DANGER UXB

More than 80 years after VE Day, around 60 unexploded bombs are recovered every year in the UK, reveals JOHN NICHOL, whose compelling new book on the Blitz tells the story of the wartime disposal teams whose heroism inspires their modern counterparts.

- By John Nichol

EIGHTY years on, the threat from Second World War ordnance is still with us. And the Blitz Spirit, too.

When one of the 60 or so unexploded bombs (UXBs) unearthed in the UK each year was discovered at the site of a former pensioners’ centre near Tower Bridge in East London in 2015, a local councillor boasted that it showed “our OAPs are hard as nails, drinking tea on top of a 1,000lb bomb for 70 years”.

In Germany the threat is even greater, with hundreds of tonnes of the million-plus bombs dropped by Allied air forces uncovered each year. Several disposal officers died attempting to defuse a device in Gottingen in 2010. Three years later, 20,000 people had to be evacuated in Dortmund when a 1,800kg RAF “blockbuster” was identified by the authorities there.

While the Blitz is inextricably linked to the capital, with Londoners bearing the brunt of the attack that lasted from September 1940 to May 1941, the scope of the Luftwaffe assault was far more widespread and devastating — lasting close to six years, and now, 80 years on, still a clear and present danger.

Because of its heavy industry, my home town of North Shields, on the banks of the Tyne eight miles east of Newcastle, was a regular target for the Luftwaffe bombers.

In the closing months of 1940, Norman Christenson and his friends were having the time of their lives, quickly acquiring an enthusiastic taste for wartime souvenirs of bomb fragments. “Every kid had a box or bag in which they stored their treasured collection of the twisted metal pieces that could be heard clunking on to tiles and roadways at the height of the raids,” he recalled.

“These would be endlessly examined, appraised, swapped and bartered, like so many of the other totally useless things we saved and treasured.” The pride of Norman’s collection was a set of tail fins off a German incendiary bomb.