Are there still WW2 mines bobbing about in UK coastal waters after 60 years ?

Answer 1

Oh Yes.

The Royal Navy bomb disposal teams are called on to blow up around 60 mines a year. Most are washed ashore and are normally harmless by now. A few are dragged up in fishing nets every year.
Most of the work carried out by the Royal Navy is on old shells and WW2 munitions that still some from torpedoed freighters around the coast.

Answer 2

Floating? I'd suspect those are really rare. During and following the war there was an aggressive campaign to find and detonate mines (from a safe distance).

At the height of Germany's efforts to starve Great Britain out of the war, hundreds of mines were being laid (and subsequently swept) on a daily basis. Some mines floated on the surface, but many more sank to a specified distance to avoid easy detection. These mines then detonated when they detected the hull of a ship. These mines were defeated by long wires emitting electro-magnetic pulses which fooled the mine into thinking a large metal hull was nearby.

To protect the ships, many were wrapped with degaussing cables, which made the magnetic profile of the ship appear much smaller.

Obviously these things cannot be left around, so they were pretty effectively cleared - though there have still be some found around.

As for the ocean floor, that's an entirely different story. There is a staggering number of unexploded mines, shells, torpedoes, etc. in coastal and deep waters around the world.

During WWII, the UK was the greatest naval power in the world and had been for quite some time. I am certain the highest number of sunken explosives exists off its shores.

Answer 3

yes but bobbing isn't exactly the word they are all on the seabed and the time on time they are caught in a fishing net.
Not only on the UK coast but also on the coasts off France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany is always a possibility that this will happen.
The danger doesn't comes only from old sea mines but also from airplane bombs and torpedo's.
Also there are sectors on the channel and in the north sea that are still forbidden to fish because there are bombs and explosives dumped or that there is a shipwreck that is loaded with ammunition.
There are even old shells from the first WW ( with mustard gas ) on the seabed in certain parts of the channel

Answer 4

I wish I could remember more details for you, but I seem to remember about 7??? years ago a news story that, after a big storm, some children were playing on a beach in Belgium on something that the storm brought to shore. It exploded, killing the children. Turned out to be some weapon from WW1 !

Answer 5

Yes - fishing trawlers and pipe-laying ships still pick them up all around our shores from the North Sea to the Atlantic, and some of them are British.

Answer 6

yes after rough seas some still become ensnared in fishing boats nets . in the past couple of years bomb disposal units have been called to the coast where i live to render mines harmless.

Answer 7

im shure there is but most arent floating no more. i was in the united states navy we found one way out in the atlantic barely floating. its rare but they put alot out there. here in virginia usa we have shells and all kinds of other explosives washing up after storms

Answer 8

Yes coz even today you can dig out shells from French soil from ww1.

Answer 9

yes there were reports only last week on the news where a trawler caught one in its nets and it had to be disposed of.