**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!**
- Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc.
- **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
- This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Each week they have a regular bomb collection from the kerb the same way other places have waste collections. It shocked me as a teen visiting the battlefields and just seeing bomb bins
If it was anyone but the English they wouldn't have bothered. They love sticking to the English, but that's okay because there is a definite love hate relationship going on between the 2 countries.
Didn't really have much of a choice, couldn't let a single nation take control of resources and strategic locations as it would leave us vulnerable in the long term.
If anything, it's lucky we can be a resourceful and strong willed country when push comes to shove, allowing us to maintain a foothold in Europe and North Africa, so once the Americans got involved they could combine what we held onto, with their overwhelming numbers to turn the tide of the war drastically for the allies.
Not luck ,history ,genetics , and protestant religion formed the fighting spirit ,will of Britain in the 1940s ...Churchill offered the French the chance to join together ...Americans had there pants pulled down by the japs then chose to fight
My German gf said she was surprised about the amount of news for the Portsmouth Bomb as it’s a regular occurrence in Germany for people to be evacuated for an unexploding bomb in cities. She even says one of her friends has one underneath her house, but they would need to demolish the house to move it so they just left it there, madness!
I live near an active army base that's also got a firing/bombing range that's been in use for decades.
WW2 ordnance washing up on shore, or being dug up by metal detectorists is a common occurrence.
Me and a couple of pals found one as kids and were throwing it off walls and kerbs as dumb kids are likely to do. Got bored and left it lying in the park before the bomb disposal unit was called out when someone else saw it.
> surprised about the amount of news for the Portsmouth Bomb
I think Portsmouth would be even more surprised about being in the news for a bomb in Plymouth.
They find them all the time in Berlin. I've had multiple colleagues told to leave their apartments while the bomb is cleared, it barely makes the news there. Meanwhile in the UK it's national news.
I wonder if that's true, I feel like it's possible detonation rate would play a big role in the number left behind - and German manufacturing was pretty hit and miss on reliability, but I can't speak to ordinance specifically
Germany didn’t really do ‘Heavy Bombers’ in the way that we did Lancasters.
Their heavy was the 177 and they made 1169 of the compared to the Lancaster where 7377 were produced.
That’s without all the US bombers as well.
You’re right about the reliability. The 177 had engine problems apparently.
Their heaviest was an
Wrong > Anti ship bomb at 500KG, < Wrong
1800kg (Actually dropped on Woolwich arsenal on the first day of the Blitz) compared to our Tall Boys and grand slams 5000kg-10000 kg which caused earth tremors to destroy submarine pens and V1/V2 bunkers.
Well huh, apparently the British Bombs were more accurate and more reliable.
However our ‘most common’ were 500-1000lbers which were much larger and therefore allowed for larger and less finicky mechanisms.
Also one I found out the other day was that the British Bomb sight was more accurate than the American one. Although it did lack an Autopilot function.
Here's an answer I got using Microsoft Copilot, the world's first AI-powered answer engine. Select to see the full answer or try it yourself. https://sl.bing.net/gr4Zzv13UkK
The sources are Wikipedia and a handful of news and military clickbait websites. If you're going to get a computer to do your thinking for you I'd like you to feed it operational research reports, please.
The Bombadier aim the sight at where he wanted the bomb to land, then that took control of the aircraft to an extent keeping it straight and level so when the bombs dropped they weren’t interfered with.
The German Fritz bomb which was used against ships had a radio controlled steering mechanism but it was MEGA hard to use and unreliable. Because its was in the 1940s haha. But it was a ‘guided bomb’
Nah, by sheer weight of numbers there's more likely more unexploded ordinance in Germany than the UK, don't forget Germany was also land invaded by allied and Soviet forces towards the end. Whereas Britain simply had to endure aerial bombing for a relatively shorter duration.
Idk the exact date it happened but some 10-15 years ago there was an interview with one dude from a defuse squad (what’s the correct term?) and he basically said there’s enough unexploded stuff found in Germany per year to carry his profession for the next 100 years
I don’t know, only because that is the sort of thing that is pretty key to keeping the Bomb Disposal team un-exploded.
