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Looks like the Germans built ordnance that would last. Namely bombs.

This the second one that has been discovered in the past year in Rochester.

Boom Boom as Basil Brush would have said.


Trains not stopping at Rochester Station after reports of a wartime bomb
TRAVEL NEWS
NEWS ALERTS
By Katie Nelson
[email protected]
Read all comments | 27
13:59, 05 February 2019 | Updated: 17:17, 05 February 2019

Passengers were evacuated from a station after a wartime bomb was discovered.

Police received reports of a suspected wartime bomb in Corys Road in Rochester at 12.36pm.

The Ministry of Defence has been contacted and Explosive Ordnance Disposal team attended the scene.


Trains were still using the line while the station was closed.

It reopened at 3pm and trains were able to call in.

Police cordoned off Rochester station after a war time bomb was found
Police cordoned off Rochester station after a war time bomb was found

Our reporter at the scene said: "The bomb squad turned up and spoke to the people outside the station before putting their sirens on and driving down Gas House Road and on to Rochester Riverside development.

"At least two army personnel are in attendance."

A Second World War bomb was discovered near the station in April last year.



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I remember some years back all the lines into Waterloo being closed when a WW2 bomb was found lodged in one of the signalling gantries that run over the track at Clapham Junction.
 
When I was a kid in the 70s there was loads of old wartime stuff left about.

Near where I lived was an old wartime ambulance depot which was used by men from the area to work on their cars as there were pits in the bays. My mates and I used it to climb onto the flat roof and throw heavy objects off, the car repair men didn't approve.

On the same site were Nissen huts which we would climb up and slide off.

The local big house used to house Officers in the war and, for some reason still had a spitfire in a big room, I think that it was a research facility as my dad knew a bloke that worked there.

My dad built our dog a kennel out of old ammunition boxes.
 
The best WW2 bomb story I know of.

RAF Scampton had an example of Barnes Wallis' huge Grand Slam "earthquake bomb" (used by of 617 Sqn - the "Dambusters") on display outside the main entrance. Until very recently this was the most powerful non-atomic aerial bomb ever used. After sitting there for well over a decade it had to be moved when the main road was being widened by the local council. Efforts to lift it with a mobile crane failed when it was found to be surprisingly heavy. Yes you guessed it - on close inspection it was found to be a live bomb containing over 4 tonnes of Torpex high explosive, and not the empty casing that everyone had always thought it was ...
 
Panic over and my apologies to Germany.

It now appears that this was not a German WWII bomb.

No, it was one of our own Naval Shells from WWII.

I’m not sure why our Navy would wish she’ll Rochester apart from Chatham (joined onto Rochester) was a huge Naval base until the nineties.


Army find naval shell near train station



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When I was a kid in the 70s there was loads of old wartime stuff left about.

Near where I lived was an old wartime ambulance depot which was used by men from the area to work on their cars as there were pits in the bays. My mates and I used it to climb onto the flat roof and throw heavy objects off, the car repair men didn't approve.

On the same site were Nissen huts which we would climb up and slide off.

The local big house used to house Officers in the war and, for some reason still had a spitfire in a big room, I think that it was a research facility as my dad knew a bloke that worked there.

My dad built our dog a kennel out of old ammunition boxes.

Sound like where I am in a Kent.

The local fields are literally full of “returning shell cases” mostly 303 aircraft stuff.

But it is also a dedicated AONB and archeological site (mainly Iron Age stuff). So the local metal dectectorists are never far away.

Next doors barn took a direct hit from an RAF Hurricane that came in vertically from 20,000 feet. The metal guys are still picking bits of it up. The pilot survived after baling out.


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My parents moved to St Mary Cray in the mid 1950's, and round the corner on the road leading to the Police station on Cray High Street were a couple of air raid shelters we used to play in, and an air raid siren that got tested every now and then, the eerie sound of it would send shivers down your spine! Most of the properties on that stretch of the road were prefabs! The whole lot has gone now, all the prefabs, the council houses and large green with swings (that I fell off more than once!), totally unrecogniseable.
 
The landlord of my local pub found a rather large air raid siren in the attic. It still had a a winding handle.

So you have a pub. A lovely evening. A huge air raid siren with an even bigger handle poking out it. What’s a bunch of guys to do?

It is a hell of a wailing sound. Ear splitting. And once you start the winding it doesn’t just stop. Oh boy.


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Somebody out there in Internet world very kindly posted me a picture of the U-508.

Remarkable to think what I am looking at here. The same submarine and crew who sank my uncles ship but never survived the war.

