WW2 Bomb Detonated in Exeter

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HoopyFrood

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Bit of excitement in my fair city the past couple of days due to the discovery of a WW2 bomb close to the university campus.

www.bbc.co.uk

Exeter WW2 bomb detonated after homes evacuated

Bomb disposal specialists deal with the 2.5m (8ft) device, which caused 2,600 homes to be evacuated.
www.bbc.co.uk

I didn't even know anything about it until our manager posted in the work chat yesterday afternoon about how our Head of the Group couldn't go home because he was in the evacuation zone.

Over 2000 people had to go and stay elsewhere and university students were put up in hotels overnight I believe.

400 tonnes of sand was piled around it in order to safely detonate it. I hadn't realised it was scheduled to be blown up until at just after 6pm this evening I heard a noise like a deep, loud firework and the walls of the building shook slightly.

It looks like it was an impressive explosion!


And pretty mad that it's been sitting there under Exeter for eighty or so years with all that explosive power still.
 
mosaix said:
And that’s just one bomb. There’s a sunken ship in the Thames estuary containing 1,400 tons of explosives that would cause a considerable tidal wave if it ever detonated.
Click to expand...

And, I seem to remember, that the recent harebrained scheme of a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland had cause to remind everyone that there’s a deep trench in the way where thousands tons of WWI explosives and munitions were dumped.
 
Don’t know if I’ve told this story before but years ago, I was evacuated from my home after my neighbour (a biker who liked to get drunk and then dig holes in his garden for some obscure reason) found a pile of bullets and what turned out to be a WW1 hand grenade. When the bomb squad arrived, they told us to stay indoors and away from windows while they investigated. I couldn’t help having a peek through the curtains and was dismayed to find two members of the bomb squad lying on the ground peering into the hole and my cat was sitting next to them.

After they confirmed the explosives were real, we were ordered out of our homes while they took away the grenade and bullets. I live just up the road from a large, sandy beach and they took it there where they blew it up. It made quite a bang but nothing on the scale of this one in Exeter.
 
And to think, there were hundreds of these going off every night, within living memory for some.
 
Foxbat said:
Don’t know if I’ve told this story before but years ago, I was evacuated from my home after my neighbour (a biker who liked to get drunk and then dig holes in his garden for some obscure reason) found a pile of bullets and what turned out to be a WW1 hand grenade. When the bomb squad arrived, they told us to stay indoors and away from windows while they investigated. I couldn’t help having a peek through the curtains and was dismayed to find two members of the bomb squad lying on the ground peering into the hole and my cat was sitting next to them.

After they confirmed the explosives were real, we were ordered out of our homes while they took away the grenade and bullets. I live just up the road from a large, sandy beach and they took it there where they blew it up. It made quite a bang but nothing on the scale of this one in Exeter.
Click to expand...

I had a good friend that on a Monday morning at work, said that he had been digging around his garden over the weekend and had dug up a hand grenade (WW2 I believe). He had his parents over, and with them and his wife they had handled this old munition. To my horror he described how they had put it in the centre of the table they were using for an outdoor lunch. I mean, it might make an interesting centre piece for a table, but it's also a 60 year old explosive fragmentation device that possibly could have gone off at any time! :oops:

Hence my insistence that he call the police/get a bomb squad down to neutralise it ASAP!
 
Yes, a work friend was sent a photo by a friend of his of the front of said friend's house, with some fairly substanial holes it.
 
There are fields in France where farmers still find shells and bombs from WW1 when ploughing.
They just leave them in a pile at the side of the road for the army to pick up and dispose of!
 
Venusian Broon said:
I had a good friend that on a Monday morning at work, said that he had been digging around his garden over the weekend and had dug up a hand grenade (WW2 I believe). He had his parents over, and with them and his wife they had handled this old munition. To my horror he described how they had put it in the centre of the table they were using for an outdoor lunch. I mean, it might make an interesting centre piece for a table, but it's also a 60 year old explosive fragmentation device that possibly could have gone off at any time! :oops:

Hence my insistence that he call the police/get a bomb squad down to neutralise it ASAP!
Click to expand...

Decayed munitions that old can be incredibly unstable. :(
 
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