Something Nasty in the Attic - WW2 German Incendiary Bombs 2022

77 years after the end of WW2, German incendiary bombs keep being found in attics, gardens and sheds across the UK. Find out the full story here.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers 'Zero Night' and 'Castle of the Eagles', both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fe...
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Disclaimer: All opinions and comments expressed in the 'Comments' section do not reflect the opinions of Mark Felton Productions. All opinions and comments should contribute to the dialogue. Mark Felton Productions does not condone written attacks, insults, racism, sexism, extremism, violence or otherwise questionable comments or material in the 'Comments' section, and reserves the right to delete any comment violating this rule or to block any poster from the channel.
Credits: US National Archives; Library of Congress; Claire Smith; Momentum2017; News 360 TV; Mottingham Police; Metropolitan Police; Ministry of Defence; Dorset Police; Kent Police; Northumbria Police; Merseyside Police; Glamorgan Police; Nick Smith; Twitter.

[@Trek001]

I remember being at a police station to report damage to my car a few years ago when this very old man shuffled in and reported finding some "unused ammunition" and that he'd brought it in his shopping trolley on the bus to hand it in. "Oh, right, can I have a look at it?" said the police worker to which the old man pulled out one of these incendiaries. There was mass panic as the station was evacuated and I thought what a jolly bit of excitement when the old man asked an Inspector if he was in trouble. When he was told he wasn't, the old man then asked "Well, should I go and fetch the other three?". Reading it in the paper sometime later, it turned out he had another two in his attic and a third propping up his living room table

[@dennis2376]

That is funny.

[@Timotheus157]

Wtf?!? LOL!

[@metalspoon69]

This is the most British scenario i could've imagined.

[@libertyvilleguy2903]

Great story. A bomb propping up his living room table.

[@silverstar4289]

I made a similar comment about a navy powder bag used as a footstool

[@preonmodel8354]

I lent a cheap metal detector to my nephews to get them outside and out of their parents hair for a while, they came back 30 minutes later with big smiles clutching rounds of anti aircraft ammunition... this did not help their parents stress levels... 😅

[@p_filippouz]

Task successfully failed

[@red_d849]

lmao i would be extremely happy too

[@trainnerd3029]

You Sir… are a professional uncle!

[@robertlennihan3113]

You probably started something

[@SonsOfLorgar]

😬

[@oceanhome2023]

Decades ago I was talking to an Italian police officer who joked that 3 prior police chiefs (how ever long that period of time was) had to deal with this crazy old lady who claimed that there was a Bomb in the basement of her house, they investigated and found nothing she would come back and complain on a yearly basis. At this point everyone just wrote her off as crazy finally after a flood she went to the police station and demanded some come at take this bomb away , the new police chief went to look and found a 250kg bomb still live . For 30 years this lady had been living with this live bomb and no one would believe her !

[@madmanmechanic8847]

IF they investigated it and found nothing the first time I could see why they thought she was a nut case then went back a second time and found it this story doesnt had up wtf?

[@DoomJoy666]

This makes no sense at all

[@karlgustov9648]

How did they not see it?

[@fimelsin5308]

@@madmanmechanic8847 well that's b/c the so called first time they "investigated" it they did a poor job and that's common when dealing with civs, cops don't put in a lot of work till some "bad guy" is around that's breaking the law so they then get payed or get a promotion.

[@oceanhome2023]

The police had not looked very well then after the floods messed up her basement the Fins of the Bomb were exposed !

[@Beelzebuebchen]

Living in a smaller town in Germany. We have big evacuations every 1-2 years because of bomb defusing. A decade ago two specialist were killed while defusing a bomb. The terror of war lingers for generations, to kill even when the war is history.

[@m42037]

Modern history, 77 years ago wasn't that long ago we just don't live that long

[@mbak7801]

@@m42037 Speak for yourself both my parents lived to 95. 77 is pretty young.

[@SportyMabamba]

@@m42037 my gran is 96yo and clearly remembers WW2

[@vk2ig]

@@SportyMabamba I have a friend in his 90s who served in the Battle Of The Coral Sea.

[@m42037]

@@mbak7801 What? I didn't say 77 was a old age I said we don't live long, 77 year's agi wasn't really that long ago, nevermind smh

[@brianb2837]

I never ceased but to be amazed what is found around England all these years after the war. Thanks Dr. Felton for yet another interesting video.

[@tommy-er6hh]

A think: more bombs were dropped on Indochina/Vietnam that during ALL WWII. Imagine what they have under their feet! I suspect Afghanistan is similar after the Russian and Post- 9/11 occupations.

[@jimwiskus8862]

I wonder if the people in Dresden have to be careful? I think the US pretty much destroyed it during WWII.

[@robertwilliamson6121]

@@tommy-er6hh Don't forget Cambodia. Thirty years of war. Vietnam War, Civil War, Four years of Pol Pot, and then Vietnam invaded with 150,000 troops for war against the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge. People are still stepping on land mines and finding bombs, and getting blown up every year. But they are close to clearing out all the UXO now. I spent a couple of months there in 2017. Have to watch where you're walking in some fields and in the jungle.

[@dappermuis5002]

@@robertwilliamson6121 I can remember a few years back, a documentary about old ordinance and that even in France they are still digging up landmines in fields.

[@NYCamper62]

Imagine how the neighbors felt when they found out that huge bomb was there.

[@cjmwhitehead462]

I'm in the UK emergency services, I've come across a fair few of the German incendiary bombs over the years, surprisingly common in the area I work.

