August 1, 2019
"My husband and I found this odd metal ball in the jungles of Guam. It’s about 3 pounds with an 1.5in diameter."
Says a woman in the subreddit whatisthisthing with a photograph of the thing in the palm of a fake-fingernailed hand. The post is marked "Solved" and the solution that rose to the top is: "Retired USAF here. That is a WWII era bomblet from a cluster bomb! Call police now! Those can be really unstable! Great personal harm could come to you!" There's also a moderator's post at the top — something I've seen before at whatisthisthin: "Your post indicates you may possibly be in possession of unexploded ordnance (UXO)." Did she bring that thing home on an airplane?
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62 comments:
Gene pool reduction?
They're still finding Japanese balloon bombs in the Pacific Northwest.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/object-found-in-forest-may-be-second-world-war-era-japanese-balloon-bomb/article21065545/
Moral: stay away from metal balls, especially if they're brass.
Stay away from the jungles of Guam.
"Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball."
IT'S HAPPY FUN BALL !!!
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture,should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
itching
vertigo
dizziness
tingling in extremities
loss of balance or coordination
slurred speech
temporary blindness
profuse sweating
or heart palpitations.
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of HappyFun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, GlobalChemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing green substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime warranty.
Happy Fun Ball! Accept no substitutes!
My Mom had a Nazi bomb land in her front yard and fail to explode; maybe German quality control has gotten better since then.
Three pounds for a sphere an inch and a half in diameter would be, let's see - over twice the density of the densest substance found at normal temperatures and pressures. Granted, she did write "about."
But yeah, she should leave that shit alone.
If Guam tipped over--as per Hank Johnson's warning--that cluster bomb would be lying harmless on the bottom of the ocean.
Just use Happy Fun Ball until you need glasses.
The things some people will do.
I couldn't get a tube of sunscreen that was a bit bigger than 3 ounces onto a plane for a Boston to Florida trip, but she was able to get unexploded ordnance on a plane back to the US from Guam, and then got it through Customs.
It's a mad, mad, mad world out there!
I did medical volunteer work in Kosovo during and after the war. Treated a lot of mine strike and UXO (unexploded ordinance) victims - the ones who survived. CBUs were a particular problem because the bomblets were brightly-colored (American bombs were blue and Brit bombs were yellow, IIRC). There were leaflets and poster all over the place with pix and warnings to avoid them. The problem was, the brightly-colored objects attracted kids who assumed they were some kind of toy. The results were nasty.
This is so blatantly stupid you have to wonder if the post was a prank and troll.
It's stupid - for anyone who is aware that cluster bombs exist. Most people don't.
My cousin brought back a bunch of 22mm cannon shells from the first Gulf War, just piled into his duffel bag. We pried them open, emptied them out, put them back together, polished them up, they look real nice. Mine still have the primers, but after nearly three decades, I don't know.
I was stopped for yogurt.
On the island of Malta in 1981 Paul Gauci, a 41-year-old Maltese man, died after welding a butterfly bomb to a metal pipe and using it as a mallet, thinking it was a harmless can. The latest find of such a bomb was on 28 October 2009, by an 11-year-old boy in a secluded valley close to a heavily bombarded airfield. This bomb was safely detonated on-site by the Armed Forces of Malta.
I wouldn't have known what it was. No matter as pretty much anything I find on the jungle floor in Guam I'm not touching.
" Did she bring that thing home on an airplane?"
Relax. It's not like she put it in her carry-on bag above your head. It's safely in the cargo hold. ~ Hank Johnson
"You found it!!! I was looking all over for that!!" --Ben Wa
Looks kind of Templar to me.
Narr
Holy Hand Grenade?
“This is so blatantly stupid you have to wonder if the post was a prank and troll.”
Was it fact checked by Snopes?
JPS said...
Three pounds for a sphere an inch and a half in diameter would be, let's see - over twice the density of the densest substance found at normal temperatures and pressures.
8/1/19, 11:23 AM
Blogger Darrell said...
If Guam tipped over--as per Hank Johnson's warning--that cluster bomb would be lying harmless on the bottom of the ocean.
WHEN Guam tips over, it will be because of these un-exploded black hole cluster bombs!!
I NEVER understood WHY the War Department thought we'd need Black Hole Cluster bombs to win WWII. Didn't they think that the combination of Atomic Power AND the Lost Ark would be enough??
But, on the other hand; they did have TOP MEN working of this
The thing that the guy found in the woods in GA about six posts down is a toy that you put caps in and they pop when it hits pavement after you throw it. We liked to put a few layers of caps in them. I haven’t thought about one of those since the ‘60s.
"Granted, she did write "about."
There should be one of those weasel words tags.
It's very ornate for something designed to be destroyed by the thousands. I guess I'm stupid too, because I know I would take that thing home if I found it. Warning: if you see me on a plane, get the hell away, or better yet, get the hell off.
is a toy that you put caps in and they pop when it hits pavement after you throw it.
those things ROCKED!
