OT: One tonne German bomb detonated in Exeter

Coming along with Lucy Worleys "Blitz Spirit", an interesting spectacle.

Begs the question how many more are there under our streets ? Was Exeter not as thoroughly cleared as London and Birmingham, or does pure statistics suggest they have a few more to come to light ?

Official records suggest I should have little worries, but being not that far from Longbridge, I wouldn't like to bet there aren't any strays here.

The stuff is still coming to light along the Western Front and that's after

The MoD reckons it currently deals with around 60 WW2 unexploded bombs each year. Data is not available before 2010, so nobody knows how that has changed over the years since 1945. That does not include those, usually smaller ordnance, dealt with by police and other bomb squads.

and then there are mines which sometimes appear on a beach somewhere.

and killing people :(

For the 2008 River Lea one they were able to remove the fuse and then steam out the main explosive. Presumably in this case they were unable to (or decided not to) remove the fuse.

There is a risk map shown here:

Then Sid brings in the second hand cars....tee hee... It's a blower upper.......

Yes its been all over the news. So how is it that normally they can remove these devices and set them off well away from people but not this time. The whole idea of these bombs was to damage buildings, that was why often they went into the ground before they went off. Surely something that big should have been noticed many years ago. Also surprised it was still viable after all this time. Brian

I found out about ten years ago that during the war, the military had an ammo dump well hidden on the side of the hill I live on. They knew there was a stach around here somewhere, so there were a number of bombs dropped but none ever hit it. Once again, there could well be some around under the countryside that have not come to light yet. Brian

In My Yoof UXBs were almost a daily news item, as London was full of em..its a sort of exponential decay thing. every year there are half as many left as the year before.

Still, this made a nice bang, didn't it?

And let's not forget the other side, old article but still valid:

Yes, we had them dropped quite regularly at one time.

German bombs were simple blast bombs; according to Wiki it was even fitted with a metal ring to prevent ground penetration. This one must have been a dud. Ground-penetrating bombs (Tallboy, Grand Slam) were only used by the British AFAIK.

As a young teenager in the mid-1950s who was interested in radio, I sometimes used to listen to the 'fish-fone' radio channels that were receivable in the 160m Amateur band. Every now and then there would be a general call from one of these along the lines of "All ships...All ships...Scheveningen Radio, Scheveningen Radio. Floating mine sighted, position....(etc etc)". These were common enough not to be worthy of comment among fellow radio enthusiasts, floating mines were just part of the Zeitgeist.

First, it was a big one - one tonne.

Second, they usually remove the fuse and then melt the TNT out.

I hear that the fuse was in too bad a condition to remove safely.

It might have a had a dud fuse, but it certainly wasn't a dud - it made pretty big bang.

Perhaps it was too heavy to move.

The overhead IR was impressive.

I wonder how much of that explosion was the original explosive, and how much the added new stuff to get it to bang ?

Which may have been a dummy with the real fuse (isn't it fuze ?) behind it.