Most of the 68 civilians killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor were killed by American AA fire falling onto civilian homes and stores. During the battle Japanese torpedo and dive bombers came in low so American AA crews aimed their barrages low and the rounds on a flat trajectory went straight into Honolulu and hit civilians.
The film Mrs Miniver features a major scene where a civilian is killed by a stray bullet from a dogfight between two fighter planes. Not quite what you’re describing though.
Why not?
I don’t believe the British spent all day hiding under their beds. :dubious:
Now as I understand, werent some of those bullets and rounds, actually duds or even still live rounds that could potentially kill?
They would have gone out to find bluebirds but, well… you know…
(I suppose they could hitchhike inside a coconut being carried by wham)
Thanks for all the responses. Nexttime there’s an aerial battle overhead I will feel no reluctance to run outside and record birdsong.
Almost certainly. My sister’s husband, who was a boy during the blitz, told a story of a friend who lost several fingers that way. Normally, if they found anything that might go bang, they would stand back and chuck bricks at it.
Yes. All through my 1950s childhood holidays around the south coast of England, we were all warned to steer clear of any stray pieces of metal we might find on the beach, occasionally a stray mine might bob up and so on.
There is, by the way, a recording of a BBC reporter’s live commentary on a German bombing raid on a convoy in the Channel and a dogfight overhead between fighter planes, in the earlier phases of the Battle of Britain (there was some criticism of turning life and death into a spectator sport), and a famous cartoon in Punch about people’s attitude to the air battle:
http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000xqAELZKJDjE/s/900/720/World-War-2-Cartoons-Punch-1940-09-25-310.jpgust=1456133701703393
Once the big bombing raids started, though, most people took cover rather than stand outside gawping.
As in the ongoing Tweet of the Day.
Then their would be the excitement of seeing parachutes. Plus sometimes fighter battles went down low.
A few years back I read Firebirds, written by a Belgian pilot flying Hawker Typhoons for the RAF. At one point he shot down a German plane in a low level dogfight over his home town and the resulting crash and explosion blew a cobblestone from a road into the air where it lodged in the leading edge of one of his wings (he kept it as a souvenir).
He and his future-wife compared notes after the war and they worked out that she was nearby and witnessed the event.
I believe that the shells were fired without having the timers set.
Falling bullets do kill people. Some locales like Los Angeles have actively campaigned against celebratory gunfire for that reason.
Study on this risk: Spent bullets and their injuries: the result of firing weapons into the sky - PubMed. Notes that the death rate from falling bullets is 32%, higher than for all shootings because the victim often takes the bullet in the head.
Los Angeles: Falling Bullets Fall: Los Angeles's Deadly Tradition of Celebratory New Year's Gunfire - Newsweek
I remember this incident here with a 4 yo boy sitting in church on New Year’s Eve. Killed by a falling bullet even after it went through the roof: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/falling-bullet-kills-4-year-old-boy-in-dekalb/nFDwr/
And those were typical handgun or rifle caliber. I imagine a .50 caliber would be even worse.
This is about dogfights, not bomber interceptions, and in China before Pearl Harbor, but aerial battles could be quite a spectacle.
From Baa Baa Black Sheep, by Pappy Boyington
They still are finding live, unexploded ordnance even after this long. I just read an article that said something like 10% of the bombs didn’t explode, and when you have 200 or 500 or more plane raids, that’s a lot of unexploded bombs! Sometimes they find them buried several feet underground. Plus, some had delay detonators that didn’t work, so the bomb is still “alive” and waiting to finally detonate, but they are old and deteriorating. One wrong bump and BOOM. In effect, there are still people dying from WWII bomb raids.
And on the subject of nightingales and bombers, I present Nightingales and Bombers.
In the early part of the war substantially all the ammo fired by fighters at bombers and fired by bombers back at fighters was simple bullets. A lump of lead with a copper jacket. Once it had fallen to the ground & cooled there was no residual hazard.
Later on many fighters were firing cannon which had explosive rounds. Which were almost all just impact-fuzed. If they missed the target aircraft some would explode when they landed, and others would just sit there. Perhaps to explode days or years later when they’d corroded enough or the explosive chemistry had deteriorated enough. Or perhaps to explode when next disturbed by people or machinery. Or not.
Most of the antiaircraft munitions fired up from the ground were both time- and contact- fuzed. So whether they hit an aircraft or not they exploded in the air and only inert metal rained down. Except for the fraction that were duds. Which might easily have been 10%. Quality control was not ideal; meeting production quotas was the bigger need.
Those duds, like the aerial cannon shells just above would explode or not at random whenever for any reason or no reason.
Ordinary ground-to-ground artillery & mortar rounds are the same situation.
As **JAQ **says just above, shells and aerial bombs of all sizes, descriptions, and original owners are still unearthed every day in 2016 all over Europe. There’s less every year, but I read an article about he German government agency in charge of this effort. They expect to be substantially finished about a century from now.
I remember hearing about a bomb being found in London last summer. Here’s the story on CNN.
It happens quite regularly. Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 bomb disposal experts will diffuse an unexploded 250 kilogram WW II bomb in Oranienburg, Germany:
https://www.rbb-online.de/panorama/beitrag/2016/02/bombenentschaerfung-oranienburg-mittwoch.html
12,000 residents, several schools and kindergartens as well as 2 railway stations will be evacuated.
This article is in part about a German man whose life was upended by the discovery of a UXB on his property, which was removed–and then authorities found more. Also a fascinating look at how the Germans go about sleuthing for ordnance.
This story is also about Oranienburg.
There was an attempt to maintain a bomb census in London during the Blitz. Here’s a website that records the findings - there were a lot of bombs.