Letters To The Times:
The reaction to the discovery of an unexploded bomb in Plymouth showed a very different attitude to risk than was normal in the postwar years. In 1948, I attended a boarding school next to a disused army training ground, where we were allowed to play. On the gate was a notice that said: “Any boy finding live ammunition MUST bring it to the headmaster’s study without delay.” The notice was removed after someone took in a hand grenade.
Adam Lewis
Radlett, Herts
When I was a child in Folkestone (on the Kent coast) mines would often wash up on the sandy beach, We kids would stand near to watch it as it rolled around in the waves on its “spikes” until the police arrived to move us away.
The bomb disposal mob would arrive a little later, attach a line to it, tow it behind a dinghy a few hundred yards off the beach and blow it up - I think by shooting at it with a rifle.
I say it occurred “often” but it was probably a couple of times a year in the 1950s as the tether cables rusted through.
