The Deadliness Below

Weapons of mass destruction thrown into the sea years ago present danger now - and the Army doesn't know where they all are
by John M.R. Bull

In the summer of 2004, a clam-dredging operation off New Jersey pulled up an old artillery shell.

Barges often were piled high with one-ton steel containers of mustard gas to be thrown into the ocean in the 1940s and 1950s. More than a dozen such as this were unloaded off the coast of South Carolina.
U.S. Army photo

The long-submerged World War I-era explosive was filled with a black tarlike substance.

Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air Force Base, Del., were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them were injured - one hospitalized with large pus-filled blisters on an arm and hand.

The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.