The Second World War is Still With Us
Officially, the Second World War ended with Japan’s surrender, 80 years ago. In at least one sense, however, the war goes on.
Although no hostile action was fought on Canadian, let alone British Columbia soil, we, too, have a history of live ordnance—so-called ‘friendly fire’—turning up, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places; several times, it has killed.
Bomb disposal expert Sergeant Rupert Frere checks the fuse on an unexploded 1000-pound bomb at a building site. — https://okok1111111111.blogspot.com/2015/03/bomb-disposal-expert.html
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I’d no sooner written the promo for this week’s offering than the Times Colonist published a small article, Crew removing undetonated explosives from military training area near William Head.
Perfect timing on my part, right?
Just three days later, this time with glaring headlines, the TC reported, Almost 500 trains cancelled during Second World War bomb disposal.
As I said, in this grim and unwelcome respect, the Second World War goes on...
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As recently as 2012, the Victoria Times Colonist was prompted by the discovery of an unexploded mortar shell near Tofino to editorialize on the need to “recover leftover bombs”.
“The discovery is a reminder that wars don't always end with the ceasefire. The projectile was found in sand dunes above the high-water mark in Pacific Rim National Park... it seems incredible that such an intricate mechanism could survive 70 years of exposure to sand, salt and sea water. Yet the shell was alive, meaning a clumsy attempt at handling could have set it off.
“Most bombs have chemical detonators that become unstable with time. Far from the danger receding as the years go by, it may actually increase. In European countries such as France and Germany, warheads are dug up every day and fatalities still occur.
“Our own corner of the world, of course, is more fortunate. The only wartime bombs to fall on B.C. were a handful of small aerial mines [sic] launched by Japan. Several thousand were attached to balloons and sent aloft when the prevailing winds were right...
“Friendly Fire is another matter. Eight residents of the Vernon area have been killed over the years by munitions left behind from military training exercises. Most were mortar shells that failed to explode and remain buried after a local firing range was abandoned. And there are numerous areas along the B.C. Coast that could still present a danger. The DND has identified 20 separate locations where Canadian or American munitions may lie buried or submerged...”
So wrote the Times Colonist, just 14 years ago. But the dangers remain, particularly in Europe where countries such as Germany and France have full-time, professional bomb disposal experts whose work is cut out for them, it has been predicted, for at least another 30 years!
Terrorists’ bombs, such as this one being handled by Montreal police officers, are another explosives story altogether. —Author’s Collecton
Last week’s complete shutdown of a major Parisian railway station and surrounding highways system until a half-ton British aerial bomb from the Second World War could be disarmed is a perfect case in point.
But these are the British Columbia Chronicles, so let’s look at the home front.
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Let’s begin with a current Government of Canada report, Locations of Unexploded Explosive Ordnance (UXO), which lists 25 B.C. sites that have posed, or continue to pose, public danger. Eleven sites are checked off as “Assessment Complete,” leaving 14 as undergoing “assessment,” i.e. of continuing concern. (An assessment, need I say it, doesn’t mean that these sites have been cleared.) These range from small arms/rifle ranges to an artillery battery, a practice bombing range, an underwater weapons range, a rocket and grenade range, and a field firing (artillery) range.
Note, there’s no mention of west coast Vancouver Island’s Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park.
What deadly secrets does Long Beach hide amidst its litter of driftwood? —Wikipedia
All these known danger areas, 80 years—more than three-quarters of a century—after the end of the Second World War!
As I write this, UXO recovery work is underway at the 17-hectare former Blair Rifle Range in North Vancouver which was used by the Canadian Armed Forces for military training, 1930s-1960s. Civilian contractors do the detection work, explosives experts from CFB Esquimalt haul unearthed objects away for disposal or detonate them on-site.
Previous sweeps of the Blair range were conducted in 2018, 2023 and 2024. The fact that the defunct range now finds itself in the midst of heavily trafficked hiking trails explains DND’s ongoing concern since the recovery of 200 kilograms of mortar shells, practice rounds and grenade components in 2018, plus the mortar shell “components” and high-explosives detected in a subsequent search.
