User:Patroklean/Conservation issues of Pompeii and Herculaneum

War
During the Allied invasion of Italy in WWII, the site was erroneously struck by Allied bombs which were intended for nearby infrastructural targets. On the night of 24 August 1943, British RAF bombers intending to attack the rail yard and steelworks in neighboring Torre Annunziata dropped several bombs on the site's southwest corner, resulting in the destruction of the antiquarium. The most significant bombing damage occurred between 13 and 20 September 1943, as part of the Allied effort to defend the Salerno beachhead which had been established by the success of Operation Avalanche from an Axis counterattack. Many of the buildings that were damaged or destroyed as a result of bombings were reconstructed in the postwar period, yet the legacy of these military operations has continued to pose threats to the site's preservation. In 1986, a team of archaeologists working on excavating a portion of the city unearthed two bombs which had been dropped during these raids, one of which was unexploded. In 2019, an investigation published by the Italian newspaper Il Fato Quotidiano estimated that approximately 7 to 10 unexploded bombs may still be lying dormant beneath the sediment and ash in unexcavated portions of the site. Furthermore, the procedures which military engineers frequently employ to excavate and defuse these bombs are often invasive and have the potential to cause damage to archaeological remains.