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[lizard]

Okay, so my daughter is there and is just being evacuated from her Halls of Residence.

Quite exciting for her, but I'd like to provide her - and the rest of the family  with context.

The police say "It's approximately 2.5m in length by about 70cm in width"

Based on this scanty evidence, I'd like to find out and have done some rudimentary research:

• What German bombs were this size?
  
  From https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-content/ipc/uploads/projects/TR030003/TR030003-000262-ES%20Appendix%2015.E%20Detailed%20UXO%20Risk%20Assessment.pdf
  
                                ... looks like it could be SC1000
  
  
  • Bomb Weight: 996-1061kg (note, quoted pound weight equivalents are wrong.  1kg = 2.2 lb)
    Explosive Weight:  530-620kg
    Fuze Type: Electrical impact/mechanical time delay fuze.
    Filling Mixture of 40% amatol and 60% TNT, but when used as an anti-shipping bomb it was filled with Trialen 105, a mixture of 15% RDX, 70% TNT and 15% aluminium powder.
    Bomb Dimensions: 2800 x 654mm (77 x 25.2in)
    Body Diameter: 654mm (18.5in)
    Use SC type bombs are General Purpose Bombs used primarily for general demolition work.
    Constructed of parallel walls with comparatively heavy noses. They are usually of three piece welded construction
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SC1000_bomb
  
  or an SB1000:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_1000
  
  
  
• Which aircraft carried them (that might have been involved)?
  
  BAT will provide ... according to loadouts, the usual suspects.
  
  
  • Do 17, 215, 217
    Ju 88, 188, 388
    He 111
    FW-190 F8, F9 (too late)
    Me 210, Me 410
    
  
  
  
  
• When bombers of these types visited Exeter?
  
  19 raids over the course of the war.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Blitz
  
  
  
  

Current story sources:

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2021-02-26/exeter-bomb-major-incident-declared-as-suspected-ww2-device-found-university-halls-evacuated?fbclid=IwAR0XFSnK2S6uXbEl1Tp3bvaHR0d3LCYQMnRRsNHhG6DxjgKEkAU9soHaMLU

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2021-02-26/exeter-university-bomb-builders-find-quite-a-large-ordnance-100-homes-evacuated

Any pointers would be most welcome.


Thanks

Bruce

[Shakaali]

What German bombs were this size?

Might be SC1200, which is 2.77 m long and 65 cm wide.

[BalDaddy]

Probably dropped during one of the Baedeker Blitz raids in April/May 1942. Revenge raids on targets with no military or strategic significance.

"Following the raid of 3/4 May 1942 German radio declared "Exeter is the jewel of the west; we have destroyed that jewel, and we will return to finish the job" Trumpeted Nazi Radio broadcasts.

[SAS~GJE52]

 

..................Not any more ..... 

[EHood]

Holy mackerel!  Good job no one was hurt.

[SAS~Storebror]

Reminds me of how the nay-sayers on the IL-2 Great Battles Forums kept pretending that a fuel tank 10 meters off the detonation point of an SC-1800 certainly remains undamaged.


Mike

[SAS~GJE52]

Despite precautions, there has been lots of collateral damage done to surrounding infrastructure though ... according to local press .... 

obviously an outstanding example of German engineering at it's finest ........ 


Knowing Exeter, it has probably done hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of improvements .... 
G;

[SAS~Storebror]

Blew out windows from houses several hundred meters away.
But mind you: It's all fake news. IL-2 Great Battles devs, testers and happy customers all agreed that a 1.8 ton bomb doesn't do shit to a fuel tank full of gasoline standing 10 meters off ground zero, so this 1 ton bomb simply cannot do that.
Fake news.
Photoshopped.
Go on, nothing much to see here...


Mike

[Vampire_pilot]

Yikes!


reminds me of my own encounter in Munich in 2012 (is this already almost 9 years?).
That was only a 500lbs bomb but at night it was something else. It was a warm summer evening, we were living in a block just at the border of the evacuation zone so could be on the balcony.




Detonation at 0:30. The video is not mine but it's about what we got. Interesting was the low rumble that reaches you well before the audible bang. The shockwave travels much faster in the solid ground.

There was a lot of fire damage afterwards because of burning dampening material from the site.

Little fun fact: there was a quite run down little club/disco on top of that bomb for decades. I danced there as well.

[Spinnetti]

Why on earth did they detonate in place? seems foolish.

[sniperton]

Why on earth did they detonate in place? seems foolish.

Good question, but it's hard to answer, technically

Here in "Fortress Budapest" bombs from FAB 50 up to GP 2000 are routinely found, defused, transported to a safe place, and detonated there.

Whole neighbourhoods are emptied for such operations, but I don't remember anything has been blown up in place in the past 20+ years.

Possibly authorities take more risk, I don't know.

Text is unfortunaly only in Hungarian, but here you are pictures of the defusing and detonating of a GP 1000 bomb (inculding crater):

https://tuzszereszet.hu/500-kilogrammos-legibomba-taksony-h320
https://tuzszereszet.hu/taksonyi-legibomba-megsemmisitese-h341

[SAS~Storebror]

Why on earth did they detonate in place? seems foolish.

Simply because they couldn't determine the fuse type.
Ministry of Defence (MoD): "The fuse was so corroded they could not determine what type of fuse it was, whether it was booby trapped (a common German practice to defeat the EOD teams of the day), so it was not safe to try to remove the fuse and thus render the device safe to move."




Mike