“And we’re only expecting to find more,” said project manager Sean Davies, two years ago of the work that’s described as being “very dangerous; everything is done by hand”.
Making this “legacy site” safe for recreational users has been “a very high priority,” DND project manager Debbie Nicholls told the North Shore News in 2023. Previous recovery efforts had achieved a downgrading to “medium [danger] status,” but the job wasn’t finished. Continuing efforts to a depth of 30-45 centimetres were and are being made to “add that extra level of safety for the community by...removing the items that are in the forest”.
At that time, North Shore historian Donna Sacuta expressed concerns that search efforts weren’t covering sufficient ground because incomplete official records don’t include a 1972 declaration by a former officer that there’s a munitions or grenade dump as well as the identified small arms range site.
These U.S. soldiers are firing an M120 mortar in Afghanistan. Second World War mortar rounds that failed to explode but are still deadly continue to turn up at former B.C. firing ranges. —Wikipedia
Proliferating hiking trails which encroach upon previously un-trodden ground increase the potential for unearthing more overlooked ordnance which becomes dangerous when it’s disturbed. A three-inch mortar round has a “lethality radius” of 10 metres and can cause serious injury up to 450 metres distant. No wonder that the DND advises against digging, cutting more trails or lighting campfires on the former firing range!
The land in question, which is co-owned by Canada Mortgage Housing Corp. and the province, will remain designated as a recreational preserve as any form of development, even forestry, would require “a much more intrusive UXO search including deforestation”. (In other words, they’re not trying to detect all possible ordnance, just that which poses the greatest threat.)
The search for unexploded armaments, project manager Nicholls pointed out, is “like finding a needle in a haystack”.
Even a national publication such as Macleans has picked up on the threat, looking at “Why unexploded bombs are an expensive—and dangerous—problem.” The 2016 feature article focused on the Goose Lake Range which is on land appropriated by the DND from the Okanagan Lake Band Reserve for use as artillery and tank ranges, mortar fields and other live-fir training exercises.
The beautiful—and potentially deadly—Okanagan Reserve lands were long used as a military range that has left an unknown litter of still-live munitions in the ground. —Okanagan Indian Band
“Almost a century of military use has left 2,800 hectares...seeded with a lethal harvest of buried unexploded ordnance...render[ing] prime development areas...largely useless for anything but grazing lands for cattle and horses. Over the years, accidental explosions...have resulted in several civilian deaths and injuries.”
In 2019, a Vancouver developer sued the federal government for “allegedly not disclosing that a parcel of land might be littered with unexploded ordnance left over from Second World War training exercises,” and, in 2019, the Globe and Mail described what it termed the “monumental battle” facing DND: “Hidden bombshells: How unexploded munitions in Canada have become a massive financial liability.”
Unexploded military ordnance isn’t restricted to former rifle, mortar and artillery ranges, however. Live mines continued to haunt world seas long after the end of the last world war. Lt.-Cmdr. Edward L. (Ted) Boradaille, RCN, was killed while disarming a Japanese mine which had drifted ashore on Bonilla Island, 90 miles from Prince Rupert, in July 1952. Trained in mine disposal practice in England, the 46-year-old career officer who’d trained in mine disposal in England then served with the bomb disposal school at Esquimalt, had demobilized at war’s end, only to return to the navy’s Ordnance School in 1951.
It was in this capacity that he found himself on Bonilla Island, trying to disarm beached mine when it exploded prematurely. He was the second ordnance expert to die in such a mishap. “May his example of calmness and fortitude inspire and strengthen us all,” eulogized the RCN magazine, The Crowsnest.
Years after the end of the Second World War, floating mines such as this one continued to sink ships and to drift ashore on B.C.’s west coast with, at least once, deadly results. —freeimages.com
The threat of floating mines that eventually broke their moorings and were carried by ocean currents from Asian waters to the Island’s west coast has subsided with passing time but it has taken quite a while—one mine, recovered off the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) in the ‘60s, was laid in 1917.