A few years ago a Civil War buff found an unexplored shell, brought it home, and tried to extract the gunpowder. He was doing this on his driveway. IIRC they never found any trace of his body.
Unexploded shell. But that changed.
think how frustrated that gunpowder had to be! Sitting and waiting and wait; for more than a hundred years. This (FINALLY!) this man comes along, and the gunpowder gets to do what it was designed for. Patience, that's the key!
Black Bellamy said...
My cousin brought back a bunch of 22mm cannon shells from the first Gulf War,
likely 25mm cannon shells if he was in the Army, off a Bradley. Perhaps 20mm if he were in the USAF or Navy
>>"It's very ornate for something designed to be destroyed by the thousands."<<
You're referring to the raised ridges. They are part of the arming mechanism of the bomblets, which goes active after they are released by the bomb (which splits open above the target). The ridges "catch wind" which causes them to spin. The spinning is registered by an internal mechanism which then activates the bomblet.
Holy Hand Grenade?
Don't be silly. Everyone knows that's in Antioch.
I've seen worse. Back in 1990, I was stationed on the island of Shemya near the end of the Aleutian chain. The island had the Bering Sea to the north and the Pacific everywhere else. All sorts of weird stuff washed ashore. One day, this cylindrical object with funny markings washed ashore. Several staff officers went to investigate it. They were rotating it to take pictures. They faxed their observations to Elmendorf AFB. The reply was surprising. They were ordered to evacuate the area for quite some distance and an EOD squad was deployed. It turned out to be the training version of a Soviet anti-ship mine. As a training version, it didn't have any explosives but no one knew that at the time. Had it been real, it could've killed a lot of people.
Shemya had all sorts of ordnance. It was a bomber base during WWII. After the war ended, they burnt massive piles of .50 caliber machine gun ammo (it wasn't worth the cost of shipping it back). There were a lot of rounds that were still live, along with the occasional hand grenade. Certain parts of the island were off limits due to the danger of unexploded ordnance. It was an interesting assignment in a lousy location.
During a tour of WWI sites there were signs to keep out posted in some places. There was so much unexpoded ordnance in the areas that they did not try to clear it.
Archaeologists (I am one) in parts of Europe have to have training to recognize mostly WWI ordnance.
Actually, a few years ago I decided every archaeological crew should have at least one member over the age of 50 to identify various historic objects. A coupla kids (you know, like 2-somethings) were pondering something that looked like a mini-light bulb. I told them what it was: an old-fashioned screw-in fuse.
20-somethings
There is a documentary available on YouTube called Scrapper (aka Of Bombs and Men, Range Runner) about people who enter active bombing ranges to gather scrap.
They're always digging up WWII bombs in Germany, mass evacuations included. A recent example: https://www.ibtimes.com/unexploded-us-bomb-world-war-ii-discovered-disarmed-germany-2805360
How do you know those are fake fingernails? They could be real.
When I lived on Guam, unexploded ordinance from WWII turned up all the time. The Navy base, with its family housing, dental and medical clinics, and elementary/middle school, is built right on where some of the heaviest fighting occurred when the island was liberated. My own house was built on the location of a mass grave of Japanese dead, for example. (The remains were repatriated during construction.) People who live there know the drill - the EOD guys come out, everyone within a certain radius is told to scram until they are done, and they safely disarm it.
From the comments:
OP: It’s not uncommon to find WW1/WW2 era munitions and trinkets in the jungles out here, but we can usually identify them pretty quickly. This one is definitely stumping us, we don’t have much more information other than it seems to be pretty old.
Response to ^: They were literally made to be curious items, to be picked up and inspected. If you know about submunitions why the hell is this in your hand? It's about to stump you.
Snort
I’m impressed by the amount of ordinance knowledge possessed by the Althouse commentariat. Also disturbed.
No... this is not a WW2 CBU.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/world-war-ii-cluster-bombs
And that photo isn't one of 'em.
I dunno what it is... but I bet it was some junk off a ship.
I take it back... might be one!!
Look at this. Looks something like it.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/02/11/war-without-end-the-deadly-legacy-of-cluster-munitions.html
But it ain't WW2.
Blogger rcocean said...
On the island of Malta in 1981 Paul Gauci, a 41-year-old Maltese man, died after welding a butterfly bomb to a metal pipe and using it as a mallet, thinking it was a harmless can. The latest find of such a bomb was on 28 October 2009, by an 11-year-old boy in a secluded valley close to a heavily bombarded airfield. This bomb was safely detonated on-site by the Armed Forces of Malta.
When I was cruising the Mediteranian in '69 with 200 of my closest pals we stopped several times in Malta. It was still a bombed out, rubbelized, mess at the time. Perhaps more bombs fell on Malta per square meter than anywhere else. (Maybe not quite but it was a lot)
It would not surprise me that there would still be lots of unexploded ordinance around there. German (and probably allies) set their bombs so that about 10% would not explode. Another 10% were supposed to explode and didn't. Lots of them still around all over england and europe.
