A Dahlbusch Bomb is an

emergency evacuation Emergency evacuation is the urgent immediate egress or escape of people away from an area that contains an imminent threat, an ongoing threat or a hazard to lives or property. Examples range from the small-scale evacuation of a building due t ...

device for use in

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

. In its original form it is a torpedo-shaped cylinder with a length of 2.5 metres (8.2 ft), developed to transport trapped miners through boreholes after

mining accident A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although accidents also occur in hard rock mining. ...

s. It does not contain

explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An expl ...

: it was called a "bomb" because of its shape. The Dahlbusch Bomb was developed in May 1955 at the Zeche Dahlbusch

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; wep, Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th most populous city of Germany and the 11th most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Ruhr area The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...

to rescue three miners. Thirty-four-year-old engineer Eberhard Au sketched it on a leaflet.
Die Dahlbusch Bombe
'.

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

46/1963. 1963-11-13. Au, who never applied for a patent, was quoted as saying "the main thing is, the lads get out". Its distinguishing feature was the small diameter of only 38.5 centimetres (15.2 in), which allows miners to be evacuated through significantly smaller boreholes than using other evacuation devices, and whose shape also helps in raising and lowering the device across long distances. At Zeche Dahlbusch, the device was successfully used to rescue three miners, trapped at a depth of 855 metres (2,805 ft) after a mine collapse, through a vertical borehole drilled 42 metres (138 ft) from the next-higher mine level. The 15.2-inch diameter would need its passenger to have his shoulders hunched up or his arms vertical above his head, and not be obese or very muscular. The device was used again on 1956 and 1957, but gained further prominence on 7 November 1963, when eleven miners were rescued after two weeks trapped at a depth of 58 metres (190 ft) in the

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the fo ...

mine in

Lengede Lengede is a municipality in the district of Peine, in Lower Saxony, Germany, some 18 kilometers southwest of Braunschweig and 40 kilometers southeast of Hanover. It became known to the world in 1963 because of a mining disaster and the subsequen ...

, Germany, in what is known in Germany now as the

Wunder von Lengede On 7 November 1963, 11 West German miners were rescued from a collapsed mine after surviving for 14 days, an event that later became known as the Wunder von Lengede ("miracle of Lengede"). On 24 October 1963, the Lengede-Broistedt Iron Mine nea ...

("Lengede Miracle"). The "Phoenix" (''Fénix'') evacuation devices used in the rescue of 33 miners after the 2010 Copiapó mining accident, in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, are an enhanced version of the Dahlbusch Bomb."Earth Times, 'Phoenix' to pull Chilean miners out of the dark"
Earthtimes.org. File:Deutsches_Museum_-_Bergbau_-_Dahlbuschbombe_Lengede_1.JPG, The original Dahlbusch Bomb on display at the

Deutsches Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

File:Deutsches Museum - Bergbau - Dahlbuschbombe Lengede 2.JPG, Closeup view

References

External links

{{Commons category, Dahlbusch Bombs
Dahlbuschbombe
at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum in Bochum (German) 1955 introductions History of mining Mining equipment Mining rescues