The artical says it was placed there by the Germans but the link in the artical says

that it was an an american bomb..........not enough info to figure who to blame ....

eeny...meeny...miny...moe..........moe..... it was George W's fault.

When my kid was in school in Port Isabel Tx one of the shrimp boats pulled up a WWII practice bomb from the Gulf of Mexico smaller load unexploded. They closed off the whole area and evacuated the primary school a block away. There is probably stuff like that still out there considering as much as was shot off in a 6 year time span.

They dropped like rain over Japan from B52s. A goodly number did not explode and where buried by the force of impact. Every few years one gets dug up when they're excavating foundations for new buildings. Freaky stuff. I would hate to live through air raids. How terrifying.

You mean B-17 the B-52 started in the early 1950s and were used in Vietnam ,I know because I saw what they did in South East Asia.The issue with finding old Bombs does not surprise me ,there all over the World ,I am glad that no one got killed or Hurt.

most of the stuff dropped on Japan was toward the end, B-29s, out of Tinian....

You mean B-29s.

Yup, the B-29 Superfortress. As far as I know, the B-17 wasn't used over Japan, only in Europe.

The B-17 also participated to a lesser extent in the War in the Pacific where it conducted raids against Japanese shipping and airfields - Wikipedia

Imagine the fuss that will ensue when/if someone locates any of the nuclear weapons that have been lost in the last 50 years! I do believe that the count is up to 8 at this point.... Don't worry, the military has assured everyone that they aren't "Armed".

Tiny_Rebel, you are right B-17 was used in the Pacific, but not against Japan's main land. We did not have any bases close to Japan for 17s to reach it untill very late in the war. By that stage 29s preaty much flatened most everything in Japan.

They were B24 Liberators

Yes they were, my father flew one.

My dad did too,Montana Woman! He's almost 90 and still in pretty good shape. When the war ended he was released from the Army Air Force and had a chance to fly a brand new B24 from Honolulu to San Francisco. When my dad found out he had a choice of the plane or a Navy ship,he took the boat! I asked him why that decision,you would have got home faster? His answer was,"It was my duty to fly in that plane,but the fact is if I had a choice I wouldn't spend another G--damn minute in it"!

Hangon says: "The artical says it was placed there by the Germans but the link in the artical says that it was an an american bomb."

The link refers to "Allemand" which is a French reference to 'Germans.'

'b' says: "They dropped like rain over Japan from B52s."

Reminds me of the Venezualan president, Chavez, who stated thet we dropped nuclear weapons from "B-76" aircraft.

[Did we ever have a "B-76?"]

Remember that many of bombs dropped by the B-29 Superfortress were actually incendiary bombs (napalm) and not explosives. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1) The Army Air Force discovered that many, many regular bombs were missing the targets. For example, when attempting to bomb the Nakajima Aircraft Company in Tokyo, only 24 of 111 aircraft dropped bombs near the target.

The Army Air Force then realized they had discovered the jet stream: if they were flying with the jet stream, the bombs went over the target, if they were flying against it, the bombs fell short. In addition to this, bad bombing weather made it very difficult to accurately spot.

2) At this point in the war, Japan rarely even attempted to scramble fighters. They relied mostly on heavy anti aircraft artillery, which was only effective for hitting targets at higher altitudes. It was ineffective at hitting low altitude targets.

3) They wanted to maximize damage to the Japanese Empire to force them to surrender. The Showa Emperor and the Americans had hoped that the battle at Okinawa would be the decisive battle of the war, but it had turned out not to be. Both sides wanted to end the war, but the Japanese wanted to do it without giving up. Therefore, they

Because of this and other reasons, General Le May ordered low altitude (5,000 feet), night time missions to avoid the jet stream and to surprise the Japanese, who were used to day time bombings anyway. Air crews of the B-29 began to think for a time that the generals ordering these missions were nuts because the B-29 was designed for high altitude (20,000+ feet), having a pressurize cabin and everything. They also had many of the guns removed from the B-29s to make them lighter.

This strategy turned out to be very effective. Tokyo was one of the most densely populated cities in the world and many of the houses were made of highly flammable materials.

