Navy divers blow up massive wartime bomb haul

Navy divers blew up more than 80 bombs from the two world wars during a four-day operation to clear a beach on the Isle of Sheppey.

Local Coastguard say it’s the biggest haul of unexploded ordnance found on the Kentish island in living memory.

After being called to three jobs in quick succession on the Sheppey shoreline – resulting in two dozen old bombs and explosive devices being rendered safe – naval divers decided a concerted search of the beach and mud near the village of Leysdown-on-Sea might prove useful.

Four divers from Portsmouth-based Southern Diving Unit 2 – CPO Ian Fleming, LD ‘Cags’ Lacey and AB(D)s ‘Billy’ Piper and ‘Sid’ Lawrence – spent four days working their way through the mud off the east coast of the island.

Donning waders and carrying 35kg of kit on their backs, the quartet spent up to five hours at a time in mud up to their shins and knees around half a kilometre offshore.

Their thorough search unearthed 86 pieces of ordnance – four 16lb high explosive bombs of Great War vintage and 82 WW2 11½lb practice bombs.

After so long in the Thames estuary, many of the bombs were encrusted with mud and marine life which had to be carefully chipped away by the divers with hammers.

“Some looked like rocks – but picking them up you knew they weren’t, they were too heavy. 

“Most of them were in amazing condition once we’d carefully got the crust off – the mechanisms were still working.”

said AB(D) Lawrence.

Once all the ordnance was gathered, the divers dug a hole in the mud, put two charges on top, then covered the lot with 30 sandbags filled with mud before detonating the lot in a controlled explosion.

“We’re fairly certain we got most of them – you can never be sure you got them all.

"From our point of view it was good training, and the locals were brilliant – they were really good to us.

"The café kept making us drinks which was much appreciated.”

added AB(D) Lawrence.

Of the ordnance destroyed, the four WW1 bombs were used by the Royal Naval Air Service – the forerunner of today’s Fleet Air Arm – which began life just a few miles away from where the divers were working at Eastchurch aerodrome.

The 16lb bombs were used by, among others, Submarine Scout Zero airships which patrolled the North Sea in search of U-boats.

As for the WW2-era ordnance, they were practice smoke bombs which gave off white smoke when they impacted; they were used by aircrew to hone their bomb-aiming skills during daytime training missions