170+ WWII bombs discovered under children's playground in Britain
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The 176 bombs that were found are believed to have belonged to a Home Guard training ground.
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Ministry of Defense shows a Second World War bomb that was discovered on a building site. on Thursday, March 2, 2017. (AP)
Over 170 WWII-era bombs were unearthed from under a children's playground undergoing update in Northern England, with more expected to be discovered.
The first batch of bombs was found still containing a charge in the playground located in Wooler, Northumberland, BBC reported as cited by CBS News. So far, 176 bombs have been dug up.
On the first day, Brimstone Site Investigations, a company that specializes in unexploded ordnance, identified an additional 65 practice bombs, each weighing 10 pounds, as well as smoke cartridges.
On the second day of work at the site, Brimstone recovered an additional 90 practice bombs and safely removed them to a designated storage area, the Wooler Parish Council wrote.
"Due to the large amount of ordnance buried, the site survey could not be completed in the anticipated 2 days and a further deployment would be necessary," officials said in a statement.
The area is believed to have been a Home Guard training ground, and the bombs were buried at the end of the war.
"I never thought as a parish councilor I'd be dealing with bomb disposal," local councilor Mark Mather told the BBC.
Mather, however, maintained that "the Army will not support us in any way, either looking for the ordnance or removing it, which has been extremely disappointing."
The Ministry of Defense confirmed to the BBC that a team attended the site twice in January but did not speak to the local council's claims.
"Clearly this find was unexpected but we are pleased to have been able to find the extra funding to allow this crucial work to be done safely," a spokesperson for the county council said in a statement.
Not an isolated incident
This isn't an uncommon incident. British and American air forces dropped 2.7 million tonnes of bombs on Europe, while the German air force dropped 12,000 tonnes of bombs on London.
In 2018, the British Defense Ministry said over 450 World War II bombs have been defused since 2010 by disposal teams, while in Germany, every year, an estimated 2,000 tons of World War II munitions are found, at times requiring the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents from their homes.
In Berlin alone, 1.8 million pieces of ordnance have been defused between 1947 and 2018.
Buried bombs, as well as mortars, land mines, and grenades, are often found during construction work, excavations, and renovations, or even by farmers tilling the land.
In one of the most recent instances, an unexploded World War II bomb was uncovered and transported on February 23, 2024, through the streets of the southwestern English port city of Plymouth.
It was placed on a boat for its next and final journey to sea, where it will be blown up by naval divers.
In what prompted one of the largest evacuations in the United Kingdom since the war, with around 10,000 people evacuated, a military convoy carried the Nazi-era explosive from a residential backyard in the city to Plymouth’s shoreline.
In Germany, 13,000 people were evacuated in Dusseldorf on August 8, 2023, after a 1-ton American bomb was uncovered and defused near a zoo, with police forces closing a 500-meter radius around the location of the bomb.
Similarly, 15,000 civilians were evacuated from Dresden, Germany, in December 2021 after a 250-kilogram bomb was found near two nursing homes. The bomb couldn't be relocated and had to be detonated on the spot.
