Let set the mood by paying homage to the Home Guard of old:
Seven decades have come and gone, and the Royal Navy is still protecting English shores from Hitler's evil designs.
Today, the British newspaper The Daily Mail, details the disposal of an unexploded naval mine just outside of the Dorchester Harbour. Article: HERE.
Boq
Seven decades have come and gone, and the Royal Navy is still protecting English shores from Hitler's evil designs.
Today, the British newspaper The Daily Mail, details the disposal of an unexploded naval mine just outside of the Dorchester Harbour. Article: HERE.
Boq
This mine was sixty years old, and still perfectly capable of functioning as designed.
Why is it that the very best of our engineering know-how always seems to go into our weapons, and nowhere else?
Our engineering know-how has already gone somewhere else entirely...
"That was a German hand-grenade, and you're all dead!"
"It's a spud, Sarge..."
It worked perfectly?
It was SUPPOSED to explode when it was dropped, so many years ago.
And even now, it needed a hunk of RN demolition explosive to persuade it to go off at long last.
That's not the level of perfection I'd want in any weapon.
We are a disposable society, which has lead to manufacturers making less durable products, knowing that we will replace them and therefore increase their sales. It's the same reason the everlasting lightbulb will never see the light of day (pardon the pun), and why it costs less to buy an entire razor than replacement razor blades.
That being said... that's one hella BOOOOOOM! sweet.
I've got a serviceable spear point that's over 1000 years old...
If the rear gunner in a Schnellbomber had a view that was unobstructed by empennage, he had a bigger problem than a mine going off in his face -- it meant that his ride had snapped in half.
I've got a serviceable spear point that's over 1000 years old...
About six inches long, sharpened on both edges, slightly skewed point? Dang -- I'll betcha it's the one I lost in the Teutoburgerwald ....
My '92 Integra runs well, but I need to scrape the $$ together to kill some growing rust on the back-left quarter panel...
So there are still some reliable things out there... :)
Just make sure you don't stab yourself with that too.
I was going by the decription of it as a "ground mine", and the photo of a "similar mine" laying in a back garden.
The fact that this one was in the water I put down to poor aim or wind drift.
I've had personal experience of these devices.
At one time the Germans modified some air-dropped sea mines for use against land targets - they replaced the shipping fuze with an impact one, often with a delayed action timer.
As a kid in London I used a shopping bag with a fat silk handle (very comfy), recycled from the parachute rigging of one such mine. It had flattened over half a dozen houses when it finally went off.
BTW, this one-tonner landed miles from any halfway legitimate target.
Curiously, it was on that bomb-site that I did get a spear point through my foot.
One of my mates thought that he could throw one of the spikes of a demolished iron fence like a spear - but it was much heavier than he could manage...
And your conclusion did have some support, as you point out.