From: dolf@echo.philips.nl (Dolf Grunbauer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Abandoned/Booby Trapped Aircraft hangars
Date: 1 Sep 92 07:04:32 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, E.C.H.O. development department

bobk@ESD.3Com.COM (Bob Konigsberg) writes:

>It finally struck me last night of something that MAY be another urban
>legend, or since I heard it in the service, a military legend...

>Anyhow, when I was in the service, I was stationed at Coleman Army
>Airfield in Mannheim in West Germany (at the time).  It was a common 
>tale there that underneath the airfield
>that we all worked on, was a maze of aircraft hangars left over from
>World War II.  The U.S. Army, had lost several people to booby traps
>when trying to investigate these hangars, that they finally flooded
>them, and sealed off the entrance.

>Question: To verify its authenticity (or more precisely the lack thereof)
>Does anyone else know of such a tale being repeated at their airbase,
>or similar circumstances?  OR better yet, can anyone substantiate the 
>story?

Although I cannot say whether this particular story is true or not, it
does not sound impossible. I have never heard stories of booby trapping
on purpose such an object. On the other hand even nowadays we still
'suffer' from the bombing during WWII. A special part of our Dutch army,
called the EOD (Explosieven Opruimings Dienst), has a full daytime work
of taking care of unexploded bombs from WWII. The amazing thing is that
even 48 years after WWII stopped, the number of bombs they find and clear
is *in*creasing each year. As you may know the Netherlands is just inbetween
England and Germany, so very many of the bombflights at night went over
our country (first the Germans to England, later on the English/Americans/etc
to Germany). And of course many planes crashed over the Netherlands.
Also Rotterdam was heavily bombed by the Germans in 1940. Just a couple
of month ago some old houses were torn down to make room for a large new
building and they found a huge unexploded bomb just beneath these old
buildings (during the war the bomb has gone through the house without
exploding and was forgotten or ignored). To clear this bomb, parts of
Rotterdam had to be evacuated (circle of radius of 500m), while an even
bigger area (circle of radius of 2 km) has to stay in house, trains were
stopped etc. This may sound weird, but this kind of thing happen about
2 to 3 times a years (although not always in an inner city, and on the
country the press doesn't always take big notice of it).

I suppose the situation in Belgium (country south of the Netherlands)
is also very much like ours, and maybe even worse as they have fought in
WWI (yes: I) (the Netherlands were neutral then) and they have tons of
chemicals bombs 'hidden' all over the country (yes that is 74 years ago now).
Just last week a small city in Belgium suffered from a leaking container
of this stuff.
-- 
   _ _
  / U | Dolf Grunbauer    E.C.H.O. Development    Digital Equipment Enterprises
 /__'<  dolf@echo.philips.nl  dolf@toet.echo.tds.philips.nl
88  |_\ mcsun!echo.philips.nl!dolf                         Was Dat voor niets ?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban