[Tech1] The inevitable

[Alan Taylor]

I would have expected a symbol looking more like a parachute for that. I didn't keep a copy of the full map with all the other symbols, but they were all pictorial representations of the various types of bombs.  I assumed that there was a standard way of recording them and that maps of dropped bombs were kept throughout the country, possibly done by the Home Guard people.

Whatever it was, it didn't explode.  I asked some people who lived in the village throughout the war and they don't recall anything falling and certainly would remember if something exploded. They don't recall bomb disposal chaps defusing anything either.

My uninformed guess is that it might have been some sort of marker, dropped to judge wind direction and strength, but I've no idea if that was how they operated.

Alan Taylor




On 3 Mar 2021, at 3 Mar . 11:20, David Brunt <davidvbrunt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Parachute landmine, perhaps.  Torpedoes dropped over land in the last months of 1940 and into 1941.  One of them killed Al Bowlly.
> 
> 
>  
> From: Alan Taylor via Tech1
> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2021 10:21 AM
> To: tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk
> Cc: Alan Taylor
> Subject: Re: [Tech1] The inevitable
>  
> I was amused by newspaper reports referring to it as a ‘suspected WW2 bomb’. 
>  
> Now I’m not especially qualified with regards to munitions from that era, but judging by the pictures of it, the cylindrical shape - pointed at one end with fins at the other, the fact it was in an area targeted during the war and the enormous bang it made when blown up, at no point did I suspect that it might have been anything other than a WW2 bomb.  Just wondering what else the experts suspected it might have been if not a bomb?
>  
> However, talking of WW2 bombing, I came across a 1940s map showing bombing raids in the Banbury area.  Most of the symbols were bomb shaped in various styles and the number of them indicated how heavily a particular place was bombed.  However there was a mystery symbol shown in many places on that map, including one on my village.  There was no key on the map explaining what the symbols represented, so I wonder of we have anybody in the group who knows what this symbol might represent?
>  
> <image0.jpeg>
>  
> This area wasn’t targeted much.  The most significant local target was the Aluminium recycling factory where saucepans were melted down to make spitfires. It was the only factory of its type in Britain ( and the machinery was installed in the mid 1930s by German specialists who presumably told their superiors exactly where it was  ). It was fairly well defended and a wooden decoy factory was built a few miles away at a point where the railway and canal look similar from the air, but both sites were spared significant bombing raids.  Most bombing in this area targeted the various airfields which had been built. But I’m mystified about what that tapered symbol represents.
>  
>  
> Alan Taylor
>  
>  
> 
>> On 3 Mar 2021, at 09:50, Bernard Newnham via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>>  I have a particular interest in that Exeter bomb, as my younger son spent a year living in halls just a few yards away (bottom left). The bomb was top right.
>> 
>> <doohaejmfgicflhp.png>
>> 
>> 
>> I don't have much experience of bombs, but perhaps a little more than most, having spent some days filming on a bomb disposal course - "Everyone has to blow something up, even you".  
>> 
>> <kkdfbgnbpipcpgmj.png>
>> 
>> 
>> At one point I was changing tapes and my assistant Antonia appeared with four sticks of plastic explosive that she had been handed, to use to blow some stuff up.  Well, we'd filled in the risk assessment. 
>> 
>> Anyway, that particular Exeter explosion - intended to burn the explosive rather than actually explode - did seem to be a bit energetic, as if maybe they'd screwed up. Unlike this one, at Shoeburyness.
>> 
>> <dieoddhfihdmempd.png>
>> 
>> 
>> B
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 02/03/2021 23:01, Mike Giles via Tech1 wrote:
>>> This may have reached you by other routes, but it had to happen!
>>>  
>>> Mike G 
>>> https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1176382472790953&id=100012576342772
>>> 
>> 
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