  We examine, in a purely geometrical way, static Ricci-flat 5-manifolds
admitting the 2-sphere and an additional hypersurface-orthogonal Killing
vector. These are widely studied in the literature, from different physical
approaches, and known variously as the Kramer - Gross - Perry - Davidson - Owen
solutions. The 2-fold infinity of cases that result are studied by way of new
coordinates (which are in most cases global) and the cases likely to be of
interest in any physical approach are distinguished on the basis of the
nakedness and geometrical mass of their associated singularities. It is argued
that the entire class of solutions has to be considered unstable about the
exceptional solutions: the black string and soliton cases. Any physical theory
which admits the non-exceptional solutions as the external vacuua of a
collapsing object has to accept the possibility of collapse to zero volume
leaving behind the weakest possible, albeit naked, geometrical singularities at
the origin.Finally, it is pointed out that these types of solutions generalize,
in a straightforward way, to higher dimensions.
