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A Navy explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team was called in to detonate a naval mine that appeared in the waters near Kitsap Naval base in Washington State on Tuesday, the Navy and Coast Guard announced on Tuesday.

  • The decades-old contact-style mine was discovered off the coast of Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound in close proximity to the route vessels take to reach Kitsap Naval Base, home to the Pentagon’s single largest arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons and also its largest fuel depot.
  • Little is known about the origins or age of the mine, first discovered by personnel from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and described by local media as a “big, round, rusted object with metal prongs bobbing in the water.”

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  •  “Upon initial inspection, the unidentified moored mine was found to have decades of marine growth,” the Navy said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Navy is assessing plans for disposal with our response partners in the best interest of public safety.”
  • But how did it get there? “Naval mines dating back to World War II are known to still be out there,” The War Zone notes. “Maybe one made its way from across the Pacific over the decades and just came into view now.”

Cool cool cool. Now less talking, more exploding:

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Munitions photo
Jared Keller
Jared Keller

Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Contact the author here.

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Munitions
Navy
Weapons
Northern Command