Wednesday, 28th October 2009 - 21:55CET
Boy finds anti-personnel bomb
An 11-year-old boy found, and picked up, a wartime anti-personnel bomb at Wied Qirda near Qormi on Sunday before hiding it until AFM personnel detonated it this afternoon.
The small bomb, of a type which killed a farmer in Rabat in 1981, was discovered embedded in a rubble wall.
The boy, Andrew Worley, picked it up and showed it to his father, who immediately realised what it was. It was then hidden beneath the carcass of a rusting, long abandoned car until the AFM bomb squad was called to the scene this afternoon.
The soldiers decided that their safest option was to detonate the device on the spot - an operation which was concluded safely with a bang within a few minutes.
The bomb was of a type which used to be dropped in clusters from German aircraft in the Second World War. Such bombs were known as butterfly bombs because of their thin cylindrical outer shell which hinged open when the bomblet was deployed, giving it the appearance of a large butterfly.
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Military technology has moved on since those days. Anti-personel mines have been so developed so as to make them very difficult to detect. Some are actually made of plastic, making them magnetically neutral, hence difficult to detect. There are still large minefields around the world in the so called "Third World Countries" where locals loose legs, arms, and even die, when they inadvertedly step on to them. In such countries, such fields should be filled with produce really !!!!
This is an interesting WWII wartime British Information film used to educate civilians against the German cluster bomb dangers.
The shape of the bomb is cylindrical slightly bigger than a preserving can diametre 75mmX90mm height approximately .
The boy and father should not have moved the bomb from where they found it. It is said that the fuse works with a counterbalance(like an automatic watch) which in turn drives a ratchet driven firing pin.
The 'Molotov bread basket ' or mother bomb contained thirty two anti personell bombs. After being dropped the mother bomb opens in mid air with an electrical fuse , spreads the thirty two bombs which in turn open four spring loaded steel covers of each bomb. The bombs are attached with a flexible rod to these covers two of which act like a parachute and the two others spin the bombs while they are falling.Some of the bombs exploded in mid air as they were intentionally designed to behave , but many remained unexploded . When found in the countryside farmers just dumped them in dry walls, prickley pear trees and wells.
Given the sheer amount of bombs dropped on Malta (more than on Germany on a per square kilometre basis) it's not that surprising, really.
In my native Netherlands, with its sandy soil, they find a couple of heavy bombs (500 lbs or more) a couple of times per year. When they decided to build a new neighbourhood on the location of an old airfield near Eindhoven, well, you can imagine the sort of things they found.
Even to this day, farmers find the poison gas shells from WW1 in Belgium and France.
In fact, large parts of Europe are in the medium risk category when it comes to unexploded ordnance and land mines.
"Indeed, a quarter of all war casualties are victims of mines; of these, more than a fifth are women and children."
I can understand children, but are you insinuating that women's lives are more valuable than men's?
Keeping to the subject, well done to all involved.
Roadworks had uncovered it and, like young Andrew, Charlie thought this was a great find; except he knew precisely what it was.
A group of kids including one of my brothers went to see Charlie detonate the bomb by throwing it into a fire.
It wouldn't go off. Charlie told all the other kids to stay put while he poked up the fire with a stick.
He must have tripped something for it went off killing him instantly and made colanders of nearby 40 gallon drums.
Had he not had the sense to tell the other younger kids to stay put there would have been an even bigger tragedy.
When we went to bury him the priest got all us kids around and showed us poor charlie's remains and that was a pretty tough thing to do to young kids.
But we got the message loud and clear and maybe that saved some kid's life.
I hope that young Andrew is reading this as he has been very lucky.
It is surprising that such WW2 dangers still lurk out there, after so many years !!
Thanks God Andrew Worley is safe and sound. Big WELL DONE goes to AFM personnel.
This incident brought to my mind a living danger that’s no longer under focus.
To me it seems that across the globe and this of course includes Malta the WWII is still on. United Nation reports that, roughly every 25 minutes a human being is blown up[this I think is more terrorist than Osama Ben Laden] or amputated by mines in the trouble-torn corners of the globe. Indeed, a quarter of all war casualties are victims of mines; of these, more than a fifth are women and children.
The cost to detect and defuse a land mine is about 8 to 10 euros. I sincerely hope world’s leaders (of France, Italy,USA,UK, RUSSIA, China etc) particularly those repeatedly promote themselves as human rights guardians, instead of spending billions of $$ on useless wars to allocate money for removing landmines they planted in each corner of planet Earth. This of course unless our leaders have a different plan as implied in the following article:
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/maund/maund092906.html
Albert.