[@n8ivspat3n56]

Wow maybe you should look into the history of your area maybe there was something that used to be there that was a key target for German bombers in ww2

[@cjmwhitehead462]

@@n8ivspat3n56, it's Coventry. The Germans coined a phrase "coventrain", to destroy a city from the air.

[@n8ivspat3n56]

@@cjmwhitehead462 oh wow I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool I’ve always wanted to check out England and look at historical sites

[@michaelmckinnon7314]

@@cjmwhitehead462 Coventry was a manufacturing center during WWII and the term coventrain came about because the bombers sent to hit the factories in and around Coventry hit everything but the factories.

[@EthanSmiffmeister]

​@@cjmwhitehead462100% back you, worked on the roads around Coventry digging lots of holes. Lots of Victorian era brick and rubble underneath the roads, luckily no bombs were unearthed during my time looking at you're comments here now lol.

[@ericscottstevens]

My professor in college as a kid took a part of a V-1 tail section during the war. He and a friend found it in the field after it had been intercepted and destroyed. He and a friend smuggled the tail section to his house and got it into the attic at his home. I think he said they balanced the tail section portion on a bicycle and carted it away before the RAF could arrive at the scene. Then there was a knock at the door a few hours later that night, a Bobby and several RAF officers standing in the doorway. Somehow word got out or neighbors spotted two British lads bringing something very aeronautical and very German through the neighborhood. Here's to you Dr. Julian Minghi !

[@MrPatriot112]

Kid (Professor - sees Bobby and RAF officer): Oh bugger...

[@macabru999]

@Dartgame 340 "A rat was the lowest ting anyone can be in my neighbourhood"

[@Admiral_Jezza]

@@macabru999 Then again the neighbours would be living next to this very aeronautical and German device.

[@ixxxxxxx]

wow. thanks for the story. when i visited the kennedy space center in florida there were old v2 fuselage parts lying around in the air force base portion, and even a v2 rocket motor with german insignia on display in a little museum attached to a bunker or 'blockhouse' that was once used as mission control in the 50s. its something to think about, that ww2 germans invented rocket travel and jet planes

[@paulhicks6667]

Jet aircraft engines were invented in more than one country. Frank Whittle developed one independently in Britain at the same time. Germany flew a jet aircraft first although it wasnt a very viable design as the engine basically melted itself. The Italians were next in 1940. Britains technology despite the brilliance of Frank Whittle was delayed by official ineptitude (surprise) and when it the government finally realised just how important and brilliantly conceived his design was, it compelled him to hand it to the Americans.

[@BuckeyeRutabaga]

My grandma, who lived in the USSR in one of the Baltic states, had a nasty experience with one of these bombs. My grandparents lived in a house right by the lake in eastern Latvia. Because they lived out in the country most of the cooking had to be done with firewood and my grandma used to take a small hatchet and chop some of the larger logs into smaller tinder fire-starters on a what appeared to be some random piece of steel barely poking out of ground right by the lake where their firewood shed was. She had been doing this for some 13 years almost on a daily basis until my uncle, who was around 10 at the time, stricken by youthful curiosity, decided to dig around it and figure out what it was. Well, to everyone’s utter horror, the steel piece my grandma had been chopping firewood on with a hatchet, turned out to be one of these unexploded German bombs. Of course the cops were called and the cops called in the military bomb squad who blocked off the area, carefully extracted the bomb, took it to a nearby forest and successfully detonated it. My grandma talked about this incident frequently until she died decades later. I can’t even imagine what had to be going through her head after she’d learned about chopping wood for years on the old live German bomb.

[@ionees3640]

I have a story too to one of these unexplodedet Bombs. I live in a German city which was bomb during ww2 and last summer suddenly there was a big explosion like 1 km from my home. Tourned out that there a bomb suddenly exploded. Lukely there were no casualties just two girls that were scared af and hat some smaller wounds (don’t know the English word) that you get if you fall on the street.

[@BuckeyeRutabaga]

@@ionees3640 Oh wow! I’m glad no one got seriously hurt then. It seems like the echo of WW2 is still reverberating throughout Europe.

[@m42037]

@@BuckeyeRutabaga 77 year's ago isn't that long ago we as humans just don't live long. These bombs lg and small will be found for decades to come

[@riograndedosulball248]

I have one story of exploded bombs In the 70's, the military used to make all nearby fields, including mine, into training grounds. Sometime in the 90's, a guy working for my neighbor found a grenade half buried in a ditch, and picked it up. And started messing with it. AND PULLED THE PIN OUT OF THE THING. THIS MAN MOST SURELY SERVED IN THE MILITARY AT HIS OWN TIME AND STILL PULLED THE PIN. ... In the subsequent detonation, he lost an arm, eye, ear, and a lot of skin on his right side, but managed to live and make some sort of a recovery. please people, don't play with explosives.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

@@ionees3640 scrapes (of the skin)....

[@andysmodelandstuff4306]

Perfect timing Mark, just this afternoon there was a controlled detonation of a SC 250 bomb in Norway. It's also fairly common to find bombs here, and the bomb that was detonated today was found by a farmer who dug it up, presuming it was a rock. He only had second thoughts AFTER he had carried it out of the field and thrown it aside. Lucky man

[@cj.tj.8201]

WOW...!

[@m42037]

Oh man, lucky it would've blown him to bits

[@Vingul]

Hvor i Norge var dette? In other words, where in Norway?

