Airdrop containers

[martylee]

I went to a local gunstore the other day to look at some of his toys. He's been collecting ww2 stuff since he was a kid. He has most of it at his home, which I will visit later. In the store the most intresting thing he has is perhaps a drop container picked up locally. Photo below. But he also told me that he knew of a containers which landed in lakes and never were picked up. I didn't think much about it at that time, but afterwards I started thinking it would be cool to raise one of these! Of course it would belong to the state, and we'd have to be careful since it might contain explosives.

What I really wonder about is if it has survied until now? Or just a bucnh of rusty crap. I guess they were packed in waerproof material in case they landed in snow or water!? Does anyone know?

I think a few of these would look wonderful in the back of my Dodge! :-D

 

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w197/martylee74/IMG_1443.jpg[/img]

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w197/martylee74/IMG_1440.jpg[/img]

 

Marty

[ghasp!]

I did the Arnhem march a few years back and was speaking to a couple of the locals in the bar afterwards. One guy there spent his weekends searching the woods for stuff by hand (metal detectors are banned there locally). He'd found a couple of drop canisters only a few weeks before.

[AlienFTM]

The state of anything at the bottom of a lake depends entirely how it is lying and in what.

 

For instance Titanic is so deep there is very little oxygen to rust it (but enough to that it is rusting slowly).

 

Komsolomsk (sp?) was a Soviet submarine which went down (further than was intended!!!) off North Cape Norway in the late 40s (IIRC) with two tubes loaded with Plutonium-tipped torpedoes and the bow caps open.

 

Much debate rages to this day about the state of the Komsolomsk and the 15kg of Plutonium. Are they exposed to sea water to rust the casing? Is it buried in sand and not exposed to rust? Can it be lifted without the torpedo casings splitting and rendering the entire planet's water poisonous? Should it be encased in concrete to prevent a Plutonium leak? Would the act of concreting the wreck split the casings?

 

I guess what you see is what you get in each case.

[Enigma]

Would be worth a try.

If its sunk in mud or a swamp like water it could be quite good.

[ArtistsRifles]

The state of anything at the bottom of a lake depends entirely how it is lying and in what.

 

For instance Titanic is so deep there is very little oxygen to rust it (but enough to that it is rusting slowly).

 

Komsolomsk (sp?) was a Soviet submarine which went down (further than was intended!!!) off North Cape Norway in the late 40s (IIRC) with two tubes loaded with Plutonium-tipped torpedoes and the bow caps open.

 

Much debate rages to this day about the state of the Komsolomsk and the 15kg of Plutonium. Are they exposed to sea water to rust the casing? Is it buried in sand and not exposed to rust? Can it be lifted without the torpedo casings splitting and rendering the entire planet's water poisonous? Should it be encased in concrete to prevent a Plutonium leak? Would the act of concreting the wreck split the casings?

 

I guess what you see is what you get in each case.

 

 

You mean the "Komsomolets" - last I heard they were planning to bury her in what I think was called a stratographic trap - varying layers of materials (sand, gravel etc,) a goodly few feet thick.......

[Joris]

I saw a documentry about the sinking of a ferry in Norway which carried heavy water for the Nazis. They found the wreck in immaculate state because there is was salt in the water and hardly any growth on it.

 

Knut Haukelid discovered their plan and decided to sabotage a ferry carrying the heavy water across lake Tinnsjø. He recognised a crew member and talked to him, taking this advantage to slip into the bottom of the ship and plant the bomb, after which he escaped. Eight and half kilograms of plastic explosive with two alarm-clock fuses were fixed to the keel of the ferry, D/F Hydro, which was to carry the railway tankers of the water. On 20 February 1944, shortly after setting off around midnight, the ferry and its cargo sank in deep water, finally capping the original mission's objective and halting Germany's atomic bomb development programme. A number of Norwegian civilians were killed as the ferry sank. Witnesses reported seeing barrels floating after the sinking, leading to speculation that they did not really contain heavy water. But an examination of records after the war showed that some barrels were only half full, and therefore would have floated. A few of these may have been salvaged and transported to Germany. Around 2005, an expedition retrieved a barrel (numbered "26") from the bottom of the lake. Its concentration of heavy water matched the records, and confirmed that the shipment was not a decoy.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage

[Enigma]

They also salvaged a barrel to check if there was heavy water in it.

It indeed contained heavy water.