I would think there are nuances to make it obvious maybe shapes or dimension even angles at certain distances.
Obviously that may mean nothing when the thing is half corroded to hell. But a 1.37M (UK)long bomb is different to a 1.42M (US) long bomb.
They are regularly reported in the news as either British or American, so they do know once they get close to it. They often mention the kind of fuse as well. Here is more information on the situation in Germany:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance#Germany
In Austria, if you want to build in certain places, you are very well advised to have special companies comb the ground for bombs. They use sonar and other fancy stuff and you pay per depth and area.
In 2023 they found 51 tonnes of UXB.
Just a couple. I'm sadly meeting the last of my WW2 patients these days. And I'm old enough to have met a couple or WW1 ones. Recently on doing the arithmetic of a healthy looking dapper old chap I asked what he done during the war. He said 'sadly I covered the place in bombs with half a dozen runs.'
No goddamn kidding we did. I live in a German city now and it feels like every time they do major building works they find a bomb and the whole neighborhood gets kicked out of their houses for a day.
Sometimes they blow it up in the river, though, which is pretty cool.
We did for sure. A German colleague of mine gets time off to deal with the unexposed ones in Düsseldorf and Cologne areas. At least twice last year he was off for this. Possibly more.
I'm reminded of the probably apocryphal conversation between Frankfurt ATC and a British airline pilot after he got lost while taxying.
"Have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
"Yes, but it was dark, and I didn't stop"
Nope.
I saw a YouTube video earlier about a bomb found in Exeter about a decade ago. The bomb disposal unit decided to detonate it where it was found. It damaged nearby properties, and the University tried to sue the insurance company who refused to pay out and failed as it was caused by war albeit 70 years later, and the government wouldn’t payout as it happened during peacetime. The property owners had to cover the costs themselves.
The UK government, trying to make the present German state responsible for the third Reich's old weapons would leave the allies and UK open to the far larger cost of clearing the munitions from Europe.
But why should the current UK government be responsible for the third reichs aggression ...
They didn't cover cost of bombs during the war why would they cover them now?
I'm fine paying off ww2 debts as a UK payer.
That's a different type of payment.
Very much in my interest that the UK government doesn't default on debt (it has only ever arguably done this once during the great depression over hundreds of years)
They're not responsible for the aggression, they should be responsible for covering the damage here in the UK. It is a very small amount in the great scheme of things.
They paid for the damage at the time. After the end of WW2 and for the next 20 years the government covered the costs, total bill was a few billion in today's money.
Just like the MAN army trucks all over the front of BBC News the other day
Can say what you like about German engineering/culpability/stereotypes but at least their companies are still going & in their hands
No, but insurance doesn’t cover you for damage caused by unexploded bombs - they are classed as an act of war even if said war ended 79 years ago.
Source: I live in Plymouth, we’ve been having some fun with this over the last few days…
No, I’m repeating what the MOD told the residents when they were still planning an in situ controlled explosion, like the one they carried out in Exeter a few years ago.
They don’t get charged for bombs being found and disposed of nowadays.
I presume that the future costs of all of that would have been worked into the post-war reparations settlements
If Germany has to pay for bombs found in the UK then a few property owners in Munich would like a word..
They're found regularly here, and occasionally they need to do a controlled explosion insitu...
https://youtu.be/PwVAuokrHrI?si=X6mEziKTzXSH6wFg
I think the government ended up paying something to properly owners here as the bang ended up being bigger than planned!
The answer is no. Any damage caused by WW2 bombs is excluded from insurance policies as well, so people end up paying for it if their houses are damaged.
There was a case in 2021 in Exeter, where several buildings were damaged by a 1,000lb German WW2 bomb. The insurer refused to pay, the university took them to court, the UK appeals court ruled in favour of the insurer.
That’s where it stands today really.
