[Juha]

Originally Posted by Kutscha

From another BB.

Chilmark (long since closed) held the RAF’s strategic reserve of conventional bombs, underground in a network of disused mining tunnels burrowed into a hillside. A friend of mine was station commander there, he told me the story of the “empty” Grand Slam that sat outside Station Headquarters (ie his office) as a Gate Guard.

Seems that some planned work in front of SHQ required the temporary removal of the bomb. So they did their research, found that the empty weight of Grand Slam was 5.5 tons, and brought round the Station’s 6-ton crane to do the job.

Chugga-chugga-chugga-Clunk. Bomb does not move, up come the back wheels of the crane.

Oh dear they said. Let’s just check the bomb’s records, to confirm that it was deactivated? Oh dear (squared), the paperwork can’t be found..

Next steps. Evacuate base, call in EOD squad from RAF Wittering.

The Wittering team arrive, set up a heavily protected control point 100 yds from the Grand Slam, and send forward their remote control “wheelbarrow” bomb disposal robot to gingerly drill a test hole to discover the condition of the bomb’s contents.

Out comes a stream of some 4 tons of rusty brown rainwater.

100 yds/91 m sounds awful short distance from well over 6 t of TNT (Torpex is 50% more powerful than TNT) even if the explosives would have packed into a pile of sacks but in this case the Torpex was inside a heavy thick-walled casting meaning big heavy fragments if the bomb had exploded.