WATCH: Unexploded device blown up by Navy
A SUSPECTED Second World War anti-submarine weapon was finally detonated yesterday – some 80 years after it landed there.
A Portsmouth-based Royal Navy team carried out a controlled explosion of the ordnance which was discovered in January by scallop diver Phil Warry some 548 metres north-east of the White Rock. The find was reported last week.
The navy team included divers and support crew so they could operate in a bubble for infection control measures.
The original plan was to assess the ordnance two days ago and if it needed detonating, it would have been done today.
Divers inspected the item at about 11am yesterday, two-and-a-half hours before the low spring tide. A decision was taken to detonate, but with a forecast of deteriorating weather for tomorrow, it was done 24 hours early.
After the first attempt failed due to technical reasons, the ordnance was detonated at about 3.40pm.
People in the Castle Emplacement area said they felt the explosion before the saw it.
Dog walker Lisa Carre, 49, said she had missed the last controlled explosion of ordnance.
‘I turned up just in time to see a ring of water,’ she said. ‘This time, while the plume of water was not that impressive, I was kneeling on the breakwater and I felt it through my knees first,’ she said.
Civil servant Alison Kirkwood said she had gone to the area to meet someone and it was only when she got there that she learned of the imminent detonation.
‘I was really surprised as you could feel it under your feet before you saw anything,’ she said.
The Leopardess and the Sarnia policed a 200m exclusion zone around the munition while restrictions were also in place for aircraft.
Harbour master Captain David Barker thanked everybody for their co-operation.