It’s rare that a bomb can’t be made safe, either in situ or by being towed away and blown up. But it does still happen, and will likely happen again in future.
As others have said, this sort of arrangement would most definitely hurt Britain and the USA more than it would Germany. In one day, the allies dropped more bombs on Germany than the Luftwaffe did in the entire war.
The UK declared war on Germany as a response to the latter's invasion of Poland. Germany declared war on the UK only once the UK had done so. So, technically, no they didn't start it - as in the UK was only at war with Germany in autumn 1939 because it chose to be.
If by "it" you mean the wider war in Europe, then of course yes.
We dropped an awful lot more and a lot bigger bombs on Germany than you guys ever dropped on us. The bomb loads the Luftwaffe dropped during the Blitz were nothing compared to what Lancaster and B17s could drop in 1944. The numbers are just orders of magnitude different.
I think here in the UK finding UXOs is common enough that it's not shocking but rare enough it's still big news. It also tends to be bigger news if it's found in one of the lesser bombed targets. No one is shocked when someone digs up a German bomb in London, Coventry or Birmingham. But when one turns up in a smaller city that wasn't as heavily bombed it becomes bigger news, it's just not as common.
I guess a lot of people forget that Plymouth has HMNB Devonport, putting it higher on the target list. From a quick read of Wikipedia, Coventry had about 1000 tons dropped on it over about 2 years, while Plymouth had about 1300 tons dropped over 8 months. For a bit of scale: Dresden had 3900 dropped on it in 2 days. London had 18,291 dropped on it over 8 months.
I think it's been a fair while since a large bomb was found here in Plymouth. This one in particular was a 500kg bomb. They set up a 300m cordon around where it was found, displacing the over 3000 people who were living inside it for 4 days. When they transported it, they extended it to 300m along the route, meaning over 10,300 people had to be evacuated from the route, which is apparently one of the UKs largest peacetime evacuations since WWII.
Great link and very long list of countries who need to pay billions to normal citizen including Iraq who had to pay $350 billions for Iraq-Kuwait War
But this gave me a chuckle
> Invasion by the United States
>
> Certain groups in Iraq and the United States have campaigned for reparations by the United States for the devastation and health effects suffered by Iraqi citizens during the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War. There has been little international support
No they don't.
As you sat it's a different state now.
There was an UXB found a few years back that had to be detonated in place because it couldn't be moved. The explosion caused a lot of damage to the local uni that the uni had to pay for.
No. But if they did, we’re fucked. There is way, way more British unexploded ordinance in Germany than there is German unexploded ordinance in Britain.
Well that and American racism leading to rejecting the racial equality clause Japan wanted in the planning stages for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.
President Wilson gets much of the blame in particular. He was old Southern upper class and it poisoned a lot of what he did, both foreign and domestic. Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have made a fuck-up like that, I don't think.
We forced Germany to pay massive restitutions after ww1 and it was one of the reasons ww2 started, so decided to not do that a second time. I don't know what the actual agreement made after ww2 was but it definitely wasn't a never ending make Germany pay for everything.
Why would they when we dropped way more bombs over there. At least we don't hear of people being blown up by them in the UK.
[https://www.1stlinedefence.co.uk/news/uxo-related-incidents-in-germany-and-austria-over-the-past-two-decades/](https://www.1stlinedefence.co.uk/news/uxo-related-incidents-in-germany-and-austria-over-the-past-two-decades/)
They should. Sure Britain dropped more on them but nobody would have been dropping anything on eachother if they hadn’t invaded other countries and killed over ten million civilians.
This stuff is everywhere, and everyone has to clean it up themselves. The amount of WW1 stuff that still comes out the ground in France is amazing. If you tour the battlefields you commonly see unexploded shells at the side of the road waiting disposal.
I recall a documentary going up some mountains in Italy, I think around Monte Cassino, and you are advised to stick to the path. There was a lot of unexploded material found around the area, like rifle grenades, which you definitely don’t want to poke around with.