[@arnetanghe7164]

Everyday stuff in Belgium with WW1 shels

[@Nord_Mann]

@@Vingul Borestranda, Jæren

[@GlasgowGallus]

More quality content from Mark: Informative and a wee bit emotional, reminding us that WW2 was only yesterday in the great scheme of things... My old Dad would have turned 99 this year and had fought in WW2. His parents were both killed in the Clydebank blitz here in Scotland as they bombed the shipbuilders on the Clyde... Weirdly, 70 years later, in 2012, a flat I moved into overlooked the remains of John Brown Shipyards, and a couple of hundred yards from where my grandparents had been killed... Thanks again Mark, thought provoking stuff....🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿👍

[@Ballinalower]

Yep. My neighbor was out for a walk yesterday enjoying the sunshine. He's 101 years old and a D day veteran. Still married to the same lady he wed during the war. He has a telegram from the Queen for turning 100 and another for his 75th wedding anniversary. He has all his faculties and can still walk short distances with a walker, and he and his wife have lived in the same house for nearly 50 years. Quite a man. We live in Canada by the way.

[@GlasgowGallus]

@@Ballinalower Fantastic to hear, and so glad he's doing well. Best wishes to all of you 👍

[@PurpleCat9794]

Yes. memories of our fathers.

[@chrislinn4486]

Great story

[@lordgarion514]

WW2 is still "living memory", but not for much longer. In May 2020 there were an estimated 330,000 American WW2 vets. July 4th 2021, there was an estimated 249,000. We don't have long before WW2 is "just history". 😞

[@justdoingitjim7095]

I found a live artillery round on the old WWII Fort Mead firing range. They had opened it up and were allowing civilians to hunt deer there. Everyone had to go through their course on what to do if you found a bomb. Most of the bombs found were dummy practice rounds, but they did fire some live rounds like the one I found, during WWII. This particular round had come through the trees and got it's nose cone knocked off and landed with the nose in an upward position. The guy from bomb disposal told me it was an electrically detonated round and upon impact a small metal ball would break loose and contact 3 metal prongs in the nose, thereby completing the circuit and detonating the bomb. He said most likely the metal ball had come loose, but never made contact due to it landing with it's nose up. If I had tried to pick it up and turned the nose down...well, I wouldn't be typing this right now!

[@The_Honcho]

Glad to hear a natural selection success story for once lol

[@johna1160]

Meade

[@jarraandyftm]

Can only make that mistake once. Well done!

[@kutter_ttl6786]

@@markc6714 It's really a liability for the fort. They have to show that they did their due diligence informing everyone allowed on their grounds of the possible hazards, in the event someone is stupid enough to pick up a bomb (the fact that we're watching a video on people keeping incendiary bombs in their attics should be proof not everyone is so prudent).

[@jamesruddy9264]

Which Ft. Meade, Maryland or South Dakota?

[@vintageshed965]

Few weeks ago in Czech Republic, a construction worker blew up, his colleague heavily injured, after he started cutting up drainage pipe with angle grinder, or so he thought. In reality it was unexploded 250kg bomb that was dropped on the near industrial zone sometimes around 1944.

[@lightningfletch5598]

That’s extremely unfortunate. I hope his colleague was ok.

[@GeoStreber]

I grew up in the suburbs of Nuremberg (in a small town named Cadolzburg). Every year we had dozens of lockdowns caused by bomb defusals. This will go on for decades. Serves at a grim reminder not to let this happen ever again.

[@cyberleaderandy1]

A firm i visit in Germany near Salzgitter had to be evacuated as they found a huge American or RAF bomb during building work. Apparently the German army put a massive water bed over it which caused rain for quite some time after they detonated the bomb.

[@roberthudson1959]

Tell that to Vladimir Vladimirovich.

[@sternencolonel7328]

During or better before constructions works, bomb are being found in the ground of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, there are still many "gifts" of the RAF or USAF waiting to be found.

[@brick6347]

I live in Przemyśl, Poland. We have problems with WW1 bombs still. Alas, given where I live I am also reminded daily that this is happening again.

[@demonprinces17]

Looked across the border lately

[@michaelalexander2306]

They do say 'every cloud has a silver lining.' I remember many years ago, visiting my sister and her husband. A German UXB under a nearby plying field. The bomb disposal experts were called and they evacuated all nearby residents for two days, this included the local pub. The landlord was more than a bit shrewd, he argued that his real ale would be out of date and unsaleable by the end of the quarantine. The local magistrates agreed and wrote off the beer. The day before the evacuation he sold it off cheap, then gave it away, so we all had a drink on Hermann Goring!

[@aramisortsbottcher8201]

Haha, at least one good thing!

[@jamesdellaneve9005]

In that case, it should have been a line of coke!

[@jeudieleslavavelasquez8410]

@@jamesdellaneve9005 And a bit of morphine to match.

[@vk2ig]

@@jeudieleslavavelasquez8410 Or maybe by the time everyone drank the beer they looked like Hermann?

[@daguard411]

My Father-in-law was a paper boy delivering in London during the war. He told me that far too often he would throw the paper into houses that were rubble and some still on fire. When I asked him why he did this he answered, "I had to have an empty satchel when I went back to the paper or they wouldn't pay me."

[@mandowarrior123]

If they were in their shelters they might be glad for their papers, especially if they've paid up for them.

[@tigershark7155]

I was stationed in Kitzingen Germany 3/63 armor 3rd ID. 1986-1988 Our base was a repurposed Luftwaffe base. I spoke to many older Germans in the town who were base personnel and some had manned the flak batteries. Our motor pool underwent reconstruction around 1987. 8x 500lb USAAC bombs were found and rendered safe onsite, during construction. My father was a Navy EOD officer. His team in Key West regularly disarmed German Torpedoes or USN mines pulled up by the shrimp boats. We used to have a dozen or so ceramic Japanese grenades lining the garden after he picked them up on some of the islands during his tours in the pacific.

