WW2 bomb detonated in my local city

[devon deer]

I was born in Exeter, it was a target by the Germans in WW2 during the blitz on several cities throughout England it was a stunning city, and that was the main reason it was targeted.
My Dad was living in Coventry at the same time and that suffered terribly.

So, last week a building site was being developed and a 2200lb unexploded bomb was discovered.
I can't imagine the terror of living during the blitz.

Even with this 'controlled' explosion several buildings within the 400m exclusion zone suffered substantial damage, some have cracks that have appeared, and the police are not letting the residents back home until structural surveys have been carried out.

Cheers

Richard

 

[406LIFE]

Wow. It amazes me that we are still finding things like this so long after. Who pays for the structural repair? Some special insurance for things like this?

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Wow. It amazes me that we are still finding things like this so long after. Who pays for the structural repair? Some special insurance for things like this?

Right 80 years later. Incredible.

 

[rwc101]

Crazy. So much forgotten history in your soil. Always amazes me when you hear about some farmer in the UK plowing up coins or artifacts after a thousand years or more.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

I'm the guy who goes to people's houses to retreive grand-pa's war souvenirs or when someone builds a housing development on an old military range and they start kicking up live ordnances out of the ground. People would be surprised the amount of calls we get. Europe is a different different beast on its own due to two world wars.

There's tree ways to dispose of a live ordnance. You can try a render-safe procedure with mechanical or explosive tools (remove the fuzing mechanism(s) from the main charge to move both separately from the site for disposal at a later time), you can vent and burn it with a shapped charge (use an explosive shapped charge to pierce the casing and ignite/burn the main charge) or you simply blow it in place.

In all three scenarios where there are structures within the blast radius, you will do protective works, reason being, no render-safe or vent and burn is 100% guarantee, items can just detonate by accident. You'll essentially cover the item with LOTS of sandbags in a certain thickness and if there is the probability of structural damages to building foundations you can dig ditches/trenches to reduce the shock wave from reaching the structure through the ground. I've seen them use blasting mats or hay bales in Europe so I assume they do things very similarily. There's only so many ways to dispose of explosive ordnances...

 

[Dave N]

That's just crazy, but I guess it's still fairly common in old war zones. It's been a while so I may not remember, but what part of town was it found? Local landmarks that I may recall from our visit?

 

[Jc2020]

That’s crazy. Do they do any scans or anything to look for unexploded ordinance in areas that where bombed before they start dirt work?

 

[Phaseolus]

Amazing. There is an area in France called The Red Zone that is still off-limits to civillians from WWI.

Zone rouge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[devon deer]

Insurance, that is a good question, so far the only expenditure has been by the county council, I have no idea who will end up paying.

They placed tons of sandbags to 'force' the blast upwards, by all accounts it worked, but at 2200lb (they initially said it was 1000lb) so damage was bound to occur I suppose.

Dave it was city outskirts NW of the hotel you stayed in, about 1 1/2 away, I forgot to say when we visited the lady farmer one of her fields has 3 deep scars, a German bomber missed his target by a country mile!

They never do scans for ordnance but in certain areas archaeological work has to be carried out, especially within the old Roman City Walls.

I discovered something with our contractors when working near the cathedral, the pavement had to be dug up, what we thought were old paving slabs turned out to be grave stones, the inscription was placed face down, some were 300 years old!
That stopped our work briefly!

Cheers

Richard

 

[Nemont]

Glad everyone was safe.


I was stationed in Nurnberg Germany for 6 years and at least couple of times a year they would uncover unexploded ordinance while excavating a new building site.

A 2,200 pounder is a monster though.

Nemont

 

[deer_shooter]

My mom grew up a couple miles from Blackpool and told me stories from when she was a kid during the war. Air raid sirens, food rations, blackouts, curfews. Apparently a rocket landed close enough to them they walked to look at the crater. Would have been scary for sure.

 

[noharleyyet]

Unfathomable terror the blitz must've been.

 

[Laelkhunter]

Glad they found it before someone got killed. Where is MacGyver when you need him? He would have made a helicopter out of that thing and flew it out of there.

 

[brymoore]

2,200 pounds is a massive bomb.

Hitler hated Exeter.

 

[Europe]

England, France, Germany, Poland, still feeling the effect of a war that ended 75 years ago. Very sad and dangerous, still today

On the other side of the world. When we visited the Solomon Islands they warned us about the possibility of finding bombs in the sand and when we did to notify them immediately.

We also saw several downed airplanes in the reef when we scuba dived there. If there are any scuba divers here, you would enjoy the Solomon Islands. The reefs are beautiful and it is is loaded with fish, turtles, rays and world war two airplanes. Just be careful of the bombs in the sand.

 

[MITCHMO]

How’d you like to be the guy on the back hoe that dug it up?

 

[Sytes]

And people think the vile leaders of countries that caused these settings is old history, unable to repeat itself.

How long ago was the Bosnian conflict? Right 1995.

Thankful they came across it without triggering the explosive! The lives lost would be an extension of what occurred not long ago.

Amazing. Terrible part to this, when googling similar events... such as the French landscape mentioned above, war knows no end.

 

[devon deer]

2,200 pounds is a massive bomb.

Hitler hated Exeter.

Hitler actually stated he had partly destroyed the most beautiful city in the West of England, thankfully he didn't finish the job.
Apparently that was the largest bomb ever blown up in England since the war.

My father lived in on the outskirts of Coventry, at the time of the blitz I think he was either working down the coal mine or steel foundary, either way he had finished work and was cycling home, an air raid started, he told me he could hear a bomb whistling down, he said he cycled like crazy and thought he was done for, but it landed over a mile away!
It had been a lone bomber that had failed to hit Coventry and randomly dropped its bombs on the way back to Germany

 

[WyoDoug]

I hear this. I found a skeleton of a Japanese soldier in a cave while exploring while I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. They are always finding old mines, grenades and artillery shells on that island and locals still getting killed when they work the farm.

 

[Rainer]

I'm glad no one was hurt. That was a explosive situation the town was under....