Blowing up unexploded bombs is nothing new to Senior Master Sgt. Matthew Hill, Master Sgt. Jason Mellor and other ordnance squad members at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, who’ve disposed of scores of improvised explosive devices in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But they never dreamed they’d blow up a deadly device practically in their own backyard, in downtown Atlanta. And there was nothing improvised about it. It was professionally manufactured, most likely a Yankee 12-pound spherical case anti-personnel shell fired into the city by soldiers under Gen. William T. Sherman.
There’s a 75 percent chance that’s the case, said noted Atlanta historian Steve Davis, author of this year’s “What the Yankees Did to Us,” published by Mercer University Press.
On the other hand, since Rebels manufactured similar shells near the site of today’s Spelman College, there’s a decent chance that what was found recently by construction workers building the College Football Hall of Fame near Centennial Olympic Park could have been Confederate.
No matter, it was dangerous, and when Atlanta police got the word, they secured the site and called Dobbins. Soon its Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit arrived.
Mellor said police using a robot had placed the shell into a TCV, or total containment vessel. The squad got some X-rays, identified it as Civil War era, and saw that it was full of black powder and ball bearings meant to tear through flesh. They took it to a police site five miles away, put it in a three-foot hole, and blew it up.
“It made a six-foot wide crater,” said Mellor, 38, who served two tours in Iraq. “We have 12 pounds worth of metal here at Dobbins.”
Civil War shells are found every year or so in Georgia. And Hill said all kinds of ordnance is showing up, from World War I to the Vietnam era.
“A lot of footlockers are full of souvenirs, small mortar rounds to land mines,” said Hill, 38, who served two tours in Afghanistan. “Now some of these men are passing or their families move to another home and find the relics. Then police get involved, and they know we’re here. We probably average one a month.”
“Both Mellor and myself neutralized dozens of IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hill said. “And anytime something like this is found, we need to get involved.”
Davis said Sherman fired more than 100,000 shells into downtown Atlanta in an effort to destroy the city’s buildings long after Union troops had defeated Confederates in battle. Such relics will continue to be found, as they have been in the past.
In 1994, an anti-personnel Union shell was found where the old Rich’s Store for Homes was located, now the site of the Atlanta Federal Center. When the Downtown Connector was being built in the 1950s, a huge cache of Rebel guns and shells was unearthed.
The city was shelled for 37 days, Davis said, wreaking havoc on civilian homes as well as the business district.
“As long as construction occurs in downtown Atlanta, there is a strong likelihood that these artillery projectiles will keep turning up,” he adds. “
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