On March 9, 1945 Le May ordered 325 B-29s to fly over and bomb the Sumida District. The radio reports began to come in to Le May, with the simple word "Conflagration." Tokyo was in ashes. As many as 100,000 civilians died on that night alone. The air crews of the B-29s reported being able to smell, at 5,000 feet, the stench of burning human and animal flesh.

Tokyo was 51% destroyed, Yokohama 58%, Okayama 70%. Because of the immense destruction, the Japanese government "wrote off" the cities and depopulated them and removed their military equipment. These bombings are cited as one reason the United States had no problem dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the atomic bombs caused fewer immediate deaths.

The number of casualties makes this a very sad thing, but what is equally disturbing is that because some many of the explosive bombs fell unpredictably, no one has any idea where they may be.

Everybody is correct here. B-24's, B-17's and B-29's were used in the Pacific. B-29's bombed the mainland of Japan. but the FIRST planes to bomb Tokyo were B-25 Mitchell's which were used for Dolittle's raid in early 1942. Those bombs that they find around the world are dangerous because the TNT in them becomes really unstable over a period of years. Peace.

Sorry for the tactical error. I am not a history buff and certainly not someone who has any desire to study war. It appalls me. My concern is not over what kind of plane drops the bomb, it is that bombs are/were dropped by all sides and civilians died on all sides. And there are still bombs endangering innocent people more than 1/2 a century later. My sons a grunt and I can't even remember what kind of weapons he carries (except the K-bar) and I bought him 10 magpuls for Christmas. God please protect our troops.

I do know what VSO's are as they pertain to our strategy in Afghan - any points for that? (That was a joke btw - not going for pnts)

'b' says: " My concern is not over what kind of plane drops the bomb, it is that bombs are/were dropped by all sides."

'b,'

If you look closely at the picture you will see that this bomb was never dropped at all... It has no 'fins' which,normally, would have been attached just before loading into a waiting aircraft's bomb-bay or onto a 'hard-point.' All that 'stuff' which you see at its rear consists of building material while the business end seems to be in really good shape. It is not a 'huge' bomb as these things are measured. I would guess that it is a little more than 500 lbs.

The Germans 'booby trapped' many buildings in cities as they withdrew from them. Artillery shells and bombs were used quite often; sometimes in conjunction with land mines.

b-895713 - I hope your son comes home safe to you. Thank him for his service. That's Okay about the B-52 thing. On the 50th anniversary of Dolittle's raid on Tokyo when he took 16 B-25's off the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet in April '42 and bombed the Japanese on their own home ground a radio announcer said Dolittle took off the deck of the Hornet with 16 B-52's.... now THAT I'd like to see. Peace.

Fascism by any other name is still fascism.

Prescott Bush, Georgies grand daddy worked with Hitler too.

Economically, the Nazis were socialist, but most people don't remember Hitler for his economic policies. The Nazis were more of a conservative group. They believed in preserving the German ethnicity and German culture, just as conservatives in this country believe in preserving American culture and values. Unfortunately, the Nazis believed that preserving all things German meant off everybody who wasn't German. Hopefully conservatives in this country won't try to take the same path...

Well,even though the Nazi's thought they were the supreme group,they also thought American's were 'next in line'.You could tell that by how nazi's treated prisoners.American's were respected by the Nazi's as worthy opponents,so the Nazi's treated American's good in POW camps.However,when it came to Russian prisoners,the nazi's thought of them as filthy rats and killed them on a daily basis.

@ Starbuck49:

Remember how during the Clinton era there were all those rabid
EOBs (Enemies of Bill) who seemingly devoted their every waking hour to
propagating scurrilous stories about the president and his family? Well, an
equally dedicated crew is now spreading sensational allegations about Dubya and
his forebears. (Sample: the president's grandfather not only financed the Nazis,
he used concentration-camp prisoners as slaves.) So each side gets a chance to
drag the other through the mud. Is this a great country or what?

