Bomb? I thought it was a rock or piece of fence
A CONSTRUCTION worker says he was left in disbelief after finding a Second World War bomb while digging in the Peak District.
Simon Hailwood initially thought he was pulling up a piece of fencing while working for JC Balls on behalf of Western Power Distribution in Earl Sterndale, near Buxton, last week.
However, the 47-year-old was left wide-eyed after seeing he had pulled a potentially deadly bomb from the ground using his excavator.
For the Chesterfield man, who had been pulling vigorously at the object in an effort to get it out of the ground, it was quite a shock.
He said: “We were digging up to put some power cables in the ground. I thought it was a piece of rock or fence.
“I was really pulling at it. As I pulled it out I thought ‘that looks like a bomb.’ I threw it onto the road.
It turned out that the device was a German bomb that had been dropped from the air by the Luftwaffe in 1941.
Simon and his colleagues called the police and the bomb squad, who confirmed it was bomb.
The area was cordoned off while the squad confirmed it was a live bomb, with the device being safely detonated the following day.
For father-of-two Simon it was a bizarre experience, and one he won’t forget in a hurry.
He said: “I’ve worked at JC Balls for nearly 18 years and we’ve never found anything like it. It wasn’t small, it was about 3ft-long.
“It was surreal – it could’ve finished me.” Following the find, Western Power Distribution said it was unusual to find such a device in the countryside.
It said: “This unexploded World War Two bomb was found by our contractors working at Earl Sterndale in the Derbyshire Peak District this week.
“Unexploded World War Two
devices are relatively common in some of the cities in our region, but are a more unusual discovery in Derbyshire villages.
“Thankfully, our work to dig and lay new electricity cables is usually much less explosive.”
The company added that Earl Sterndale was the only village in Derbyshire to have its church damaged by a German bomb during the war.
It happened as part of a raid in 1941, which is believed to have been targeting either a large ammunition dump at Harpur Hill or a submarine battery factory at Bakewell.