Origins of bombs under investigation
State, military officials
open criminal inquiry; devices safely removed
By Tom Pelton
Sun Staff
May 7, 2004
Authorities opened a criminal investigation yesterday to determine
who buried 12 explosives -- including a fat 4,000-pound bomb of the kind
dropped from airplanes during World War II -- at a former military shipyard
along the water in remote southern Baltimore.
But the day seemed to yield as many questions as answers, with military
officials suggesting some of the bombs had been manufactured during different
periods, one as late as the Vietnam War. And they said the bombs could have
been buried on the industrial site in Fairfield as recently as the mid-1990s.
None of the weapons, which were uncovered by construction workers Wednesday
morning, had a working detonator. This means they posed little risk of blowing
up as they were inspected by Army bomb squads using high-tech gamma-ray
equipment.
State officials, who closed the nearby Harbor Tunnel Thruway and restricted
water access to the
Inner
Harbor late Wednesday night, ended the restrictions by early yesterday
morning, in time for the rush hour along Interstate 895.
Soldiers then strapped the bombs to the back of a flatbed truck and drove
them to Aberdeen Proving Ground, where they are being destroyed.
Ned Christensen, a spokesman for the Army's Fort Myer in Arlington, Va.,
said that bomb squad experts called to the waterfront from the Army's 767th
Ordnance Detachment believe many of the explosives were buried from 1993 to
1996.
"These bombs did not have detonators, but they are still volatile, so
you have to handle them very carefully," he said. "They looked like somebody
put them in a hole during the 1990s, as far as anybody can determine."
It was during this period that the 10-acre parcel of industrial land,
now the property of the Maryland Port Administration, was owned by a scrap
company controlled by the family of Kerry L. Ellis Sr. He made money disassembling
and selling parts from the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea and other military
ships.
Ellis, a local businessman, was sentenced to two years in prison in 1998
on federal charges of mishandling pollution at the site and failing to protect
his workers from asbestos. He died of a heart attack in prison.
But Jane F. Barrett, who prosecuted the case for the U.S. attorney's office,
said yesterday that she doubts Ellis was responsible for burying the bombs.
Barrett said that while the contractor was sloppy with asbestos and other
pollutants, the Navy was careful to strip all of its vessels of weapons before
turning them over to ship scrappers.
"They would not be taking these vessels to the scrap yard with any ammunition
on them," said Barrett. "We talked to almost every worker who scrapped that
vessel [the Coral Sea], and we heard nothing about anybody burying anything."
More likely, Barrett guessed, is that someone who used the shipyard before
the 1990s -- perhaps during the World War II period -- buried the weapons.
On land just east of the site at 3000 Childs St., the Bethlehem-Fairfield
Shipyard Inc. from 1941 to 1945 employed more than 30,000 workers to build
384 lightly armed cargo vessels called Liberty Ships.
Steve Medura, a retired longshoreman who worked at the Fairfield docks
from 1962 to 1997, said his father, also a longshoreman, loaded bombs onto
Liberty Ships for transport to Europe at what was called "ammunition pier"
near the site during World War II.
"They would load heavy bombs and other explosives onto the ships, and
it was a hazardous job," Medura said. "Back then, it wasn't unusual, if they
didn't want inoperative munition, or chemicals or something else, they'd
just throw it overboard or bury it in the ground."
After the war, the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyard was converted into ship
scrapping operations. The Patapsco Scrap Yard at Fairfield dismantled at least
20 ships, including tankers and aircraft carriers.
Bryon N. Johnston Jr., director of media relations for the Maryland Transportation
Authority, said it's not clear who buried the bombs. But he said state and
military officials are conducting a criminal investigation because it's illegal
to dump such dangerous material.
"There are procedures that have to be followed in disposing of military
ordnance, and we are trying to find out who did this," said Johnston. "We
are in touch with federal prosecutors and are treating the site as a crime
scene."
The Maryland Port Administration bought the polluted land in November
2000 for $885,000. On Dec. 3, 2003, the state Board of Public Works approved
a $2.3 million contract to Potts & Callahan to clean up the property.
State officials intend to pave the land and perhaps lease it to a company
that wants to store vehicles shipped to the port from overseas.
Darlene Frank, director of communications for the Maryland Port Administration,
said yesterday that state officials can't continue their work cleaning up
the property until the military certifies it is safe.
After a contractor operating a backhoe dug up the bombs Wednesday morning,
he called state officials -- who summoned two teams of military bomb experts.
Eight soldiers from the Army's 767th Ordnance Detatchment, based at Fort
McNair in Washington, arrived first with X-ray equipment to examine the 12
bombs that had been buried in a muddy hole near the water.
But the X-ray wouldn't work on some of the largest bombs, and officials
worried that some might contain toxic chemicals.
So they called in the Army's Guardian Brigade, which specializes in defusing
chemical weapons, from Aberdeen Proving Ground, said George Mercer, a spokesman
for Aberdeen.
The chemical weapons specialists carried a futuristic piece of equipment
that looks something like a ray gun, called a portable isotopic neutron
spectroscopy system.
This device shot streams of neutrons that penetrated the bomb's steel
casings to sense what chemicals were inside, said Gus Caffrey, a physicist
who analyzed the data.
Working through the night, the experts concluded that there were no chemical
weapons in the bomb casings and determined the detonators did not work.
The 12 devices hauled away include a 4,000-pound M65 bomb of a kind dropped
from airplanes in World War II; a 2,000-pound bomb; a 1,000-pound bomb; a
500-pound BLU31 bomb; four other 500-pound bombs; a 90-pound fragmentation
bomb; a torpedo; another unspecified explosive; and a device, called a bomb
dispenser, that could potentially hold chemicals or other alternative weapons,
said Mercer.
A few of the bombs were filled with concrete and were apparently used
for training purposes. Others were believed to contain explosives, Mercer
said.