Though the Bush family's detractors are legion, one of the most
prominent is John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor and past president of the
Florida Holocaust Museum in Saint Petersburg. In 1994 Loftus coauthored a book
with Mark Aarons entitled The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western
Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People. The book alleges various misdeeds by
George W.'s father, George H.W., his grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his
great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Since space is limited we'll focus on
the accusations against Prescott Bush, which in my opinion are the most
serious.

The central charge against Prescott Bush has a basis in fact. In
1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized several
companies in which he had an interest. Prescott at the time was an investment
banker with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), which had funneled U.S. capital into
Germany during the 1920s and '30s. Among the seized companies was the Union Banking
Corporation (UBC) of New York, which was controlled by German industrialist
Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen had been an early financier of the Nazi party — in fact,
in 1941 he published a book entitled I Paid Hitler. Ergo, Prescott
helped finance
the Nazis.

An article by journalist Toby Rogers posted on Loftus's Web site
makes an even more explosive charge. Another company in which Prescott and his
associates had a stake was the Silesian-American Corporation (SAC), which owned
several industrial concerns in Poland. The Auschwitz death camp was established
in a district where SAC already had a steel plant. The plant allegedly used
forced labor from Auschwitz during World War II. The article asserts that "a
portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,'
according to a Dutch intelligence agent." (See
www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.asp.)

The slave labor charge is easy to dismiss. SAC plants in Poland
were taken over by the German government after the Nazi invasion of 1939, and
the Auschwitz prison camp wasn't established until 1940. No one can seriously claim
that Prescott Bush managed camp inmates in any of those plants.

Prescott's involvement with Nazi finance is more complicated.
Though Thyssen had been an ardent backer of the Nazis in the early days, he
broke with them in 1938 after the Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews. He fled
to Switzerland the following year, and Hitler confiscated his fortune and
stripped him of his citizenship. In I Paid Hitler Thyssen confessed his
role in financing
the Nazis and denounced the Führer. Arrested in Vichy France, he spent the
balance of the war as an Axis prisoner. Prescott Bush, for his part, owned a
single share of stock (of 4,000) in UBC, the Thyssen bank. According to a 2001
Boston Globe piece, the New York Herald Tribune ran a story in
July 1942 headlined "Hitler's Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank," in which Prescott
and other BBH partners "explain[ed] to government regulators that their position
[as directors of UBC] was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client."

So, did Bush and his firm finance the Nazis and enable Germany
to rearm? Indirectly, yes. But they had a lot of company. Some of the most
distinguished names in American business had investments or subsidiaries in
prewar Germany, including Standard Oil and General Motors. Critics have argued
for years that without U.S. money, the Nazis could never have waged war. But
American business has always invested in totalitarian regimes — witness our
dealings with mainland China.

Loftus tells me there's more to it than that. He says that the
value of German industrial assets in which Bush and friends invested increased
during World War II, in part due to slave labor, and that Bush benefited from
this increase when the assets were returned — supposedly he got $1.5 million
when UBC was liquidated in 1951. I'll buy the claim that Bush got his share of
UBC back — it was an American bank, after all — but the idea that his German
holdings increased in value despite being obliterated by Allied bombs is
ridiculous.

@Mr. Bubbs:

You are right that conservatives are trying to preserve AMERICAN culture and values. What you appear to forget is that we, AMERICANS, are a melting pot of a world of cultures and our values, and rely on the FREEDOM to practice said cultures and values without fear of government interference and interruption! To merely suppose that any party (Liberal or Conservative) would resort to genocide is ludicrous!

Random pennsylvanian

Well,even though the Nazi's thought they were the supreme group,they also thought American's were 'next in line'.You could tell that by how nazi's treated prisoners.American's were respected by the Nazi's as worthy opponents,so the Nazi's treated American's good in POW camps.However,when it came to Russian prisoners,the nazi's thought of them as filthy rats and killed them on a daily basis.

Where did you learn this?????

I had an uncle that was captured by them in WW2, they Nazi's did not treat American POW, good. Many times the Geneva convention was violated by the Nazi's when dealing with American POW's.

At least I can say the American POWs in Germany were treated better than those captured by the Japanese.

Oh you're so full of BS, Random Penn.