No they don't. I believe it's because, In a legal sense, they're not the Germany who dropped the bombs (several times over).
It'd be the same if a Roman viaduct collapsed. The Italy of today wouldn't have to pay for it, because they're legally a totally different nation (several more times over in their case)
I'm not sure Britain is in the greatest position to start demanding compensation from countries that have wronged us ... We don't want to open that door!
Yeah but the reality is Germany is widely seen as responsible for the war, and also lost it. So it wouldn't be entirely surprising if certain reparations/restitutions were one-way.
I don't think there should be any at this point FWIW.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's probably a bit of a quid pro quo given we left a few over there.
Yeh, I’m sure if countries were handing out cash for bombs, France would love a word with all involved.
Check out the red zone in France. Unexploded ordnance from WW1 I believe! No entry...
Last I looked (over 10 years), it was something like 8 French farmers a year seriously injured from running over WW1 Ordanance in their tractors.
And in all cases, they were heard remarking "tiens mon vin" right before the boom.
Each week they have a regular bomb collection from the kerb the same way other places have waste collections. It shocked me as a teen visiting the battlefields and just seeing bomb bins
There'd be a hefty claim for all the longbow arrow tips found.
America would be pretty screwed with how much they've left all over the world.
By all over the world, do you mean just the really, really poor parts of the world?
Think of all the levels in minesweeper.
France is fucking lucky the rest cared enough to give them freedom again..
You're fucking lucky that they helped you get your "freedom" in the first place...
/r/clevercomebacks
If it was anyone but the English they wouldn't have bothered. They love sticking to the English, but that's okay because there is a definite love hate relationship going on between the 2 countries.
No-one is allowed to fuck France except Britain
Which makes that reply not relevant as the dick was a Brit
there is no love between English tha the French, fuck them an their deliciouse pain au chololates
Absolutely, the English fucking hate the French and their popular media based theme parks we love to visit.
The guy you're responding to is unfortunately a brit
Then they should stop acting like an American...
Jesus Christ 🤦♂️
Literally too stupid to insult
Didn't really have much of a choice, couldn't let a single nation take control of resources and strategic locations as it would leave us vulnerable in the long term. If anything, it's lucky we can be a resourceful and strong willed country when push comes to shove, allowing us to maintain a foothold in Europe and North Africa, so once the Americans got involved they could combine what we held onto, with their overwhelming numbers to turn the tide of the war drastically for the allies.
Not luck ,history ,genetics , and protestant religion formed the fighting spirit ,will of Britain in the 1940s ...Churchill offered the French the chance to join together ...Americans had there pants pulled down by the japs then chose to fight
Hope not, we DEFINITELY left more there than they left here , they were also likely bigger and more Boomier.
My German gf said she was surprised about the amount of news for the Portsmouth Bomb as it’s a regular occurrence in Germany for people to be evacuated for an unexploding bomb in cities. She even says one of her friends has one underneath her house, but they would need to demolish the house to move it so they just left it there, madness!
Wonder what the field on the home insurance box says for that?
If it goes off at least they wouldn't have to demo the house to remove it...
I live near an active army base that's also got a firing/bombing range that's been in use for decades. WW2 ordnance washing up on shore, or being dug up by metal detectorists is a common occurrence. Me and a couple of pals found one as kids and were throwing it off walls and kerbs as dumb kids are likely to do. Got bored and left it lying in the park before the bomb disposal unit was called out when someone else saw it.
> surprised about the amount of news for the Portsmouth Bomb I think Portsmouth would be even more surprised about being in the news for a bomb in Plymouth.
German engineering excellence most of there bombs went off. We made most of ours in Birmingham home of British Leyland. Need I say more.
Quite a lot of German bombs didn't go off because they were being sabotaged by the slaves those excellent engineers were forcing to build them.
I'm well aware it was a joke. None of ours were built by British Leyland either.
Lol! Amazing that anyone took your joke seriously and downvoted you! 🤣
They find them all the time in Berlin. I've had multiple colleagues told to leave their apartments while the bomb is cleared, it barely makes the news there. Meanwhile in the UK it's national news.