Japanese balloon bombs still turn up. Of the 1000s of these ingenious devices which were floated across the Pacific carrying incendiary bombs, fewer than 100 were recovered along the B.C. coast. Fortunately for us, many likely didn’t complete the trip and most of those that did failed to detonate. But some are sure to be still out there in our remoter forests. (See Deja Vu all over again—Chinese spy balloons recall Japanese aerial bombardment of B.C. forests).
This schematic drawing shows the mechanism of a Japanese aerial bomb, 1000s of which were launched against Canadian and American west coast forests during the Second world war.
So far, with the above exceptions, I’ve been discussing the dangers posed by former military sites. But the threat can be much more widespread than that—sometimes in the sanctity of one’s own home.
Years ago, I interviewed the late Lt.-Cmdr. Arthur Rowse, RCN, then second in command of Esquimalt naval base’s naval diving establishment. He told me that he’d “long ceased being amazed” at the wartime souvenirs some people had in their private possession. Such as the man who’d made a lamp of a 12-pound practice bomb.
“Every time he turned the lamp on,” Rowse marvelled, “there was an electrical spark...”
Because it was legal to possess such curios, he “knew of live hand grenades in a man’s house here. He thinks they’re safe, I know they’re not. I can’t do anything about it because it’s perfectly legal to take the chance of blowing up yourself, your family and your house.”
Connecting militaria such as these items is harmless.
In July 1964, in response to an appeal that the public have any wartime souvenirs checked out by naval explosives experts, Vancouver Island residents handed in: two torpedoes, one 100-pound incendiary bomb, 100 small explosives, three semi-armour-piercing shells, seven 12-pound armour-piercing shells, one 11-pound bomb, one Asdic repeater target, two smoke floats, 30 heat shells, eight 81mm mortars, and 44 three-inch recoilless rifle shells.
One of those who checked with the navy wanted to make a birdbath by cutting off the top of a live 400-pound bomb!
Another man “had an eight-inch shell of a type that hasn’t been seen on this coast since the early 1900s. He’d been using it as a doorstop for years. We took it out to Bentinck Island and sure blew a big hole in the island.” Yet another veteran “carried a 125-pound live aerial bomb home from the Pacific”.
Trench art, souvenirs made from artillery shells and the like, are highly collectible and there are books such as this one dedicated to them. But—the shells used to create artworks are first rendered harmless. —Amazon
As recently as last year, a medical call in Mission turned into the seizure of almost 1000 pieces of unexploded ordnance, firearms and ammunition. While attending a private residence, paramedics spotted a grenade on a kitchen counter then a box of grenades in a back room, and alerted the RCMP who called in what are now designated Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams from the Fleet Diving Unit (Pacific).
Said to be “an avid” collector of military memorabilia, the homeowner had to relinquish a 1000-pound practice bomb, grenades, mortars, anti-tank rounds, high-explosive squash-head rounds and 100s of different types of munitions. He also “made his own small arms...so we even found a working 50-calibre machine gun,” a naval spokesman told the Mission City Record.
His impounded collection was the largest this explosives expert had ever seen.
“Normally, when we get calls, it might be for a single item or maybe a couple...but normally, it’s just a single grenade or a single mortar. There might be a handful of them, but definitely not around 1000 items.”
It took two days to render the items safe on-site then remove and dispose of them but, when it was determined that the owner was purely a collector who had no intention of putting his arsenal to use, no charges were laid. The public was reminded that, should they come across explosive ordnance of any kind, not to handle them but immediately report them to police.
Naval experts consider souvenirs to be the most dangerous of all explosives because their owners think them safe. Artillery shells, for example, may have had the percussion cap removed and the cartridge emptied, but the explosive projectile may still be intact.
In short, Cmdr. Rowse had no empathy for collectors of live or even questionable militaria. “They’re put on earth for only one purpose and that’s to kill. If you have or find anything, for God’s sake, call the Navy.” (Probably, the police first.)
As he pointed out, “Explosives never deteriorate into something more stable. They’re unstable compounds to begin with and they break down into more unstable compounds.”
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My files of news reports over several decades is half-an-inch thick and continues to grow.