Danger UXB was a Masterpiece Theatre series about a crew of Brits in WWII who went around London disposing of unexploded bombs. Pretty interesting. It's on YouTube.
John Henry
I knew a guy that always traveled with a a small bomb in his carryon. His reasoning was that the statistical chances of having two bombs on the same plane were close to nil.
Since he knew he was not going to hijack the plane, he figured nobody else would.
When I was a kid I had a 37mm shell that my father had brought back from WWII. Kind of a cool artifact. No charge, not even a primer, hollow steel head on a brass casing.
In 1989, on a visit to my mother's, my son found it and asked if he could have it. She said yeah but nobody else knew. He had it in his back pack when he set off the metal detector in LaGuardia. Lots of fun and excitement.
I was trying to explain it was empty, starting banging it on the floor trying to get it open.
Once they got calmed down, they let me send it as checked baggage.
John Henry
When I lived in Europe, 1993 saw seventeen Belgians and French were killed by ordinance from the First World War. IIRC, three-quarters of them were farmers who plowed or ran over artillery shells.
The Drill SGT said...
Black Bellamy said...
My cousin brought back a bunch of 22mm cannon shells from the first Gulf War,
likely 25mm cannon shells if he was in the Army, off a Bradley. Perhaps 20mm if he were in the USAF or Navy
8/1/19, 12:28 PM
More interesting would be 23mm Russian ammo for the ZSU-23-4 Shilka. A fearsome SPAAG. I believe the A-10's heavy armor was specified to resist the threat of the 23mm cannon.
Paul said...
No... this is not a WW2 CBU.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/world-war-ii-cluster-bombs
And that photo isn't one of 'em.
There are too many different types of them to say definitively. Some on the Wiki page look pretty close except for the raised metal sections visible in the woman's pic. The castings on the real cluster bombs usually aren't that clean. They were meant to blow up, of course. I assume the Sarin type exploded, too. Those might be a little more precise.
1.5 inch diameter = .00102 cubic ft. 3 lbs= density of 2941 lbs per cubic foot. Mecury weighs 849 lbs per cubic foot.
There are smarter commenters here, please check my math. Something is askew.
More math. Doing the conversion. 1.5 inch diam, = 29cubic centimeters. 3 lbs = 1360 grams, now we have the density =47gr/cm3., Mercury= 13.5gr/cm3.
Something is still askew
I was a 13Mike (Multiple Launch Rocket System Operator) during the Cold War, and each of our bomblets would kill anything within 10 square meters. Each rocket dropped between 100-200 bomblets each. Placed properly, we could wipe out an entire square kilometer with a 12 pack. I would not mess with that thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M270_Multiple_Launch_Rocket_System
Earth densest material
gold= 19.3gr/cm3
osmium= 29.59gr/cm3
This ladies find = 47gr/cm3
Iowan2, I got 47 g/cc as well.
The diameter looks right, so it just didn't weigh 3 pounds. Probably just a guess by them. On vacation, weights and measures can get distorted.
"The ridges "catch wind" which causes them to spin. The spinning is registered by an internal mechanism which then activates the bomblet."
So I'm good as long as my idea for a wind chime is put on the back burner until the marriage is on the rocks.
I can’t see the picture but small spherical cluster bomblets were not used in the ww2 pacific theatre. Probably a ball bearing if it is smooth. If it is a cluster bomblet it is from the Vietnam era and was lost by mistake by a usaf b52, but miraculously did not detonate.
Radius of the sphere is 0.75in = 1.905 cm.
Volume of a sphere is (4/3) * pi * r^3, so the volume of this sphere is 28.958 cm^3.
1 kg = 2.2 lb, so 3 lb = 1.364 kg = 1364 g. 1364 g/ 28.958 cm^3 = 47.1 g/cm^3.
According to Wikipeida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density), the Sun's core has a density between 33 g/cm^3 and 160 g/cm^3. So a 1.5" diameter sphere weighing three pounds would be as dense as some parts of the sun.
Keep in mind that a solid steel sphere (density about 8 g/cm^3) of this size would only weigh about 232 g or about half a pound.
20 years ago I worked for a company that made, among other things, metal detectors that were installed inside combination harvesters destined for Europe. The device sat above the channel leading to the thresher. An old shell might make it through the reaping process. But the thresher really would toss it around, and....
whilst emptying an attic years ago, we found an intact munitions shell. at this time and in that town, we called the local pizza guy, as we had spent so much time on so many visits to his place for wonderful pizza we had heard his stories about his time in our military on the bomb squad. we did not touch it til he did and said it had been emptied.
My wife and I were on the Chemin des Dames in France in late 2017, and stopped to poke around the last overgrown vestiges of the WWI entrenchments that were walkable. I knew about the possible unexploded ordnance, but it turns out they think they have found most of it there--the warning was more about cave-ins from the honeycomb of bunkers and tunnels both sides used there.
We kept to the paths.
Narr
I was there more for 1814
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