For the benefit of those without access to East Anglian regional programmes, and considering the number of forumites from this region I’m surprised no-one has mentioned it, there’s going to be an exceedingly big bang at Oakington at 12 noon.
During archeological digs on the site several bombs have been uncovered including 2x 1000lb bombs of RAF origin. The RAF Bomb Disposal team have been struggling to diffuse them for several days and have no choice but to blow them up on site today. The problem seems to be that they are only 8ft apart and that there is the possibility of more bombs buried nearby, subsequently the whole village and the Asylum Seekers Hostel are being evacuated at this very moment. It was interesting to watch the news last night and see the amount of sand being trucked in, Travis Perkins must be making a fortune.
From my research the bomb dump was on the north side of the airfield, question is, seems odd that these bombs were just buried, presumably after the war, have there been any other cases of this happening and should I begin to make a big detour around Wethersfield.
By: ZRX61 - 8th October 2005 at 03:50
Thats one way of shifting assylum seekers
That was also my first thought….. :diablo:
By: TEXANTOMCAT - 7th October 2005 at 19:59
5131 BD doing what they do best!
By: Pete Truman - 7th October 2005 at 14:08
Excellent coverage on BBC East just now, should be worth watching Look East at 6:30 tonight when they’ve had more time to edit, don’t bother with Anglia, they only recorded the sound of the bang.
Must have obtained stills from MOD showing preparations for explosion including bank of 250 tons of sand bags, plus trenches to absorb blast, picture of bombs in situ lying almost vertically, nose up. Good bit of film showing very large detonation, crater is 50m across and 30m deep. Some people in the village had taped up their windows WW2 style. One of the RAF bomb disposal team thought that the bombs may have come out of a crashed a/c, seems unlikely, would have expected them to have dealt with those at the time.
Apparently they are currently looking for more.
By: Avro's Finest - 7th October 2005 at 10:34
Thats one way of shifting assylum seekers
By: David Burke - 7th October 2005 at 10:11
It was not unusual practice to burry surplus bombs at RAF bomb dumps.
A friend of mine was on RAF EOD clearance and when decommisioning stations
they very often found weaponry which had been discarded years ago.
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October 7, 2005 at 9:24 am