Olympic bomb unearthed
The massive World War II bomb that caused chaos in the East End earlier this month will have brought back memories of the Blitz for older residents. The 1000 kilo Luftwaffe bomb was dredged out of the River Lea, where it had lain happily undisturbed for almost 70 years. It took a major new development, the construction works for the 2012 Olympics to uncover the ticking monster, and it does raise the question … how many other bombs lie harmlessly undiscovered around the East End.
Periodically an unexploded bomb (or UXB) is discovered and this led to a Parliamentary Question from Simon Hughes to the Armed Forces Minister Nicholas Soames back in 1996. Soames revealed that there was a Ministry of Defence listing of known German UXBs in London - and that the MOD intended only to deal with the bombs if it was ‘thought they were unstable’. So is there a stable bomb near you?
The business uses and names of the sites have often changed now of course. There was a UXB listed in the old LMS goods yard site at West India Dock, another at Baron’s pickle factory in Assembly Passage Mile End. Another was buried in the cemetery, at the rear of 33 Ropery Street in Stepney. Heading out to East Ham, there were four buried in a sewage works, one at the New London Electronics Works, Boleyn Road, and another in the Creon and Silley weirs by an allotment. Hackney had four at the Latham Timber Yard. Two bombs lie in Leyton marshes, while back in 1996 there were still a dozen gently slumbering in West Ham - in the River Lea, in the backyards of 13 Wester Road and of 49 Baron Road in Canning Town. Another lay in Halin’s Piggery at Temple Mills. In total, there were 74 known UXBs in London
East London has more than its share, but then it had more than its share of the Blitz. On 7 September 1940 there began 57 consecutive nights of bombing, and this first Blitz went on until 10 May 1941. Leaving aside the incalculable psychological trauma this caused to Londoners, it killed more than 43,000 civilians and damaged or destroyed more than a million homes. Around a million civilians where injured, and Britain lost 1023 fighter planes and 376 bombers, 148 coastal command aircraft and 1041 air crew. Up to 500 bombers were targeting London on some nights, and the Germans lost 2698 aircrew, 873 fighters and 1015 bomber planes.
There were later attacks too. The Baedeker Blitz, between February and May 1942 targeted Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich and York, while November 1943’s Baby Blitz was probably more damaging to the Luftwaffe than to London, proving costly yet ineffective. And by 1944 the Germans had switched to unmanned attacks, with the V1 Flying Bombs and V2 Rockets.
Less well known of course was the German aerial bombing of London during World War I, which barely a person alive will now remember. The German Admiralty was in charge of the air force (such as it was) in these early days of manned flight. This first air force totalled a mere seven Zeppelins, few and slow moving, though capable of wreaking enormous damage. The Germans launched the first Zeppelin raid on London on 21 May 1915, killing seven and injuring 60. They had previously bombed Yarmouth and King’s Lynn. Raids continued, hitting Gravesend, Sunderland, Edinburgh, the Midlands and the Home Counties, and by the end of May 1916 at least 550 British civilians had been killed by Zeppelins.
But at a top speed of around 80mph they were almost sitting targets. It didn’t take long for the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service (which would amalgamate at the end of the War to form the RAF) to hone the skills needed to shoot the behemoths down. The anti-aircraft batteries got the measure of them too, and 77 of the 115 Zeppelins had been downed or fatally damaged by 1917. In June of that year, the Germans realised the Zeppelin was history, and they ceased bombing London.
For modern Londoners, the German UXB was more inconvenient than dangerous. Flights were disrupted from London City Airport, train journeys were disrupted, and a half dozen people had to leave their houseboats in Sugar House Lane. But with contractors digging into areas untouched for decades, more UXBs could well come to light.