Two discoveries, one difficult afternoon
British military bomb-disposal teams faced an unusual double challenge on January 14 when an unexploded German bomb was found on a building site in Plymouth and another munition was discovered aboard a dredger at Exmouth Marina. A detailed account published this week uses the incidents to show how wartime explosives continue to disrupt construction, transport and coastal work more than 80 years after they were dropped.
The two cases required army and navy specialists at the same time. Disposal crews must first identify a device, determine the condition and mechanism of its fuze, and decide whether it can be made safe where it lies or needs to be moved. The consequences of a wrong decision can extend well beyond the immediate site: a 250-kilogram bomb detonating in a city could destroy much of a street.
Britain was hit by about 50,000 tonnes of German bombs during the Second World War, according to figures cited in the account. The Ministry of Defence estimates that approximately one in ten did not explode on impact. Some landed at an angle or in ground soft enough to absorb the strike; manufacturing defects also contributed. Britain additionally left behind munitions from training and postwar disposal.
Construction brings old hazards back
Wartime ordnance now represents about 2,000 of the roughly 2,500 incidents handled by military disposal teams in an average year. Metal detectorists and magnet fishers generate some reports, as do people clearing old possessions. Construction is an increasing source because taller buildings and redevelopment require deeper excavation in places that may have been bombed. Private contractors have consequently developed a specialist market for surveying sites before digging begins.
Age does not make the devices harmless. Three disposal specialists died in Göttingen, Germany, in 2010 when a 500-kilogram American bomb exploded near a planned sports arena. In Britain, a 250-kilogram bomb detonated beneath a crab boat off Norfolk in 2020, seriously injuring five crew members. Another explosion near Munich's main railway station injured four people in 2021.
The continued callouts show why suspected ordnance must be left to specialists. Its appearance may reveal little about the condition of the explosive or fuze inside. The Plymouth and Exmouth responses were exceptional because they unfolded together, but the underlying work is routine: tracing the physical legacy of aerial war as cities expand, harbours are dredged and forgotten objects are brought back to the surface.
