Eight hundred people were forced to flee their homes in the dead of night on Thursday, after a 50kg Nazi bomb was uncovered in Plymouth and taken to sea to be blown up.
Bleary-eyed locals were roused from their beds as the cordon around the bomb’s convoy route remained in place from 11pm until 3am this morning.
On Wednesday, a ‘major incident’ was declared after two separate unexploded WWII bombs were discovered – one in a building site in Plymouth and another in a marina in Exmouth, after one local had spotted a ‘very large’ device being dredged from the water.
In the early hours on Friday morning, bomb disposal squads worked to detonate both bombs in Devon’s seabed while nearby residents were safely away.
The first to be exploded was the German SC50 discovered in Plymouth, which was brave heaved into a vehicle and slowly driven towards Millbay docks and King Point Marina.
Once the WWII bomber reached the shore, it was placed onto a small RIB boat with a couple of bomb disposal experts before being detonated in a controlled explosion, which the council confirmed had been successful just before 3am.
Plymouth Government said at 2.50am: ‘Military Operation now complete.
‘The operation to safely remove and dispose of the wartime device in Millbay has been successfully completed and people can return to their homes.
‘Over the past couple of hours around 800 residents were asked to evacuate from their homes to allow specialists to carry out the removal work safely.
‘Once the area was confirmed clear, Royal Navy bomb disposal experts secured the device and transported it in a military convoy to King Point Marina. From there, it was transferred out to sea for a safe, controlled detonation.’
‘The cordon is now being lifted and everyone who has been evacuated can return to their homes,’ they added, thanking people for their patience and cooperation and the council staff, police and Royal Navy who helped in the 48-hour mission.
Next, a few hours later at 8.13am on Friday morning, the other WWII bomb found in Exmouth’s marina was detonated on the seabed.
Assistant Chief Constable Nikki Leaper, from Devon and Cornwall Police, told the BBC: ‘Everyone has pulled in really long hours to get this safely to a conclusion with minimum hours.
‘We didn’t want this going on for days and days.
She said: ‘Luckily some people were only out of their houses for a couple of nights, but this could have gone on, but because of the experts in their fields we’ve managed to bring it to a safe conclusion quite quickly.’
Up to 5,000 people were evacuated across two days and a secondary school was forced to close on Thursday following the discoveries in Devon, as residents living within 1,300ft were warned to stay away.
Around one hundred people slept in makeshift accommodation at Exmouth’s leisure centre on Wednesday night and a further 20 on Thursday night as the bombs were examined meticulously and government officials put plans in place for their removal.
But many south coast locals were initially defiant at their forced removal, as cafes refused to close and pubgoers didn’t let the threat of a massive Nazi bomb get in the way of their plans.
Exmouth resident Eleanor Bradburn said she saw large numbers of police arrive on Wednesday night before getting a ‘knock on the door’ and an order to evacuate. She said: ‘I just grabbed a few things.. and went to the pub’.
While parts of Plymouth have been brought to a standstill, one defiant cafe owner insisted they were staying open.
Blooming Brew in Plymouth – which sits just outside the city’s no-go zone – told its customers: ‘No WW2 bomb will stop us from closing. We are still open today.’
News of the discovery in Plymouth was something of a Groundhog Day for locals, with one posting on X: ‘When you hear a WW2 bomb has been found in Plymouth’ along with a viral meme of ‘Brenda from Bristol’ and her famous slogan: ‘You’re joking, not another one!’