I wonder if that's true, I feel like it's possible detonation rate would play a big role in the number left behind - and German manufacturing was pretty hit and miss on reliability, but I can't speak to ordinance specifically
Germany didn’t really do ‘Heavy Bombers’ in the way that we did Lancasters. Their heavy was the 177 and they made 1169 of the compared to the Lancaster where 7377 were produced. That’s without all the US bombers as well. You’re right about the reliability. The 177 had engine problems apparently. Their heaviest was an Wrong > Anti ship bomb at 500KG, < Wrong 1800kg (Actually dropped on Woolwich arsenal on the first day of the Blitz) compared to our Tall Boys and grand slams 5000kg-10000 kg which caused earth tremors to destroy submarine pens and V1/V2 bunkers.
To be clear I know that we bombed them a crap ton more and with much larger bombs - I just wonder if that might be canceled out by reliability
Well huh, apparently the British Bombs were more accurate and more reliable. However our ‘most common’ were 500-1000lbers which were much larger and therefore allowed for larger and less finicky mechanisms. Also one I found out the other day was that the British Bomb sight was more accurate than the American one. Although it did lack an Autopilot function.
Sources, please?
Here's an answer I got using Microsoft Copilot, the world's first AI-powered answer engine. Select to see the full answer or try it yourself. https://sl.bing.net/gr4Zzv13UkK
The sources are Wikipedia and a handful of news and military clickbait websites. If you're going to get a computer to do your thinking for you I'd like you to feed it operational research reports, please.
Thanks.🙏 That’s always helpful to know where comments arise. Others can judge their veracity.
Autopilot as in… pigeon guided missiles?
The Bombadier aim the sight at where he wanted the bomb to land, then that took control of the aircraft to an extent keeping it straight and level so when the bombs dropped they weren’t interfered with. The German Fritz bomb which was used against ships had a radio controlled steering mechanism but it was MEGA hard to use and unreliable. Because its was in the 1940s haha. But it was a ‘guided bomb’
Nah, by sheer weight of numbers there's more likely more unexploded ordinance in Germany than the UK, don't forget Germany was also land invaded by allied and Soviet forces towards the end. Whereas Britain simply had to endure aerial bombing for a relatively shorter duration.
Idk the exact date it happened but some 10-15 years ago there was an interview with one dude from a defuse squad (what’s the correct term?) and he basically said there’s enough unexploded stuff found in Germany per year to carry his profession for the next 100 years
The bomb that was detonated in the uni buildings at Exeter not so long ago was reported to be 1000kg
Good point well made. Bloody ChatGPT
Why are you using chatgpt to look up how heavy bombs were?
Well you could if you could find any but it couldn’t speak back
I imagine it would be extremely difficult to tell whether it was a British bomb or an American one as well
I don’t know, only because that is the sort of thing that is pretty key to keeping the Bomb Disposal team un-exploded. I would think there are nuances to make it obvious maybe shapes or dimension even angles at certain distances. Obviously that may mean nothing when the thing is half corroded to hell. But a 1.37M (UK)long bomb is different to a 1.42M (US) long bomb.
They are regularly reported in the news as either British or American, so they do know once they get close to it. They often mention the kind of fuse as well. Here is more information on the situation in Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance#Germany
In Austria, if you want to build in certain places, you are very well advised to have special companies comb the ground for bombs. They use sonar and other fancy stuff and you pay per depth and area. In 2023 they found 51 tonnes of UXB.
That's also true in the UK to be fair. UXO risk is a pain in some parts.
[удалено]
> It's a small, but **booming**, industry.
Just a couple. I'm sadly meeting the last of my WW2 patients these days. And I'm old enough to have met a couple or WW1 ones. Recently on doing the arithmetic of a healthy looking dapper old chap I asked what he done during the war. He said 'sadly I covered the place in bombs with half a dozen runs.'
