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Message:: [QUOTE="PaddyB, post: 4064913, member: 40017"]For a while I was in the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal unit here in the UK, and had to deal with some of the German UXBs that turned up. As [USER=28550]@GeorgeM[/USER] suggests, some things get better and some worse. The German fuses were mostly Electrical, using a capacitor charged up in the plane to detonate the main charge. With these it was fairly safe to assume that the capacitor had discharged over the years, although it was only in the 1980s that this was formally accepted. You still had to keep an eye out for the mechanical anti-removal mechanisms, designed specifically to catch the Bomb Disposal team. With German bombs the bigger challenge was the use of Picric acid as a booster charge. In moist conditions over time this reacts with the metals around it to form copper and iron picrate - both of which are extremely sensitive detonator material, and so an unwary attempt to unscrew a fuse could prove terminal! I can't speak much for British made bombs - the Germans are the experts on those![/QUOTE]