[@lanternsown3525]

Wow! that must have been scary.

[@2thomask833]

A Few years after the war ended, my grandpa’s younger brother was killed by an old bomb while playing in a field near our home in Poland, no one really knows exactly what happened, but it seemed that he found a bomb a didn’t know what it was, and went to pick it up. He was only about 8 years old at the time

[@heinkle1]

😢

[@Skinny_El.Funky6.9]

We have a familly friend who was 8 years old in 1944. He said that after an american bombardament, a man tried to disarm an unexploded bomb he found in his field, it exploded and pulverised his body and trew his head over 20 meters away back in the direction of his house. After he died he ran into town to tell the mans wife her husband died, they had an small child. He said that many ppl would try to disarm bombs in order to take them appart for the metal parts to sell them for scrap. For context this happened in Romania in Ploiesti wich was an target for american bombers due to the oil rafineries

[@JanKowalski-nn2fk]

@@Skinny_El.Funky6.9 Americans and their oil...

[@MusMasi]

that is sad, I wonder what its like in vietnam? didn't they drop more explosives on that one country than was dropped during the entire WWII? thats an insane amount of bombs.

[@jett6906]

@@JanKowalski-nn2fk that was actually oil sold to Nazi's back then

[@ronchabale]

My dad had an incendiary bomb hanging from the rafters in his cottage in North Wales, far as I heard it was my grandfather that disarmed it and brought it home after an air raid on Birkenhead

[@johndupre5887]

One fantastic story I read involved a search during WW2 for a bomb in the attic of a home. While working to defuse the WW2 bomb someone noticed a nicely patched round hole in another part of the roof with a companion hole in the floor. Every floor had a patched round hole and, in the cellar, another filled in hole. Underneath that they discovered an unexploded bomb from WW1 dropped from a Zeppelin or Gotha bomber.

[@thetman0068]

Two duds in the same house! Now that’s lucky!

[@jean6872]

As a 6-year-old boy my parents took me to visit some shirt-tail relatives in London after WWII where the damage to buildings was very visible. One of my favorite activities that summer was to swing and slide in the playground on Page Street opposite where we were staying in a top flat. In my bedroom was a mighty crack in the ceiling and it was explained by the resident that a bomb had hit the roof but ricocheted, hitting the building opposite. The destroyed building had been turned into a playground.

[@angelachouinard4581]

The older people who would recognize these things are passing away. Thank goodness that girl's mum looked up the markings. But the people who kept live munitions as souvenirs just blow me away (pun intended). Thanks, this was very interesting.

[@treystephens6166]

As long as you don’t drop them it should be fine.

[@m42037]

Lot of people still alive from the war, it ended 77 years ago not 100 years ago

[@statementleaver8095]

Well Police and Souvenirs. Double standards again. No wonder Turin committed suicide.

[@duneydan7993]

I found an live IAP 20mm round in my grandpa office. He forgot what it was and almost throw it in the trash bin. The bin was supposed to be emptied in the town incineration plant... And also a live Scorpion amunition in his garage. It's still there.

[@FishFind3000]

@@treystephens6166 oops! Butterfingers…

[@howardbowen-RC-Pilot]

When I was a small boy in the local Doctors surgery. I recall seeing an old poster warning about butterfly bombs. A Luftwaffe present to Britain delivered when the Germans were well aware they'd lost the war. Kids thought they were toys. Evil people thought them up.

[@ibnewton8951]

Apparently the reason the Germans stopped dropping the very successful incendiary Butterfly bombs was because of the high level of secrecy the press not being allowed to report on the success of these devices during wartime, the Germans believed they were an unsuccessful device. The dropping of these devices stopped because the British people knew how to keep a secret.

[@Nemesisth]

Brits did the same.

[@Pesmog]

If he has not done one already, then a video from Mark Felton about the butterfly bomb would be a great topic for consideration. The Germans only used them a few times in Britain but their impact and the chaos that they caused went well beyond their small size and there was a big cover up at the time to ensure that the Germans never got too hear how just successful they were as a weapon. The Butterfly bomb attack on the port of Grimsby in particular brought the place to a near standstill for weeks, as every inch of the town had to be thoroughly checked (by thousands of volunteers) and in the period following the attack over 100 people were killed, some months and even years after the raid. It was a very nasty weapon.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

It was down to the bomb damage assessment done in the Spanish Civil War. The German scientists realised that a 1000kg ‘mother bomb’ containing 500 2 kg cluster bombs could cause many more casualties than a single 1000kg bomb. All of the allies eventually copied this and indeed the Americans used a direct copy of the SD2 ‘Butterfly Bomb’ on the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War (along with many other types). Cluster munitions remain a significant global problem.

[@Nemesisth]

@@harryricochet8134 on children too

[@TheCatBilbo]

I vividly remember handling an intact incendiary bomb, whilst at junior school (about 1981). As part of lessons about WW2, a man brought in various artefacts: gas masks, tin helmet, shrapnel...& this Nazi fire-starter! I was surprised at how heavy it was & how they bothered to paint the tail fin in a dark green - but I suppose it stopped rust if stored & helped camouflage if lying in undergrowth. Strange to handle something that had been carried in a bomber from Europe, 40-odd years before, then dropped on England & didn't work.

