
- Some handy maintenance tips for Mac owners running Panther. (2)
- Alex King launches Use Tasks: a hosted service for Tasks and Tasks Pro™. (2)
- Min Jung, Anil Dash, and I get interviewed for HBO’s Real Sex. (10)
Blog-roll
A selection of blogs I read on a regular basis.
- Hmm, the blog-roll seems to be a little bit broken right now (it may be that the blo.gs service is having problems). I’ve sent myself an email about this problem, and will try to fix it ASAP.