The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Soldiers move wartime bomb through Plymouth
Neil Johnston seNior NeWs rePorter
WHAT started as a simple home extension led to one of the biggest peacetime evacuations in British history when a spade came into contact with an unexploded Second World War bomb.
Thousands were forced to leave their homes after a father helping out at his daughter’s home found the 500kg explosive dropped by the Luftwaffe 83 years ago in her Plymouth garden.
Nearly 80 hours after it was found in the Keyham area of the city, the Nazi explosive is expected to be finally detonated in the sea following a carefully planned operation which brought parts of the city to a standstill.
Residents living within 300 yards of an exclusion zone were evacuated as the bomb was taken on a military convoy 1.6 miles towards a ferry slipway before it was detonated in The Sound.
The Ministry of Defence said the evacuation was “one of the largest UK peacetime evacuation operations since WW2” and officers had been “working round the clock to make safe a 500kg unexploded bomb”.
The operation – which Plymouth city council said has been a “success” yesterday evening – prompted the Government to use its new emergency alert service for the first time, although some residents complained they did not receive the warning.
The council said that more than 10,000 people and 4,300 properties from 35 streets were affected after a major incident was declared. Trains, ‘Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door and police officers asking to have a look’ buses and ferries were diverted or cancelled and the NHS in Devon declared a critical incident as a “precautionary measure” for the aftermath of any potential explosion.
Schools and nurseries were also closed to allow the operation to take place as emergency services went door to door evacuating residents, some of whom herded up cats while others chose to camp out in local pubs.
Police were alerted to the bomb, which experts say was dropped in April 1941, on Tuesday when a resident realised the object he had hit with a spade a week earlier might be an explosive.
The man said he and a builder were preparing for an extension at the back of the terraced house in St Michael Avenue belonging to his daughter and that after several days of digging and rain they realised what the object was.
“By this point my wife said we really should just call the police and alert them,” he said. “I took photos and sent them off and a sergeant in Exeter rang me... saying he needed to send them off to explosive ordnance disposal.
“Five minutes later there’s a knock on the door and police officers asking to have a look. The next minute they’re suggesting a cordon.
“My daughter and her two neighbours were brought together for a meeting where they were effectively told to prepare for all three houses to be destroyed,” he said.
Devon and Cornwall Police said that it became clear that if the bomb was detonated where it was found, there
Spade’s tell-tale tap on big, hard object triggers one of the biggest peacetime evacuations since 1945