Three generations of British military families lived on a German housing estate blissfully unaware that the ground beneath them contained unexploded RAF bombs dropped on Hitler's Third Reich more than 60 years earlier, The Herald can reveal.
Three generations of British military families lived on a German housing estate blissfully unaware that the ground beneath them contained unexploded RAF bombs dropped on Hitler's Third Reich more than 60 years earlier, The Herald can reveal.
The 500lb bombs, each capable of destroying an area 80ft across and gouging a crater 12ft deep, are believed to have been aimed at the Osnabruck Kaiserkaserne, a complex of First World War-era barracks, as allied forces crossed the German border in 1945.
The barracks were taken over as a British camp during the early years of occupation before part of the area was redeveloped as British Army of the Rhine married quarters for the subsequent Cold War garrison.
The presence of the high explosives was discovered only last weekend when developers began to clear and excavate the site following the withdrawal of British troops back to the UK as part of a planned redeployment late last year.
The four weapons were found embedded in the earth between nine and 15ft below the surface, causing the panic evacuation of two hospitals, an old people's home and 15,000 residents of the north German city.
The minimum "safe"
distance to escape damage or injury blast waves and shrapnel from a 500lb weapon is 2500ft, according to the RAF's own safety tables, and even this might not prevent secondary injuries from shards of glass from shattered windows.
The German authorities brought in military bomb- disposal teams and 1000 firefighters and ambulance staff were also drafted to the area on standby in case of casualties.
Two of the bombs were defused by hand on Sunday but the other two were judged to be in too dangerous a condition to risk removing their rusting detonators.
These were covered in bales of hay and layers of earth and destroyed using controlled explosions.
A spokesman for the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, said: "Unexploded bombs from the 1940s are regularly found in Germany, particularly near industrial or military targets of the time.
"Osnabruck suffered many raids because of its extensive barracks and its strategic location dominating the road and rail network on the north German plain."
