Expolsives found at Lakenheath

[Grimweasel]

Lakenheath: Explosives found near base flightline to be blown up - News - East Anglian Daily Times (http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/lakenheath_explosives_found_near_base_flightline_to_be_blown _up_1_975709?)

Does anyone know anything else on this story? I would imagine that it was buried ordanance found on the runway resurfacing job?

[Chugalug2]

Grimweasel:
..... on the runway resurfacing job?
Yeah Gods! Not another base closure?

[Diablo Rouge]

Speculation; but such a story is worthy of speculation. They probably have not been 'found' because they possibly were never 'lost'. They 'may' have been runway/airfield denial explosives now perceived as timex and therefore in need of removal or replacement. If it was of WWII legacy, they would have said so, and given the security on US facilities being somewhat more robust then typical UK bases, I cannot for one minute believe that explosives are from an unknown source.

The lack of specific information will of course give rise to decades of conspiracy theories amongst the local community. It is not the best example for community PR I have seen.

[Not_a_boffin]

Sounds just like the palaver at Daedalus some years back. WWII denial charges that "surfaced" in an audit prior to handover to civvies.

Agree its p1ss-poor PR though.

[Grimweasel]

Yeah, not the best PR as you have all said. Would have been better to tell people to stop the conspiracy stories!!
Still, hope they know their bombs and they are not some of the free fall Nukes they had there in F111 days!!! :ok:

[BEagle]

Expolsives found at Lakenheath

Do they go 'Bnag' when detonated?

[ColinB]

Interesting timing. MOD are currently conducting Project Cleansweep looking for wartime mustard gas munitions.

[bobward]

Don't waste your time: they're all buried in Iraq with all the other nasty things we didn't find.....

[Motleycallsign]

I thought it was only Dymanite that went Bnag BEagle

[Whenurhappy]

A huge effort went into finding wartime (and post-war) nasties all over the UK in the late 1990s, led by the now defunct RAF Infrastructure Orgnisation. Old, and allegedly clean, sites were reopened and remediated at considerable cost. Where is the corporate knowledge management?

I had great delight, on being invited to visit Chimark during the remediation phase (site of 14 MU), going to Clothing Stores and drawing a 'proper' NBC suite and requesting 'war use' cannisters and not training ones. Up until the early 1990s, the management of munitions at that site was remarkably lax (especially around the proofing house) and at the end of the war, the Mustard Pots were simply filled with chlorine bleach, and then all sorts of other material was simply dumped in with it. Chlorine, of course, can also be a war gas...

[ColinB]

I think they may have missed a few. This is a current project. Just to remind you

http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/rr82/ColinBa/BOMBPICS-1.jpg

[L J R]

Colin, judging by all the brown liquid around your 'collection' I think that one or two of them might be leaking. :eek: I guess as long as none are 'ticking', all will be OK. :suspect:

[diginagain]

NBC suite
Two-piece, or three, and did they throw-in free antimacassars?

[Whenurhappy]

Very good - I do like to be comfortable when dealing with chemical stuff!

[davejb]

No it's NBAG,
and that's bang out of order!

[Martin the Martian]

'explosives "found" near runway'...

F-15E tearing away from the concrete, pilot says to WSO "funny, did ya feel a bump on take off?"

[BravoWhisky7A]

Colin, judging by all the brown liquid around your 'collection' I think that one or two of them might be leaking. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/eek.gif I guess as long as none are 'ticking', all will be OK. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/cwm13.gif

The brown liquid may have come from the bloke who had to put them there and not from the cannisters! :ooh:

BW7A

[TEEEJ]

Crystallized dynamite found at RAF Lakenheath - Local - Bury Free Press (http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/news/local/crystallized_dynamite_found_at_raf_lakenheath_1_2902719)

A series of controlled detonations will take place tonight (Tuesday) and tomorrow morning after crystallized dynamite was found at a US military base.

The discovery was made at RAF Lakenheath this morning near the base’s flightline.

The detonations will be carried out by US and Ministry of Defence personnel between 6pm and 9pm tonight and 6am and 10am tomorrow.

A base spokesman said: “Residents in the local community may hear occasional noises during these periods but should not be concerned. There are no risks to the local community.”

Flying operations at the base have not been affected by the find.

[jamesdevice]

except for the one that looks like an acetylene bottle those don't look in too bad a condition. Whats in them - chlorine? Except for the pointy ones they look like gas bottles, not bombs

As for the mustard gas "pots" at Chilmark - if they've been bleached out they should be safe, especially after all this time. Don't worry about effects from the chlorine bleach - that will be well neutralised by the groundwater by now.
The bigger risks come from two problems: shells which were deployed for hidden storage during WW2 and then lost. I seem to remember a few mustard shells surfaced on a hillside in Lancashire near Clitheroe ten years or so ago. The site had been a TA training range during WW2
And then there are the undocumented production sites and shell filling plants. For instance local tradition has it that there was a gas shell filling plant in Lancaster during WW1 - but there are no records of it: everything was kept secret. Its possible to make educated guesses, but no-one knows. One possible site (which was later used for making arsenic products for horticulture) has had flats built on it

[green granite]

We had a mustard gas store near us in the woods at Melchbourne, It was mostly burnt off after the war but some bombs, that were deemed too dangerous to handle, were left. The locals were quite relaxed about this but in the 89's the incomers discovered it's presence and you'd have thought the end of the world was coming. The MOD moved in and cleared it. Now they come back periodically to check the site and give the villagers a report on conditions.

[ColinB]

As far as I know (willing to be proved wrong) there were never any pots at Chilmark. It was not a charging unit but storage for already charged munitions.
All of the WWI CW factories are listed at TNA in WO 161/1. If you discover the company name in Lancaster I can tell you what was produced there.
Up to 1943 there was an instruction to have 25% of bombs held on bomber airfields to be CW in case of German invasion.