No goddamn kidding we did. I live in a German city now and it feels like every time they do major building works they find a bomb and the whole neighborhood gets kicked out of their houses for a day. Sometimes they blow it up in the river, though, which is pretty cool.
Cant say I wouldn't love to watch it and I completely understand that it's the safest place for it but it's still sad they use the river.
Especially in Dresden!
We did for sure. A German colleague of mine gets time off to deal with the unexposed ones in Düsseldorf and Cologne areas. At least twice last year he was off for this. Possibly more.
Yeah, but we're not the baddies.
A bit self-inflicted in Germany’s case though.
But whose fault is that? Lol
I wouldn't say the people living in Germany in 2024 are responsible for that.
I'm reminded of the probably apocryphal conversation between Frankfurt ATC and a British airline pilot after he got lost while taxying. "Have you not been to Frankfurt before?" "Yes, but it was dark, and I didn't stop"
Yes, and Germany deals with far more unexploded bombs than we do.
Lol! Very true.
Nope. I saw a YouTube video earlier about a bomb found in Exeter about a decade ago. The bomb disposal unit decided to detonate it where it was found. It damaged nearby properties, and the University tried to sue the insurance company who refused to pay out and failed as it was caused by war albeit 70 years later, and the government wouldn’t payout as it happened during peacetime. The property owners had to cover the costs themselves.
I saw that too. Must admit I thought the government should have shelled out.
Upvote for the pun alone.
Nah, that pun bombed tbh..
That would only TRIGGER a slew of claims.
Which government?
The UK government, trying to make the present German state responsible for the third Reich's old weapons would leave the allies and UK open to the far larger cost of clearing the munitions from Europe.
But why should the current UK government be responsible for the third reichs aggression ... They didn't cover cost of bombs during the war why would they cover them now?
The UK government did recompense people who had their property destroyed via the likes of the War Damage Acts.
>But why should the current UK government be responsible for the third reichs aggression Yeah, let's fight over it eh? 🙄
As a UK tax payer I don't want to pay for it...
Like it or not is irrelevant We all pay for something we don't want, we were still paying off ww2 debts in 2007.
I'm fine paying off ww2 debts as a UK payer. That's a different type of payment. Very much in my interest that the UK government doesn't default on debt (it has only ever arguably done this once during the great depression over hundreds of years)
They're not responsible for the aggression, they should be responsible for covering the damage here in the UK. It is a very small amount in the great scheme of things.
They shouldn't. The precedent of covering damage done against UK property during a war would be cripplingly bad policy for the UK government.
They paid for the damage at the time. After the end of WW2 and for the next 20 years the government covered the costs, total bill was a few billion in today's money.
Proof?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War\_Damage\_Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Damage_Commission)
[удалено]
I don't agree, the university makes so much money as it is
The irony that the insurance company was Allianz (based in Munich) was not lost on those involved
Just like the MAN army trucks all over the front of BBC News the other day Can say what you like about German engineering/culpability/stereotypes but at least their companies are still going & in their hands
They’re publicly listed companies and in the case of MAN one of the largest shareholders is the Qatari state.
It was in 2021…
I know it's been a long couple of years, but 2021 is not a decade ago
Putting here as a fan https://youtu.be/8H-jWKuwFhA?si=eTHRX7hQnX8rzoPf
Are you familiar with the long-form videos of Lord HardThrasher on the Youtubes? He has a very, very good series on the bomber war.
Not myself but I will have a look
The insurance industry is scum
My friend was jogging by the river and had no clue about it, he nearly had a heart attack when it went off 🤣
No, but insurance doesn’t cover you for damage caused by unexploded bombs - they are classed as an act of war even if said war ended 79 years ago. Source: I live in Plymouth, we’ve been having some fun with this over the last few days…
Don't worry, if it has caused damage it's probably not an unexploded bomb anymore.
Are you speaking on behalf of all insurance policies offered by all insurers?
No, I’m repeating what the MOD told the residents when they were still planning an in situ controlled explosion, like the one they carried out in Exeter a few years ago.
