I would expect that you wouldn’t be able to loosen anything on an old, rusty bomb, especially that it is so unstable and can go off anytime.
In: 1985
The people on the bomb have a large budget and extensive experience directly relating to getting in there without any issues.
Johnny down at the shop just needs to get the god damn bolt off so he can fix your POS and go home
They don’t, they detonate them.
Most disposal teams will evacuate the area, pack it with explosives and sand bags, then detonate the bomb from a safe distance.
Some might be moved to a safer location to be detonated.
As you say after 80 years there’s no way of dismantling it. The procedure is to pack earth around it and then detonate an explosion next to it to destroy any mechanism. This occasionally explodes the bomb like this one in Exeter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-56277388
The threads of theae things tend to be entirely protected by being inside the munition.
A cars bolt threads tend to be exposed to salty wet road shit so rust
Theres one method involving a Catherine wheel type affair powered by 2 opposing 12.7mm cartridges, the idea being that it removes it before the fuze has time to function.
Alternative methods to demolition include using specifically designed shape charges to penetrate the case to ‘burn out’ the explosive filling.
Not very eli5 sorry
Edit I think it may be 4 cartridges, cant fully remember, probably never been used in anger
There was a English TV show about this back in 1979
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078593/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078593/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3)
I know nothing about bomb disposal specifically and some folks below seem to have that covered but speaking very broadly about threaded fittings: it can depend heavily on the materials involved and stuff like how tightly it was screwed in in the first place. if you have a steel bolt in a steel hole both sides can rust and all the rust fuses together. in that case you can snap the head off before the bolt will turn. if you have aluminum threads screwed into steal they never fuse. it might be crunchy but you should still be able to get them apart. in the case of bomb fuses, maybe they’re different materials that don’t fuse as badly as steel on steel?
Iirc some of those bombs could cause an enormous explosion. Like, enough to level half a city block. How do they detonate a bomb that powerful?
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During the Vietnam War, we carried 750 pound bombs with chemical fuses. In theory, they would detonate within 24 hours after fused. They would detonate if the fuse was unscrewed.
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