[@PLuMUK54]

I found this to be the most fascinating of all this channel's videos. Possibly, this is due to stories about my grandfather, who was one of the village's ARP wardens, and who dealt with many fire bombs. A few years ago, a regular bomb was discovered about two miles from my house. It was necessary to explode it. Not only did it flatten nearby buildings, but two miles away my house shook, and items on shelves moved. Events that day brought home to me a little of what people must have experienced as they huddled in their shelters, and just how brave bomb disposal personnel are. Thank you for this fascinating video.

[@rickb1973]

For perspective, think about the old part of the City of London, where there's a modern layer of concrete, over and around where the Germans tried to burn the place down. But if you dig a lot deeper, still there's a much older stratum of charred debris, where the wronged queen Boudica torched Londinium in 60AD or so......Awesome to think about.

[@arlen_95]

That's an amazing point to think about! Being from a city in America that was only settled ~150 years ago I'm always awed by rich layers of history everywhere in Europe has!

[@simonkevnorris]

He careful where you dig. I was living in Sunbury-on-Thames and was told there were some plague pits dug in the area. I presume from the Black Death era.

[@rickb1973]

@@simonkevnorris I heard the same thing, plague pits, when I lived near Blackheath, in South London.

[@jarraandyftm]

@@simonkevnorris would they still be a risk??

[@jarredingersoll2772]

@@jarraandyftm with how things r going in the world, probably

[@richardjohnson4238]

We're still finding shells from the American Civil War around here (central Virginia). My grandfather had several under the crawl space of his house (He found them relic hunting with a metal detector). One of my teachers in high school had most of one hand blown off by one in the 60's. A woman I knew found a large artillery shell in her front yard near Petersburg. She thought it was a rock at first, when she found it while digging with a shovel. When the bomb squad removed it and did a controled explosion, it was said it left a hole you "could have burried a Volkswagen in." And just a few years ago, a man was killed near here, when a shell he found while relic hunting went off in his garage while he was doing something with it. Those are just ones I know of. I'm sure there have been others. Like your German ones, they're a threat many years later.

[@hubriswonk]

The technology of the civil war bombs is actually very impressive. I have a friend that is on the Bomb Squad and he handles civil war bombs several times a year. Usually they are inert but he does find live ones. People will have these live shells in their homes, garages or yard ornaments! He was once at a garage sale and identified artillery pieces as being live and they people did not believe him and actually argued with him.....he called in his buddies and blew them up at the police facility and sent the video to the people he took them from! hahahaha!

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

When they interviewed the widow of that relic hunter apparently she said something like “I don’t know how that happened, he knew what he was doing”. I’m sorry but I can tell you from my own experience that just appeals to the black humour of bomb disposal people…

[@richardjohnson4238]

@@bob_the_bomb4508 Yep. The teacher I mentioned earlier, the one who blew most of his hand off, "knew what he was doing" too. He'd done it before. He was a WWII Marine who'd done it in the service. But sometimes, "stuff happens." :) He would tell the story over and over, telling you all the dumb stuff he'd done..."Don't do this at home boys and girls."

[@mikehipperson]

When I was young I lived in the East End of London and often saw neat, round holes punched into the paving slabs of pavements. My dad told me that these were the damage done by incendiary bombs from the war. It's still amazes me how such small devices could wreak so much damage. The Germans, if course, found out the hard way in Dresden and Hamburg after Bomber Harris's speech about "Reaping the Whirlwind!"

[@aramisortsbottcher8201]

Yeah, I recall my grandmother talking about the bomb-dropping and not to long ago I saw a documentary on a guy restoring a medieval house. Multiple slightly burned beams in the attic...

[@m42037]

That was murder

[@LAHSS1940]

@@m42037 that was war of the times…. Definitely sad though…. No side was innocent….

[@jasonallen9144]

@ Ken Sturm not forgetting what the Luftwaffe did to Guernica in the Spanish civil war.

[@neighbor-j-4737]

@@m42037 All war is murder, just legitimized for your sensitive palette. Firebombing specifically is legitimized terrorism, nothing more. So again, a war crime if they do it, totally justified if we do it. Funny yet horrific what delusions and moral contradictions absolute power brings.

[@andrewstickley6681]

A few years ago while i was going through OSUT (Basic training) at Fort Benning (georgia) i was on a land navigation course and kept finding lots of interesting things laying around. Spent 75mm recoilless rifle shells, full clips of blanks from M1 Garands, etc. I was crossing a dried creek bed and noticed a rusty green can, laying upside down wedged between some rocks. Wondering what it was i picked it up and turned it over, and was greeted by what was clearly a trip fuze and half-rusted over yellow lettering reading "ANTI-PERSONNEL". I was so shocked that it slipped out of my hands and smacked off the rocks below me. Thankfully, it didn't go bang. Not my only experience finding old EO but definitely the most uncomfortable.

[@andrewstickley6681]

For anyone wondering, it was an M16 Anti-personnel mine

[@nipstyler]

Was this before you had the basic training around not picking up objects, on military bases/firing ranges, you haven't already identified and confirmed it inert?

[@garypulliam3740]

OSUT A-1/38 1988 Harmony Church, Ft. Benning, Ga.

[@BrassLock]

Since your report was noticed by the Course Coordinator, the planning committee has held an emergency meeting and rearranged the course so that weapons training and ordnance recognition is held _before_ the land navigation segment.

[@fredbrandon1645]

@@BrassLock doesn't do any good when nugs can't pay attention! Their like the nug that was told REPEATEDLY to walk out of the gas chamber facing the wind but ran full speed into a 4ft oak.....