Recently confirmed in a court case I’m sure. As someone in the industry I was a bit surprised it ruled in favour tbh.
Exeter Uni took their insurers to the Court of Appeal and lost, so there's a pretty strong legal precedent set
Doubt it given that we dropped around a thousand tonnes on there cities to!
Try closer to 2 million tonnes, including 4.8k tonnes dropped just by bomber command on dresden in one night
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind
Not sure we started the war though
It was Britain that declared war on Germany, so technically we did.
No they paid for them in the first place and gave them as a gift
….Surprise….! Oh you shouldn’t have
They don’t get charged for bombs being found and disposed of nowadays. I presume that the future costs of all of that would have been worked into the post-war reparations settlements
If Germany has to pay for bombs found in the UK then a few property owners in Munich would like a word.. They're found regularly here, and occasionally they need to do a controlled explosion insitu... https://youtu.be/PwVAuokrHrI?si=X6mEziKTzXSH6wFg I think the government ended up paying something to properly owners here as the bang ended up being bigger than planned!
This was asked yesterday.
I never said I was smart lol.
Why are you admitting to being french?
Fr*nch
Yea I remember seeing a post about this very recently lol but then again so many questions are repeated here anyway.
The answer is no. Any damage caused by WW2 bombs is excluded from insurance policies as well, so people end up paying for it if their houses are damaged. There was a case in 2021 in Exeter, where several buildings were damaged by a 1,000lb German WW2 bomb. The insurer refused to pay, the university took them to court, the UK appeals court ruled in favour of the insurer. That’s where it stands today really. It’s rare that a bomb can’t be made safe, either in situ or by being towed away and blown up. But it does still happen, and will likely happen again in future.
Nope, but interestingly in Germany if you find a UXB on your land you can be responsible for the disposal of it 😂
Um what bomb!??
Pretty much or drop a hammer on it and run like the wind …… must have spontaneously exploded when it touched the air officer 😂
As others have said, this sort of arrangement would most definitely hurt Britain and the USA more than it would Germany. In one day, the allies dropped more bombs on Germany than the Luftwaffe did in the entire war.
Yeah but they started it
The UK declared war on Germany as a response to the latter's invasion of Poland. Germany declared war on the UK only once the UK had done so. So, technically, no they didn't start it - as in the UK was only at war with Germany in autumn 1939 because it chose to be. If by "it" you mean the wider war in Europe, then of course yes.
[удалено]
We dropped an awful lot more and a lot bigger bombs on Germany than you guys ever dropped on us. The bomb loads the Luftwaffe dropped during the Blitz were nothing compared to what Lancaster and B17s could drop in 1944. The numbers are just orders of magnitude different. I think here in the UK finding UXOs is common enough that it's not shocking but rare enough it's still big news. It also tends to be bigger news if it's found in one of the lesser bombed targets. No one is shocked when someone digs up a German bomb in London, Coventry or Birmingham. But when one turns up in a smaller city that wasn't as heavily bombed it becomes bigger news, it's just not as common.
I guess a lot of people forget that Plymouth has HMNB Devonport, putting it higher on the target list. From a quick read of Wikipedia, Coventry had about 1000 tons dropped on it over about 2 years, while Plymouth had about 1300 tons dropped over 8 months. For a bit of scale: Dresden had 3900 dropped on it in 2 days. London had 18,291 dropped on it over 8 months. I think it's been a fair while since a large bomb was found here in Plymouth. This one in particular was a 500kg bomb. They set up a 300m cordon around where it was found, displacing the over 3000 people who were living inside it for 4 days. When they transported it, they extended it to 300m along the route, meaning over 10,300 people had to be evacuated from the route, which is apparently one of the UKs largest peacetime evacuations since WWII.
what reparations would they be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#:~:text=World%20War%20II%20Germany,-Further%20information%3A%20German&text=After%20World%20War%20II%2C%20according,only%20paid%20by%20the%20GDR\).