Not only were American POWs treated like all other POWs, but Hitler saw America as Germany's greatest potential rival. Hitler wrote, but never published, a sequel to Mein Kampf that was discovered in the late 50's as Americans were sorting through the troves of documents the Nazis left behind. It was never published because Hitler felt he'd be giving away some of his plans to his enemies.

In "Mein Kampf 2" - at it's commonly referred to - Hitler wrote of an eventual war with the U.S. Not only because the country was rich in resources that would be beneficial to Germany, but Hitler felt that America was siphoning Germany's creative strength and intellect through immigration (which, in a way, they were). Hitler's conquest of Europe and Africa was meant to be preparation for the eventual invasion of the U.S.

Dabugguy

You are right that conservatives are trying to preserve AMERICAN culture and values. What you appear to forget is that we, AMERICANS, are a melting pot of a world of cultures and our values, and rely on the FREEDOM to practice said cultures and values without fear of government interference and interruption! To merely suppose that any party (Liberal or Conservative) would resort to genocide is ludicrous!

I haven't forgotten a damn thing about what our culture is. However, some people in this country don't think that America should be a melting pot of different cultures and ideas, and would like to do nothing more than purge our country of what they view as "foreign" or "pagan" influences. We should be wary of those kinds of people the way that the people of Germany should have been wary of Hitler and his goons. Right now, these extremists are on the cultural fringe. But if our country gets completely screwed over, then who's to say that the American people - poor, confused, and angry as the Germans were at the end of WW1 - won't rally around someone whom no one should rally around.

Conservatism in general isn't truly bad. There is nothing wrong with preserving culture, or practicing a policy that has a proven track record, which is ultimately what conservatism is about. But like any philosophy - left, right, or middle - it can be taken to horrific extremes if the conditions are just right.

Correction, the second book is called Zweites Buch - literally "Second Book."

@ Mr. Bubbs:

I agree with you in part.

Our past leaders have NOT surrounded themselves with socialist believers as our current leader has. Even though some of these socialistic believers and admitted COMMUNIST'S i.e. Van Jones have "offered" their resignations after being exposed for who they are. Mr. Obama has written several papers on how Marxism and socialism WILL work for our society and he is currently instigating this into OUR lives with his executive orders that supersede the LAWS of congress. Do you truly want the government to TELL you what doctor or dentist to see when you are perfectly happy with the ones you already have? answer me that......Do you really want the government to tell you what kind of vehicle you can drive, just because your vehicle doesn't have the right MPG?... Answer me that... Do you want the government saying what light bulbs to use, or when your water heater can warm water, what air pressure that goes into your tires, how much weight you car should carry, How much you can eat, What medicines you can take, how your kids are taught, WHEN YOU SHOULD DIE BECAUSE YOU ARE A BURDEN TO SOCIETY!!!!!!! Tell me!! DO YOU WANT THIS?!?!?!

This is what is happening right under our noses RIGHT NOW and people are too blind to see it with this administration!!!

If you look at it from my point of view, this is EXACTLY how Hitler got into power.....

THINK ABOUT IT....

actually, rev, Hitler was a democrat

dabugguy

There's a difference between saying and suggesting. No, I don't want the government controlling my life, but so far I have never had any jack-booted government thugs kick my door down at 3AM in the morning and drag me to a death camp because I don't drive a Prius, or I don't have enough fiber in my diet, or because I like to take long hot showers.

As far as how our kids are taught and whether people should die because they're a burden to society... really? Have you listened to people complaining about kids not being taught creationism in public schools even though it should be a strictly private, religious matter? Have you read the article about how the Texas board of education voted to essentially rewrite their school text books into tomes of sugar-coated propaganda. Hmmm? And when has any of these pro-lifers cared about a child AFTER that child's been born? As soon as the kid takes his first breath, he's a tax burden that they have to pay for!