[@danieljackson4511]

A distant friend of me wandered a long the rhine river bed after a period of extrem dry weather so the water was unusually low and he found something opaque and thought it was amber and picked it up. After it dried in his pocket it begann to smoke and burn. He threw it immidiately away but died from phosphorus poisoning shortly after. sorry 4 my english

[@danstotland6386]

Your English is fine. A damn sight better than my Germen.

[@evangetz]

I’m so sorry to hear that.

[@MusMasi]

that is sad man we put so much effort into inventing things that kill and maim each other.

[@fredericksaxton3991]

Your English is good. Sorry about your friend.

[@shelbyseelbach9568]

@@MusMasi We also put a hell of a lot of effort into things which help us and save us every day.

[@Indy_at_the_beach]

My mother told us many stories of her life in Croydon during the war. In one, she told us of the air raid sirens going off. As she and her mother were about to go into the shelter an incendiary landed in her kitchen garden and rolled up next to a large cabbage that was ready for harvest. She dropped everything and grabbed a broom and ran out into the garden to move it away from the cabbage. She did save the cabbage. Later, a bomb hit in the street in front of their home and her mother was wounded by flying glass. My mother was at school at the time and cam home to her mother being loaded into an ambulance. In 1943 my mother started working in Wallis Barnes lab doing calculations on aerofoils. She was also dating a mechanic from John Cooper's garage and a couple of other guys at the same time so got a lot of gas rations.

[@christina3521]

What gems, stories these are, thank you for sharing them. 🌻

[@michaelmckinnon7314]

That's why she was dating a lot of guys at the same time back then, so she could get gas to drive wherever she wanted (not uncommon during WWII)

[@feedingravens]

Well... just told my friend today that the british used high explosive bombs in the first wave to open up the roofs, and then the second wave came with tens of thousands of incendiary bombs. A single bomb is in principle no issue to put out with a bucket of sand, but when there are hundreds... Our sports and english teacher (here in Munich) told us after the war they as kids carried the duds they found up the stands of a stadium and threw them down to see what happens... And here in Germany, they are still busy analyzing aerial photographs the allies made for damage assessment after the raids. Interesting are not the bomb craters, but the gaps in the row of craters, as that is the potential location for a dud.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

I did a bit of work with the Police EOD team in Berlin. In 2003, through use of the technique you describe, and armed with Allied bombing records, they estimated that there were, at that time, some 3,000 unexploded aircraft bombs in Berlin, mainly in the East.

[@feedingravens]

@@bob_the_bomb4508 As you were in Berlin, I heard that Berlin was so destroyed that they wanted to tear it all down and instead create a huge "park" area with satellite cities in between. But after a while they found that while above the ground almost all was gone, the infrastructure underground (canalisation etc. was largely intact, and scrapping all that and building it from scratch would have been insane. So the streets stayed where they were... Greetings from Munich.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

@@feedingravens well there was the Morgenstern Plan to do that with the whole of Germany… …a lot of the buildings in Berlin are repaired pre-war structures, and most of the demolished bridges (such as the massive Heerstrasse Bridge connecting Spandau to the rest of Berlin) were rebuilt to the same design. I’d say they did a better job of rebuilding than we did in London. I was there in the mid 80’s but I’ve been back for work a few times since. It’s still my favourite city in Europe.

[@feedingravens]

@@bob_the_bomb4508 I was in London twice (about when you were in Berlin), mainly to visit the Cutty Sark. So I know here before it burnt down. I even have some wood pieces of her that they gave me, original teak deck planking from 1869. Maybe I should send it back, it is probably some of the last remaining original wood.

[@deedeeko9]

You are not looking for gaps in the pattern of bomb craters, rather you look at the holes the duds make. They are visible in the pictures made shortly after the bombing run. Funny thing: a lot of pictures are stereoscopic, 3D!!

[@nightw4tchman]

4:58 I'm not sure what's more amazing, that this device had been undiscovered for nearly 80 years, that no one suffered ill health from it (I stand to be corrected), or that a water tank was used for 70+ years without someone checking it.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

They just don't make them like they used to......magnesium probably acted like an anode and prevented degradation of the tank over the years...bonus!

[@e-curb]

@@JohnSmith-yv6eq Magnesium is at the end of the scale for cathodic protection. Meaning, every other metal or alloy you can think of is protected while the Mg is sacrificed.

[@edi9892]

Similar story with Germany. We find leftovers with almost every construction site... A German told me that he experienced a bombing raid as a little kid. He said that something zipped right through the room penetrating the roof and floor. It wasn't big but had a lot of speed. They ran down only to notice that the ground floor was ablaze. He had to jump through the first floor window to get out. I don't know what bomb it was.

[@MrJamesjustin]

I must say, Dr. Felton, I long ago stopped reading what your videos are about, before watching them. I just press the play button, because every one of your efforts is super interesting. Thanks for your wonderful work.

[@DinJaevel]

My father was employed, through a swedish firm, dredging for the container ship harbour and the barrier entry at Kronstadt just outside St Peterburg in the early 2000's. They found lots of unexploded ordnances in the silt and mud the dredgers put in the barges. When they did find one they had a number to call. Three russians subsequently turned up with a small boat, went aboard, picked up the recent find and without a single care threw it onboard their little skip, sailed some distance and then tossed it over the side again.

[@blackterminal]

Russians really don't give a crap about human life

[@bretthess6376]

Yeah, that's about right.