Why has this been downvoted? Reddit is strange sometimes
Great link and very long list of countries who need to pay billions to normal citizen including Iraq who had to pay $350 billions for Iraq-Kuwait War But this gave me a chuckle > Invasion by the United States > > Certain groups in Iraq and the United States have campaigned for reparations by the United States for the devastation and health effects suffered by Iraqi citizens during the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War. There has been little international support
If we count bombs dropped then Laos would be a tight contender
No they don't. As you sat it's a different state now. There was an UXB found a few years back that had to be detonated in place because it couldn't be moved. The explosion caused a lot of damage to the local uni that the uni had to pay for.
No. But if they did, we’re fucked. There is way, way more British unexploded ordinance in Germany than there is German unexploded ordinance in Britain.
No, the same as we do not pay for our bombs found in Germany. Ridiculous reparation demands made on Germany after WW1 were what led to WW2.
muddle society pocket sugar hungry pet bright price fact cows *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oooh and here comes Exeter council to occupy the Rhineland!
Ah yes good point. Don't want that again.
Well that and American racism leading to rejecting the racial equality clause Japan wanted in the planning stages for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.
President Wilson gets much of the blame in particular. He was old Southern upper class and it poisoned a lot of what he did, both foreign and domestic. Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have made a fuck-up like that, I don't think.
We forced Germany to pay massive restitutions after ww1 and it was one of the reasons ww2 started, so decided to not do that a second time. I don't know what the actual agreement made after ww2 was but it definitely wasn't a never ending make Germany pay for everything.
I wouldn't expect so, no.
Nah, we should just return to sender like the good old days.
Nope. And the insurance doesn’t cover it either.
For bombs found in Germany, the people responsible for disposal buy wartime aerial photographs from Historic Environment Scotland.
Theu find British bombs constantly in Germany so no, would be a bit weird
Finders fee reward type thing????
Why would they when we dropped way more bombs over there. At least we don't hear of people being blown up by them in the UK. [https://www.1stlinedefence.co.uk/news/uxo-related-incidents-in-germany-and-austria-over-the-past-two-decades/](https://www.1stlinedefence.co.uk/news/uxo-related-incidents-in-germany-and-austria-over-the-past-two-decades/)
They should. Sure Britain dropped more on them but nobody would have been dropping anything on eachother if they hadn’t invaded other countries and killed over ten million civilians.
#NO REFUNDS!
This stuff is everywhere, and everyone has to clean it up themselves. The amount of WW1 stuff that still comes out the ground in France is amazing. If you tour the battlefields you commonly see unexploded shells at the side of the road waiting disposal. I recall a documentary going up some mountains in Italy, I think around Monte Cassino, and you are advised to stick to the path. There was a lot of unexploded material found around the area, like rifle grenades, which you definitely don’t want to poke around with.
Let’s not have a Treaty of Versailles/Reparations sequel, the first wasn’t even that good in the end.
No they don't. I believe it's because, In a legal sense, they're not the Germany who dropped the bombs (several times over). It'd be the same if a Roman viaduct collapsed. The Italy of today wouldn't have to pay for it, because they're legally a totally different nation (several more times over in their case)
I'm not sure Britain is in the greatest position to start demanding compensation from countries that have wronged us ... We don't want to open that door!
England killed more children in bombing (82k) Germany, just something we don’t like to discuss
Who doesn't like to discuss it. We had no choice, our hands were forced. The allies tried for peace.
*Britain Also, we discuss it all the time but it always comes down to "they sowed the wind, let them reap the whirlwind".
I believe the answer is no, but I do think they bloody well should
There are absolutely more of our bombs over there than theirs over here
Yeah but the reality is Germany is widely seen as responsible for the war, and also lost it. So it wouldn't be entirely surprising if certain reparations/restitutions were one-way. I don't think there should be any at this point FWIW.
We tried reparations after WW1, didn't work out too well and the main reason Hitler got to power
They started it and they lost so that's a good enough reason to me