Gulf of Mexico most likely holds tons of discarded military munitions
By JIM THOMPSON | Northwest Florida Daily News | Published: July 19, 2019
FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. (Tribune News Service) — From the end of World War I until the early 1970s, the world's oceans, including the Gulf of Mexico, served as a dumping ground for the tangible reminders of armed conflicts — the bombs and other munitions which took up space and presented potential hazards at military bases around the country.
Dumped from barges or sent to the bottom aboard scuttled ships, estimates are that millions of pounds of military munitions — unexploded 250-, 500- and 1,000-pound bombs, land mines, mustard gas and other chemical weapons, including munitions confiscated from Nazi Germany and elsewhere following World War II — were sunk off the eastern seaboard of the United States, around the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of the Hawaiian islands. Records of the dumped munitions, if kept at all, are scarce. Some likely are inaccurate. Some likely were destroyed.
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/gulf-of-mexico-most-likely-holds-tons-of-discarded-military-munitions-1.591080