[@Pesmog]

There were similar worries when they dredged Portsmouth harbour in 2015-17 so that the new large aircraft carriers would have a deep channel into the naval base. Several WW1 and WW2 unexploded bombs, sea mines and a live torpedo were brought to the surface. They were then professionally dealt with a few miles out to sea. I recall they dredged up about 20,000 artifacts including some ancient cannons from the days of sail and inevitably a large number of old anchors.

[@DinJaevel]

@@Pesmog both me and my father was employed by that same company, when they dredged the marina in Gosport, opposite from Portsmouth. We had a direct number to the military bomb disposal team. Luckily we only found unmarked cables and no explosives.

[@Jreb1865]

Out of sight, out of mind..lol

[@vernonfindlay1314]

We here in Canada never experienced the horror on our soil,but our soldiers experienced it all overseas. God bless 🙌 our greatest generation, we owe so much to them,and look how we squander their legacy. 🙏❤🇨🇦 🇬🇧 🇺🇲

[@amb8274]

Exeter made famous. I was one of the Police Officers 'guarding' that bomb and got a good first hand look, huge thing. Made a big bang too!

[@gcprost]

Very interesting. Thanks for doing this. I grew up in Zweibruken in Germany in the 50’s and 60’s. We had Ammunition Awareness Week every year. Service members would bring around inert samples of ordinance that was found locally in the past year and warn us not to touch anything we found and to contact the proper authorities. I find it amazing that ordinance is still turning up regularly in the UK.

[@dave8599]

The germans deserve this, but not the English. germany should pay for the bomb disposal costs in England. germany owes England for destroying nazi germany.

[@stewartcarroll304]

My wife's great aunty worked in a mill in Manchester in the War. At night, she donned a helmet and was stationed on the factory roof armed with a tea tray with instructions to deflect incendiaries as they fell. It beggars belief, but well done Aunty Nell!

[@Jreb1865]

Now that is so British....lol Almost like a Monty Python sketch... Maybe they should have furnished her with a cricket bat as well...

[@n8ivspat3n56]

I absolutely love these videos when I was still in high school I used one of your videos in a presentation I had to do and my class and teacher enjoyed your video. I will say this I never seen my class mates so quiet watching you narrate a video from ww2 I was actually amazed they even listened. Keep up the good work

[@n8ivspat3n56]

I forgot to mention the class itself was called “History up to World War Two”

[@GCSol]

When I was in the military I was transferred to England. When we left the states there were six crates with out household goods. In England we were told there would be a delay in getting our things. Six weeks later they showed up with five crates. When I questioned it, a very nice man in a suit said they had to "inspect" everything because the paperwork said we had a bomb. I laughed because it was an empty artillery shell my grandfather brought back from WWI. That gentleman stayed there all morning until we found the shell and I proved it was empty.

[@nasiriyah110]

I too was stationed in England. I am a history buff and was into WWII reenactment, etc., while I was stationed there. Let’s just say I’m very fortunate my things all got back here with no issues. I happen to own an inert subject of this video I bought at a militaria show sometime in the late 1990s in Bedford. It was quite obviously deactivated by someone who knew what they were doing, as the tail was ground down in three spots to access the tail plug. The tail plug had also been unscrewed to remove the thermite and striker assembly

[@cj.tj.8201]

Im very glad we have you Dr. Felton. Your insight and knowledge into WWll, is Invaluable.!!!

[@MrLurchsThings]

“Keeping live ordinance as trophies is….. strongly discouraged” Understatement of the year 😂

[@mariosebastiani3214]

In Italy it is actually illegal.

[@rumpstatefiasco]

No one else that I know of gets this excellently nerdy in detail, thank you Dr. Felton, for the sublime mind- food!

[@irish3335]

Great follow up from your last video thanks Dr Felton! Another great lesson of WWII history alive and well today!

[@obesetuna3164]

In Exeter, it is quite amazing that such a large bomb could have remained dormant for so many years.

[@stuartandrews4344]

We had a 500lb bomb defused here in Bath in May 2016, it was discovered just one metre beneath the surface of the school's playground... In the Bath Blitz,they gave an estimate of 4356 incendiary bombs dropped on Bath.

[@tellyknessis6229]

In Plymouth, they built the School of Architecture on top of a 70kg UXB in the 50s. It was only when they came to demolish that building 60 years on that it came to light...

[@mandowarrior123]

Dormant? They used quite stable explosives especially in the big ones. Its like finding an old candle, is it that surprising it still works?

[@plymouth5714]

My late employer use to tell me of his experiences during the Plymouth Blitz and how you could hear rains of incendiaries hitting the roofs and sounding like hail. His pal got into trouble with his parents after salvaging an unexploded incendiary and was happily sitting on the front door steps prising off the end cap when the thing went off - his mum was more angry at the damage to her scrubbed clean red tile steps than the burns on his legs! My father was in the Plympton Home Guard alongside my Grandad too and his section was detailed to dig out a stick of five HE bombs which landed in the Plym estuary mudflats having missed the huge railway depot beside the river. The more they dug the further down into the mud they sank and in the end the Bomb Disposal Officer said 'Sod it, they aren't going to hurt anybody down there, just leave them!" They're still down there to this day!

[@lewdachris7721]

What’s really scary is we’ll never know when we found the last one.

[@jonb3311]

I found an incendiary bomb when I was a kid, took it home and was told by my father to take it up the police station. I must have carried it for over a mile. The village copper told me to stick it in the corner and go home. No big fuss back then. Coincidently, I found it the other side of the railway from Crockenhill.

[@bjs301]

I am grateful we never had to worry about these things in America. It is incredible the burden many European and Asian countries still live with. Especially England. They won the war, lost their empire, and had to struggle along alone while the US rebuilt our former enemies.