But I think you forgot to add in a few more questions, such as: Do you want to live in a country where the government tells you who to love? Do you want the government to enforce their view of religion on you whether you believe in it or not? Do you want the government to outlaw abortions, but also discourage birth control methods that would prevent the unwanted pregnancy in the first place? Do you want the government in your bedroom telling how, and in what positions, you're supposed to have sex with your lover? Do you want to live in a country where the intellectual is reviled while the moron is placed on a pedestal? Where science is reviled unless it helps develop new and interesting ways to kill people? Do you want to live in a country where the workers have no bargaining rights, and where corporations can get away with anything as long as the government bails them out with the people's tax dollars? Do you want to live in a country without any kind of safety net, where if you break a leg or get sick, you could lose EVERYTHING? Or how about where you have to submit yourself to intrusive and humiliating pat-downs and body scans before you board a plane?

Answer me that.

I have thought about your point of view, dabugguy. And from MY point of view, it's paranoia and fear that got Hitler into power.

One more small tidbit, the FIRST thing the Nazi'S took over was the German health care system. Veeerrry Interesting, but vill it verk?

Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Lennon, Mao, Mussolini, Ho Chi Mien, Pol Pot, Chavez, Hussain, Jong Il, Castro, Taylor and Putin, leftists all. Hitler even referred to the Nazi party as "progressives". Chavez has joked about being seen as further right than Obama. Hmmmm, there's an old saying involving throwing stones and living in glass houses. Something the leftists among us might want to keep in mind?

Mr.Bubbs-"Not only were American POWs treated like all other POWs"

No they were not.Russians got treated a lot worse than Americans.Americans got a small amount of food and shelter,but Russians rarely got any food or shelter.Read up on your history moron.

Mr. Bubbs says: "Economically, the Nazis were socialist"

Well that's what they called themselves, but that's where it stopped...

One of the very first things which Hitler did when he took power in 1933 was to dissolve ALL the German trade unions.

What's in a name? In this case, very little... National Socialism -- naziism -- was nothing more than fascism.

Random Penn

Just because American POWs were slightly better treated by their Nazi captors than their Russian counterparts doesn't make things all peaches and cream. It's funny though, how you never called concerned veteran on his uncle's claim that American POWs were not treated well, considering that said uncle was in fact captured by the Nazis during WW2 and experienced their brutality first-hand.

But no, I'm easier to argue with, aren't I, you Nazi apologist?

I'm still recovering from St.Paddy's day/night,hehe! :)

Okay. This reminds me of a documentary I once saw where European governments would look at old Allied aerial reconn....reconoi.... pictures of the results of bombing raids to find duds. Sometimes, among a cluster of bomb craters, there would be a tiny round hole, the telltale sign of a dud that went into the ground. Surveyors would find the spot, and they'd carefully dig it up.

Carrie the PC police say St Patrick or Paddy is too religious. You must now use O'Green day.

@Lonereb:

Aye, I must use O'greene day now.. If you cannot handle a religious holiday, then I suggest ye not give any gifts on St. Nicks holiday, or give candy on All Hallows Eve, or hide the Easter eggs for you wee little tot's in celebration of our Lord's resurrection..... If YOU can't handle that, then you better shove a pickle up the PC police mans arse....

Webcrawler;

Look at it this way, it's the only place people in some countries can express such thoughts without fear of imprisonment or worse. As for the story, an old German-American-English-Albanian, who ever bomb was found defused, and destroyed. This sort of thing happens nearly every day. They didn't set it off with a back hoe so it was a good day for the construction guys. Happy now?

They found one in the Rhine River near Koblenz last summer. River level was really low, exposing it.

Believe it or not, we're still finding intact, volatile Civil War mortar bombs and artillery shells. I recall an article some 10-20 years ago of construction in the old warehouse and factory area of St Louis, MO, findind an old foundry/arsenal where such bombs were produced and finding dozens intact and live. I suspect somebody needed new underwear that day.

Btw, St, Louis' flood walls along the Mississippi in old town area date to the 1830-40 period when Robert E. Lee supervised their construction.

UXB's (unexploded bombs) are found all the time all over europe. I remember reading an article not to long ago about farmers finding UXB's while plowing there fields. They drag them to the road and the police come by and gather them up. The farmers sometimes will stack the UXB's like wood.