9bd01feb0ddb2e9195bd2d53607ce5fa.jpg



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This design of airfield defence structure is one of the more unusual. The so-called "mushroom" pillboxes are apparently found on very few airfields and this one has remained largely unmolested - probably due at least in part to being sited in a very soggy field:

DSCN9924.jpg



They were obviously designed to give a 360-degree field of fire. If those cows had got any closer they'd have got a burst from my Bren gun:

DSCN9925.jpg
 
It's more of a bomb shelter than a pillbox.

It's not meant to halt a frontal attack by the enemy's infantry and armoured divisions, but to protect the soldiers during an air raid while allowing them to keep watch and maintan combat positions (as opposed to an underground bomb shelter or a ditch etc).
 
It's more of a bomb shelter than a pillbox.

It's not meant to halt a frontal attack by the enemy's infantry and armoured divisions, but to protect the soldiers during an air raid while allowing them to keep watch and maintan combat positions (as opposed to an underground bomb shelter or a ditch etc).

I don't think so. Apparently, there's another one in worse condition in the same field although I didn't see it and they would have formed part of the interlocking defences around the perimeter of the airfield.

However, there was also a conventional blast shelter surviving further down the field for use in the event of air raids.
 
This design of airfield defence structure is one of the more unusual. The so-called "mushroom" pillboxes are apparently found on very few airfields and this one has remained largely unmolested - probably due at least in part to being sited in a very soggy field:

DSCN9924.jpg



They were obviously designed to give a 360-degree field of fire. If those cows had got any closer they'd have got a burst from my Bren gun:

DSCN9925.jpg


These are fantastic photographs. Thank you for posting. Would that be the Gun Mounting Ring that we can see (looks like its made out of scaffold tube)
 
These are fantastic photographs. Thank you for posting. Would that be the Gun Mounting Ring that we can see (looks like its made out of scaffold tube)

I would imagine it must have been although it appeared to be in surprisingly good condition.

This wasn't too far away either. Although it looks like another defensive structure, it was actually the Battle HQ and would probably have been hidden in a hedgerow or other vegetation during the war years. If the airfield had been attacked and was in danger of being overrun, the idea was that those in command would withdraw to this location, set up communications as best they could and then try to co-ordinate their defensive forces. Like the structures that you have photographed, it has fallen victim to vandalism and the "decoration" is somewhat 21st century whilst the moss-covered slab to the right has been placed there to block the entrance:

DSCN9915.jpg



Unlike the mushroom pillbox, the metal work hasn't worn so well and there is less and less of it holding up a very big lump of concrete. You wouldn't want to put your fingers into that gap....

DSCN9921.jpg
 
It would be common practice to 'soften' the target by an air raid prior to landing troops.

The traditional bukers would provide cover for pilots and ground crew but the perimeter defence would need to have a shelter that allows them to maintain their fighting positions in readiness for the ground attack that would follow the air raid.

You can see that the roof is made of concrete but the surrounding wall is made only of bricks and offers very limited protection from shrapnel and light fire.

Enemy paratroopers would not be expected to have field artillery or heavy machine guns (let alone tanks and armoured vehicles).
 
It's often only the "small change" that remains when everything else has long gone.

These "tombstones" scattered around the woodland floor are the bases on which the pot-belly stoves once stood that would have been the only heating for an entire nissen hut:

DSCN9933.jpg


DSCN9934.jpg


DSCN9941.jpg
 
And the woodland floor isn't all it seems.

Scraping away a few centimetres of leaf litter reveals the concrete floors of the nissen huts that once stood here:

DSCN9935.jpg



If you search around at this time of year when the vegetation has died back you can sometimes find a doorstep that marks the site of the entrance to a hut. You can only wonder if any of those who passed through this portal are still around:

DSCN9944.jpg
 
Since this was obviously a subject which he enjoyed I would hope that the late Bruce Millar wouldn't object to a thread resurrection and may even be looking on approvingly.

The picture below was taken in 1943 and shows the flying part of the airfield at the top complete with Lancasters on their hardstandings and what look like gilders in the centre of the field whilst in the bottom left is one of the many dispersed domestic (living) sites:

RAF_Langar_-_September_1943_-_Oblique_2-1.jpg


This is my rather clumsy close-up of the domestic site:

RAF_Langar_September_1943.jpg

Although long-vacated by the Airforce, the runways and perimeter track are intact and see a lot of civilian flying but away from there the old domestic site has largely faded into history.
 

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