The wrect of the Laura C. . sunk off the Messina strais on 3/7/1941 by HMS Upholder was "sealed" by the Italian police after it was discovered it's load of TNT and detonators was gradually being recovered by a criminal organisation. The ship was sunk in shallow waters and was a pretty popular diving site. http://www.colapisci.it/tuffatore/laurac.htm Wonder what "sealed" means, if it's just forbidding diving on the site it will not discourage criminals, but woll make their work a bit harder. The only viable long term solution would be blowing up the wreck but that would cause a minor scale environmental disaster. I fear there are plenty of known wrecks that would be a good source of HE is one is willing to face the risks.
"Today that large cargo holds were partially filled with concrete..." Underwater welding would have followup upon that I suspect. 3 July 1941 http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/3535.html HMS Upholder Class 1 Pennant 99N, built 8 Jul 1940 with a crew of 33 (Lt.Cdr. M.D. Wanklyn, RN) torpedoed the Italian merchant Laura C (6181 GRT, built 1923) off Saline Ioniche, Calabria, in position 37°55'N, 15°44'E. According to Italian sources she was in convoy with Mameli (2682 GRT, 1889), both from Taranto and Pugliola (2974 GRT, 1917) which had joined from Crotone and escorted by the torpedo-boat Altair and the minesweeper Arborea. They were proceeding to Messina. Laura C. was indeed hit by two torpedoes, the ship was taken in tow to be run ashore but sank in deep water. Of her crew of 38, there were three wounded, three killed and three missing. Altair hunted the submarine, (HMS Upholder (N 99)) dropping 18 depth charges in four runs, and claimed it probably sunk. She had an interesting career until 10 April 1942 when Upholder was then sent to patrol east of Djerba Island and then received an order to form a patrol line with HMS Thrasher (Lt. H.S. Mackenzie, RN) and HMS Urge (Lt.Cdr. E.P. Tomkinson, DSO and Bar, RN) to intercept an important convoy approaching Tripoli from the east (the Aprilia convoy). Upholder was not heard from again. Details: https://web.archive.org/web/20080106150307/http://home.cogeco.ca/~gchalcraft/sm/page29.html Upholders Paxman Engines: http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxsubs.htm Does anyone have any information on Axis Claims that might correlate with this loss?
I apologize, couldn't translate....this sounds amazing...like a movie....was this recently the criminals were trying this?? I would think the detonators would be unstable?? but TNT ok??
When I was stationed in Attu there were (and still are) thousands of shells buried in the soupy muskeg which failed to go off during the war. When there were sharp temperature changes they'd occasionally explode and we'd hear the dull "whump" out there. I don't know if explosives held in seawater with a more constant temperature would be more stable than those in the ground, but the explosives do degrade over time and become unstable. These criminal gangs might be in for some big surprises.
This is old stuff. During the French war in Indochina, the Vietminh sent teams of divers into the Gulf of Tonkin to salvage explosives and ammunition from Japanese ships that had been sunk during WWII. Very hazardous, I would imagine, but the Vietminh were 1) at war and 2) desperate.
The fillers (mixtures that included picric acid primarily) that were used in a lot of WWII and almost all WWI era shells and bombs would become very unstable if it came into contact with metal for any period of time. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picric_acid#Safety and http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/cci/safety/picric.pdf