Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

[MissouriStateGuard]

In case anyone is interested.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A man who sold Civil War relics that included munitions was killed by an explosion, and residents of the neighborhood were kept out of their homes Tuesday as experts looked for more explosives.

Samuel H. White, 53, was found in his backyard Monday by neighbors who had heard the blast, Chesterfield County police said.

Police Capt. Steve Neal said that what exploded was military ordnance, possibly dating from the Civil War. Authorities found unexploded military ordnance at his house, and on Tuesday they were still collecting and detonating explosives.

White's business, Sam White Relics, advertised various relics for sale including Civil War artillery shells, cannonballs and bullets. His Web site says he would "disarm, clean, and preserve your Civil War period and earlier military ordnance" for about $35 each.

About two dozen nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution and police spokeswoman Ann Reid said the evacuation would remain in effect indefinitely.

Neighbor Brian Dunkerly told the Richmond Times-Dispatch the explosion hurled a chunk of metal weighing about 15 pounds that struck the roof of his front porch about one-quarter-mile from White's house. He said no one was hurt, although the piece of metal shattered his glass front door, hit the floor inside and bounced to the ceiling before coming to rest in the center of his living room.

Condolences to his family. More information and follow up stories can be found using a search engine.

[HistoryGeek]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

I read about that. That's crazy that Civil War munitions could still go off after 140+ years! I couldn't believe it. I wonder what happened to the shell in the house that got the glass smashed?

History Geek
Evan Hunsberger

[JimKindred]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

It is not crazy, this seems to happen at a minimum about once a year.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

Hallo!

My father volunteered for UXB bomb disposal in 1946 Germany.
Had he been accepted, I might not be typing this...

Farmers in Belgium and France routinely plow up unexploded shells. They stack them by the side of the road to be picked up disposal services.

Aside from the loss of life, another loss is that the Civil War ordnance whether empty, live with damaged/unexploded fuses, and live fused shells will be confiscated and destroyed alike.

Curt

[Abrams]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

Hallo!

My father volunteered for UXB bomb disposal in 1946 Germany.
Had he been accepted, I might not be typing this...

Farmers in Belgium and France routinely plow up unexploded shells. They stack them by the side of the road to be picked up disposal services.

Aside from the loss of life, another loss is that the Civil War ordnance whether empty, live with damaged/unexploded fuses, and live fused shells will be confiscated and destroyed alike.

Curt

Personally, I am glad your dad did not get that job, so you are here and typing stuff. You are a wealth of great info. :)

I also thought it a Great Shame that the other ordinance is being destroyed, and not being de-fused and preserved. :(

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

I have touched on this before, it's exactly why none of us should tell another member how to conserve a shell.

[J.H.Berger]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

We still dig up dozens of bombs from WW2 here in Germany each and every year. Fortunately very very seldom there are accidents but there was one 2 years ago when a caterpillar driver was killed when a 250kg bomb exploded while he was scraping off the Autobahn asphaltum layer. It had laid there for 60 years thousands of cars driving over it each day but that machine was too much for it. Tho9se things are simply damn dangerous no matter how old or in what condition they are!

[J.H.Berger]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

We still dig up dozens of bombs from WW2 here in Germany each and every year. Fortunately very very seldom there are accidents but there was one 2 years ago when a caterpillar driver was killed when a 250kg bomb exploded while he was scraping off the Autobahn asphaltum layer. It had laid there for 60 years thousands of cars driving over it each day but that machine was too much for it. Those things are simply damn dangerous no matter how old or in what condition they are!

[MissouriStateGuard]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

I spoke to a Belgian EOD officer recently about the amount of WWI ordnance still being recovered in their country today. On average, he said, they recover approximately 300 tons of ordnance per year- approximately 10% still contain chemical agents, with mustard gas predominant. These are recovered on a daily basis by farmers, road crews, and construction companies, and collected by roving EOD teams.

In addition there are several large ordnance dumps they are currently working on disarming. One by itself contains an estimated 400 tons of German shells.

They also have a problem with some ordnance collectors attempting to disarm the rounds themselves, and a few people each year are killed through accidental contact (through digging or burning ground clutter.) By and large, though, the citizenry are very respectful of the power of these rounds.

V/R,
Kip

[Mbond057]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

In 1997 Capt. Craig Button an Air Force Pilot of an A-10 Thunderbolt apparently committed suicide by flying into the side of a Colorado mountain. Button was stationed at Davis-Monthon Air Force Base in Arizona where his ill fated flight started and flew some 800 miles off course before he crashed near Vail, Colorado. Somewhere between AZ and Colorado he dropped four 500 pound bombs. From the cockpit recordings and onboard black boxes recovered at the crash scene the Air Force determined the bombs were not armed when they were dropped. Because of the erratic flight pattern they are not sure of the exact location that Button dropped his ordnance. Several search teams from both the military and civilian hiking groups have tried to locate the missing bombs.

As of this date they have not been recovered. So between AZ and Colorado there are four 500 pound bombs that are missing and it is coming up on 11 years since they went missing.

Here are some of the news clippings of the story I just mentioned.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/craig_david_button/index.html

[fortdonelsonrelics]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

I read about that. That's crazy that Civil War munitions could still go off after 140+ years! I couldn't believe it. I wonder what happened to the shell in the house that got the glass smashed?

History Geek
Evan Hunsberger

I thought I would quote the above statment in relation to a reponse, especially before posts start flying in about 'beating it with a hammer' or 'dropping it' start rolling in.

The simple facts are that when you drill into a shell you are running the risk of the shell going off, period. Unless proper techniques and safe guards are used prior to the actual drilling, these risks run even higher and it would appear that this is what happened here. It has been stated by sources close to the scene and by those who had spoke to Sam just prior to the event, that he had to disarm a fair quantity of shells in a short amount of time, thus taking short cuts to accomplish his task.

There have only been two deaths in the past 70+ years of people disarming civil war artillery shells. Though no one can put a value on a life, it is still statistically very low, and does not happen about once a year.

If anyone on this forum knows about anyone who drills shells with a hand-drill or uses what is percieved to be unsafe practices, tell them to stop immediately. It is not a matter of 'if' its only a matter of 'when'.


John Walsh

[JimKindred]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

To clarify my comment about this happening about once a year, I was referring to ordnance going off not necessarily killing someone. The point I was making is that this stuff is dangerous and if you dick around with it the wrong way it can kill you. Was it not last year a story was published about damage to a house caused by a Civil War shell being displayed near a fireplace that went from inert to "ert"?

[1stMaine]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

Comrades,

For what it's worth:

From this website about Ft. Macon:

http://www.clis.com/friends/History.htm

Two American soldiers were injured in Casemate 2 when a cannon shot they had placed in the fireplace as an andiron exploded from the heat of the fire. These men were both Northerners, so the local newspapers thought it humorous that two more "Yankees" had been gotten by a Confederate cannon ball some 80 years after the battle.

Even in WWII, CW UXB's were a problem.

Heck, when I went through basic at Fort Knox, there was always ordnance found along the map ranges, from dropped ammo to unexploded tank and artillery rounds. We were told to mark it on our maps, draw a sketch of the ordnance and the area if possibe, and stay the heck away from it and let someone in authority know about it.

Respects,

[Tom Ezell]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

My LCI instructor last year drilled it into our heads last year that if one makes a habit of running stop signs/stop lights, he's (eventually) going to get hit. Might be sooner, might be later, but probability will catch up with you, and when it does, you're toast.

I'm not an EOD man either (thought about it once or twice, but came back to my senses), but I have a number of close friends who are/were, and have watched the EOD folks in action. The reason we find these spent artillery shells lying around is that they're duds... usually faulty fuzes. The dud rate is pretty high; in the tens of percent in many cases, even higher for Confederate fuzes. There's a hair trigger there that may set the shell off when it does achieve the right circumstance. One of those things is electricity -- static or otherwise -- and I am informed from the article that Mr. Sam was in the habit of subjecting these items to electrolysis in order to clean off corrosion. Note that electricity and electrolysis share something in common. Another thing that sets these things off is physical shock... such as being jarred or hit with a hammer, or drilled into.

To add to the above complications with fuzes, old black powder is more sensitive than fresh black powder, and thus goes off more easily when it does decide to blow.

To echo Mr. Kindred's comments, people get killed or maimed by this sort of stuff nearly every day. Not all have the "honor" of being converted into hamburger by a real Yankee or Rebel shell... most are claimed by an old land mine, or grenade or artillery submunition. They're just as hurt, and it's just as foolish to screw around with a dud Parrott shell or case shot from 1864 as it is to mess with a dud DPICM munition from Gulf War II.

And if you're diligent enough (and can dig/dive deep enough), there are a few old Cold War era nukes still lost out there somewhere that we were unable to find and secure. Someday, somebody like Mr. White might be trying to drill out one of those... with possible consequences for the neighborhood.

Don't be a dud... let sleeping shells lie!

[Richmond Depot]

Re: Man Killed Disarming CW Shell

If anyone on this forum knows about anyone who drills shells with a hand-drill or uses what is percieved to be unsafe practices, tell them to stop immediately. It is not a matter of 'if' its only a matter of 'when'.


John Walsh

I met Sam White back in 1989. We relic hunted together for many years, spending hundreds of hours in the woods and fields of Hanover and Petersburg. At the time, Sam and I were fairly good friends.

In about 1993 or so, I was over at his place and he was showing me the "proper" technique for unloading shells which basically consisted of submerging the shell in just enough water to cover the hole that he was drilling with an electric hand drill. After the hole was drilled, water would run into the shell making the powder wet and then the powder would run out.

After holding my breath and standing back watching him do two shells in this manner, he wanted me to do one to which my response was " No F&^%$#G way, your going to blow us up " I remember that he laughed at me when I said this.

Not long after the shell disarming lesson, Sam and I had a falling out over a rather trivial matter and never spoke again. I would periodically see Sam at the CW shows but we never spoke and it is now much to my regret that I never took the iniative to make amends.

Best,