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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Well I was curious so I did.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

    Long story short it has an ass load of unexploded ordinance, an exclusion zone around it and a cautionary tale…

    One of the reasons that the explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralise the contents of the Polish cargo ship Kielce, that sank in 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel. During preliminary work, Kielce exploded with a force equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and bringing “panic and chaos” to Folkestone, although there were no injuries. Kielce was at least 3 or 4 miles (4.8 or 6.4 km) from land, had sunk in deeper water than Richard Montgomery, and had “just a fraction” of the load of explosives.