A SdKfz 250 being recovered from a small lake in Russia.

War relic

This morning in the German city of Koblenz some 45.000 people had to be evacuated because a 1,8 ton WW2 bomb had to be made safe.The bomb was found in the river Rhine together with an American 275 kg bomb because the waterlevel of the river was very low.Because an eventual explosion would be devastating a region of 2 km around the bombs was evacuated.
The article in in Dutch but there is a series of 14 photos that can be viewed :)
http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20111204_029

greetz,brummbar

Koblenz Evacuation

In the 1920s, German engineer Georges Imbert developed a wood gas generator for mobile use. The gases were cleaned and dried and then fed into the vehicle's combustion engine, which barely needs to be adapted. The Imbert generator was mass produced from 1931 on. At the end of the 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles were in use, almost exclusively in Europe.

Second World War
The technology became commonplace in many European countries during the Second World War, as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 producer gas vehicles were in operation by the end of the war.

A network of some 3,000 "petrol stations" was set up, where drivers could stock up on firewood. Not only private cars but also trucks, buses, tractors, motorcycles, ships and trains were equipped with a wood gasification unit. Some tanks were driven on wood gas, too, but for military use the Germans preferred the production of liquid synthetic fuels (made out of wood or coal).

In 1942 (when the technology had not yet reached the height of its popularity), there were about 73,000 producer gas vehicles in Sweden, 65,000 in France, 10,000 in Denmark, 9,000 in both Austria and Norway, and almost 8,000 in Switzerland. Finland had 43,000 "woodmobiles" in 1944, of which 30,000 were buses and trucks, 7,000 private vehicles, 4,000 tractors and 600 boats. 

Woodmobiles also appeared in the US, Asia and, particularly, Australia, which had 72,000 vehicles running on woodgas . Altogether, more than one million producer gas vehicles were used during World War Two.

After the war, with gasoline once again available, the technology fell into oblivion almost instantaneously. At the beginning of the 1950s, the then West-Germany only had some 20,000 woodmobiles left.

Greetz,brummbar