Mystery over arsenal of wartime explosives found under house
IT WAS an explosive discovery... a whole arsenal of Second World War bombs found under a house.
Police were called to the home in Dora Road, Small Heath, on Saturday morning after shells dating from the war were found under floorboards during renovation work.
Neighbouring houses were evacuated as bomb-disposal experts cordoned off the area to make sure the unexploded shells were removed safely from the building.
The stash of ordnance appears to have been stored deliberately rather than dropped during the war. It is not clear if it is British or German – but Birmingham was a major centre for munitions manufacture during the war.
The house was not far from the BSA factory that contributed to the Allied war effort and was itself bombed by the Germans.
One neighbour, Basharat Ali, 46, whose house was within the cordon, said: “No one lives in that house – I think there are just workers. It’s been empty for a long time. I’ve been here 10 years and it’s always been empty. The owners come and go.”
Thousands of bombs were dropped on Birmingham and other British cities by the Nazis more than 70 years ago. However, many never exploded and remain hidden beneath streets and roads such as the one that forced the closure of the Aston Expressway a few years ago.
While this unusual stash of bombs was unlikely to explode if left undisturbed, experts said these types of explosives can still pose a major threat if they are handled incorrectly.
Matt Brosnan, a historian at the Imperial War Museum, said: “The risk is in their unpredictability; they are inherently unstable and still contain explosives – which is why they are treated so seriously and have to be disposed of properly and safely.”
In 2014, a worker was killed when his digger accidentally struck a Second World War RAF bomb on a construction site in Germany.