London Arts & Letters  

Latest Posts  |  Archive  | 

A Bomb That Didn't Blast

by Zoe Strimpel
Sun, 8 Jun 2008 at 9:53 PM

Print

Send

RSS

Share:

Ever since July 7, 2005, the day terrorists blew up Tube trains and a bus, resulting in carnage on London's Underground and streets, the sight of the words "Tube" and "bomb" in the same sentence has been enough to cause instant and major panic. So it was a strange feeling on Friday to see all the evening papers screaming just such headlines — but with a sense of historical wonder and "gosh, isn't this something" excitement. Not least because nobody was hurt.

What the papers were talking about, and what I thought I'd misheard or dreamed up in a Tube announcement Friday morning when I got on at Swiss Cottage, was the discovery that a 2,000-pound UXB German bomb found 50 yards from the main sewage pump for East London on Monday had turned out to be thicker than expected and therefore harder to detonate safely. It had lain dormant for more than 60 years but could explode — causing untold havoc — at any moment.

Passengers planning to cruise though East London on District and Hammersmith and City Line trains faced serious disruption to their journey and had to find alternative routes. But meanwhile, heroic military engineers cut through the bomb's casing (5 feet by 2 feet) so that they could begin "steaming" it. Then they encased it in an "igloo" made from sand and wood to contain it if it blasted. The army said the bomb started to "tick and ooze" (far more palatable words than those associated with more modern forms of terror and warfare): One Royal Engineer was assigned the risky task of repeatedly pouring a salt solution on it to freeze it. A super-strength magnet was used to stop its timer.

The World War II gift from our friends, the Germans, was discovered by a mechanical digger working near the Olympic site during an operation to widen the banks of the Lea river in Bromley-By-Bow so that barges can pass through with Olympic cargo.

London Arts & Letters Homepage