How are WW1 or WW2 era bombs still regularly found in gardens and houses around UK and Europe?

Question

The day after or week after these were dropped 60-100 years ago, did people not think, there’s a bomb over there we should make it safe.

Edit: I singled out the UK because they discovered a bomb from World War Two today in Plymouth. I know the UK is still in Europe.

In: Other

Answer 1

First off, keep in mind we droped MILLIONs of tons of bomb and the failure rate was about 15%. Especially for impact detonated bombs landing on soft soil. That’s a lot of bombs to keep track of and I don’t think anybody has an accurate count of how many bombs were used period.

Second, because these were duds often landing on soft soil these bombs tended to burry themselves far past their tails. You’d hear a thud and might see a hole in the ground at best and just a patch of disturbed dirt at worse.

Third, bombs were almost never dropped alone. Carpet bombing usually involved entire squadrons of bombers dropping hundreds of bombs most people were too busy hiding to count how many bombs detonated.