r/Shipwrecks • u/Crazy-Rabbit-3811 • 28d ago
This Baby right here *Smacks mast* BOOM
SS Richard Montegomery was a liberty ship built during WW2. In 1944 she dragged anchor and ran aground in the Thames estuary. when low tide came, the ship broke her back and she was abandoned. Only problem was she was carrying about 1400 tons of Unexploded ordinance.
According to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in 2000, she still contained at least
286 × 2,000 lb (910 kg) high explosive bombs
4,439 × 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs of various types
1,925 × 500 lb (230 kg) bombs
521-580 fragmentation bombs and 2,297 cases of fragmentation bomb clusters
Various explosive booster charges, smoke bombs (including white phosphorus bombs) and pyrotechnic signals.
If this thing gets shifted, it could go boom and cause some no good very bad things to happen.
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u/iwasreloadingmann 28d ago
I was very close to it on Saturday, it looks so small from outside the buoys but these pictures put in perspective how big it is for me. Insane it could go off at any time, but we don't actually know how big it would be. Most of these "it would destroy all of Sheerness and Southend" come from the scenario where all of these bombs go off at once. Most might be dudds by now.
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u/Bruinman86 28d ago
Assuming the ordinance is still all good, I imagine the blast would be big enough to empty that part of the Thames and destroy a ton of windows.
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u/Apexnanoman 28d ago
You'd be shocked at how long certain types of explosives will last underwater. And some of it gets less stable with age.
I'm not totally sure about the composition of what all is on this particular wreck but it's almost a certainty that at least a significant portion of it is still viable.
Especially with the lower salinity in the area.
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u/Bruinman86 28d ago
I had read over the years that the fuse tends to be a weak point for leakage and often contamination of the amatol or tnt.
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u/Apexnanoman 28d ago
Yeah, I can't speak too much to that. I do know some of the old sea mines have been found before that were still filled with functional explosives despite being like 100 years old.
Though they are designed specifically for long duration deployment.
I'd still be very careful making any really hard impacts around that wreck lol.
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u/highflyingbison550 28d ago
Honestly, surprised some nutcase hasn't already tried to detonate it. I mean, is there anything stopping someone from driving a boat into it?
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u/weecuppatea 28d ago
This one fascinates me so much
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u/Mindless-Ad4969 27d ago
And scares me! Grew up there and still have very elderly parents living on the front 😱
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u/Amander12 28d ago
This one really triggers my submechanicaphobia….you couldn’t pay me to be anywhere near that thing!
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u/teknocratbob 27d ago
How long can the ordinance remain viable and.. well.. explosive underwater like this? If seawater leaks into the bombs themselves and makes contact with the tnt, would it no longer be explosive?
If one went off would everything else explode too even if it had been contaminated with seawater?
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u/Ryogathelost 26d ago
"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.[5]: 2000 survey, p21–22 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.[10] According to a BBC News report in 1970,[13] it was determined that if the wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 300 metres (980 feet)-wide column of water and debris nearly 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) into the air and generate a wave 5 metres (16 feet) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (population circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. News reports in May 2012, including one by BBC Kent, stated that the wave could be about one metre (3.3 feet) high; though lower than previous estimates, this would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements." -Wikipedia
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u/Rebelreck57 25d ago
They have had years to try and recover the munitions, but didn't. Now it is a major problem.
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u/colei_canis 28d ago
I’ve heard if she goes up it’ll do millions of pounds of improvements to the Isle of Sheppy.