Must of been a slow news day for one WWII bomb to make the news. I was stationed in West Berlin from March 1982 through November 1985, the amount of live ordnance discovered each year was measured in the tons.

France still has areas that are off limits to the public, from WW1 chemical bombs. Those areas had mustard gas bombs explode and the area will never be safe.

Does it matter 67 years after the war ended who dropped it.

Please re read the article, the bomb was German not American.

I did read the article. Initially attributed to Germany, but then retracted. And yes, we did bomb Marseille.

Bill Marvell;

So did the Germans and the Brits, What's your point? It was an old bomb, and by the sound of it, not an aerial dropped munition. More like a large mine or bomb to destroy advancing tanks and such. This far removed from the time, what does it matter? The good news is, It was found, defused and destroyed without anyone getting killed.

all i can say about Ameican surrender is " NUTS "
"

We didn't surrender the whole country/

If may have been a booby trap. Or, it could have been a stray, unexploded bomb dropped by an airplane that jettisoned its load. Who knows?

LA1IMPALA, there are still thousands or tens of thousands of items of unexploded ordnance in Europe--two world wars left the place a mess. Add to this that the reliability factor of fuzing systems back then was nowhere near what is considered acceptable today. The result is a secret, unseen but extremely deadly nightmare for all concerned.

Glad the thing was safely removed and disposed of without injury or incident--not always the case, in such situations.

From the report, we only have an approximate size to work with. Given what little we do have, I wonder if the bomb might have been of British origin. The Germans didn't go much beyond about 1500 KG, but the Brits developed and used "monster bombs" up to 22,000 pounds. We used some pretty large bombs, but the American standard was a 2000 pound bomb that was fairly short and squat. Hard to apply much more logic or experience without more specific information.

From what I read, it was a Geman bomb, placed there by the Germans, not "dropped" from an airplane. It was probably placed there as a "booby trap" as the Allies were getting awfully close.

IF it took a vehicle the size the article mentions, to move it, it would not have even been carried by an aircraft, as there were none capable of carrying bombs of that size at that time. It wasn't until the U.S. came out with the B-29 that planes were able to carry bombs of that size, and none of those planes were used in the European Theater of Operations.

Other comments regarding WWII ordnance found in Europe, it was, and still is, found all over. As a young kid, running around in England, in the fifties and sixties, it wasn't that uncommon to find unexploded ordnance, of all sorts, in farm fields, especially near former allied air bases, or in the cities. (They were still reconstructing after WWII, and are still doing it sixty years later, because of the massive cost.)

Um, British Lancasters were carrying 22,000lb bombs,the one pictured in this article is a British bomb. Who cares what the article says when the article is easily proven wrong. Whoever wrote the American review of the French article is both ignorant, and a liar.

Ha Ha. How original.

Three countries bombed France during WWII Who really cares who dropped it 67 years later? Just glad nobody died because of it.

Reading the article it doesn't even sound like the bomb was dropped, but planted. Terrible writing.

buuuuuurn.

It was really the "HOLY HAND GRENADE".

Did it have a walmart smiley on it too?

I was thinking the same thing, put it in a museum. Or on display somewhere in France. BTW - how do we know the French didn't put a white flag in it while waiting for the bomb squad.

The reason I suspect that they aren't chucking it in a museum is because these things surface in France, Germany, and here in the UK every so often. Stuff like this is already in the museums. Where I currently live, you can walk through the countryside and still find bunkers and pill boxes from the era, and every so often, a farmer or someone digging around in the garden finds a bomb. The neighborhood gets evacuated, they get rid of the thing, and move on with life.

I'll admit that it was really exciting for me when I first moved here. I was heading to a friend's house in Cambridge and she called me to tell me to meet her at the pub a few miles away because her neighbor found a bomb in the back yard and the neighborhood was cleared out. I was all wowed about it. Everyone else was just kind of annoyed.

Sadly, though, some of those have gone off in the past and blown up a farmers while they were plowing the fields.

If we're going to the old ethnic, stereotype jokes. The reason the new German president couldn't take the French surrender was because he was working on a new microwave. It seats 26 !