[@MrAsianPie]

Well, several Civil War cannonballs are still live, though most of them have been collected and stored/defused.

[@bjs301]

@@MrAsianPie Yeah I'm aware of that, and the Japanese dropped a few firebombs over the Pacific coast. To compare that to the thousands and thousands of explosive devices still lying around England is ridiculous. I was a very outdoorsy kid, and my parents never had to worry I'd find something that would explode on me.

[@vk2ig]

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island also copped a lot of ordnance as well as England. The whole of the UK did.

[@bjs301]

@@vk2ig No question. I should have said that.

[@bobdadnaila7708]

That's how you turn enemies into friends, stopping the adversarial cycle. Something you chaps never seem to learn.

[@buggs9950]

A workmate of mine found a strange package in a loft we were working in. And what a nice looking package it was, dusty red velvet tied with a bow of ribbon with golden strands in it. He was dead excited and reckoned it had to be treasure. I told him to put it in the van and he could open it after lunch. Lunch break came and with trembling hands he gingerly opened said package and found it contained..... ...a turd. An ancient, dried up turd. I have to admit I was surprised but not as surprised as I'd have been if it had actually been something of value. But the look on his face was priceless..

[@paulkirkland3263]

At 3:45 - just to clarify, every building certainly had timber rafters, trusses and attic floors, but the roofs themselves were, and still are, almost invariably slate or tiles. That aside, I was surprised to learn that over 70% of Britain's homes were damaged to some extent during WW2 (the IWM's own figures). Great video.

[@mandowarrior123]

IWM isn't a reliable source. Its a contended issue, their focus is emotional experiences over historical record.

[@paulkirkland3263]

@@mandowarrior123 Damage was estimated locally, and often included buildings with a few broken windows or roof tiles missing. In London, some of those lightly-damaged buildings were pulled down. The records lie with the IWM.

[@pseudonym745]

Same here in Germany, (obviously) I can remember 5 evacuations related to the finding of a "Fliegerbombe" from witch one exploded (or was blown up). The bang was stomach wrenching, really frightening. Once I found a British INC 4 LB "Stabbrandbombe" in wood nearby my home. They have a very characteristic, hexagonal shape and work pretty much the same way as their german counterparts. From '42 on they were also equipped with a "Mr.nice-device"... - which is a great example for the sickening way war brings out the nastiest traits of men is just sickening. T

[@martinfiedler4317]

Originally wanted to comment that WWII Britons were quite cold-blooded to take bombs as "souvenirs". But then I remembered that when I was a small boy, I found a strange metal object in the field next to our house on the Austrian countryside. Of course, I was curious and played with it, but my grandfather drew me away as soon as he saw it. Was an old grenade. Only decades later, when he had already passed, I learned that he had built the house where the German lines were during the weeks directly before capitulation and where the war ended for him. When you take a look out of the bedroom window, you can see the ridge where the Soviet lines were. He loved that house. Think, we who have not experienced it, will never be able to even remotely understand the impact that the war had on our grandfathers and grandmothers who had to live through this war.

[@eritain]

I knew a man in Ukraine who found a strange metal object in the woods when he was a boy. It had been buried, but the stream flooded and uncovered it. It was the detonator of a WWII bomb. He lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

[@TheBaywork]

Fabulous video. What an era and what experiences people must have had during those troubled war days. A fine video, indeed, Mark.

[@amg863]

Great, now all I'll think about is how I'm about to blow up in my garden when I dig up the base of a new shed this summer... Thanks Mark

[@toddhudson9653]

We had a sad incident that happened about 39 years ago. The community where we live used to be an old army training base called Camp Elliott. They used to test fire grenades, mortars, and other explosives here during the Second World War. After the war the area was cleaned up by the army. However, there are many canyons located in this area and they were not able to retrieve all of the unexploded ordnance. One day back in 1983, two children were playing in one of the canyons and found an unexploded anti-tank shell. Thinking it was inert, they played with it and it went off, killing both of them. They were just 8 years old. The Navy, since Miramar was a Naval Air Station at that time and was just a few miles outside where the explosion took place sent teams of personnel to go over all of the canyons and open areas to search for more unexploded ordnance. They found another 202 pieces of unexploded ordnance out of which about 25% were still live. It was a very sad day for our community. Thank you Mark for showing this video as it shows the constant dangers that still exist even after 77 years of these pieces just sitting idle.

[@yolanda231000]

I lived on Cartulina Road in Tierrasanta during this time and remember the incident. Our back yard abutted on of these canyons. EOD found three 105 shells 10 yards from our backyard wall.🥴

[@toddhudson9653]

@@yolanda231000 that's very unnerving. At that time I lived at Villa Portofino so there are no canyons in that area but I had friends that lived near canyons and they were understandably very concerned.

[@yolanda231000]

@@toddhudson9653 I live in Germany now and guess what...explosive ordnance is all over the place! 😂

[@at1970]

It is estimated that 60-70 million mines are still out there from various conflicts. > 20,000 people are killed and wounded every year from them and old ordinance. Another “gift” of war that keeps on giving.

[@simonc2751]

Fascinating as always Mark, thank you for uploading

[@davidcronan4072]

About 10 years ago the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry were putting on a play about the November 14th 1940 blitz on the city. The opening night had to be cancelled because an unexploded German bomb had been unearthed on a building site, just round the corner from the theatre. How's that for irony!

[@robinforrest7680]

My mum was a « Fire watcher » during the blitz. She was 19. She told me her post was on top of Derry & Toms department store on Kensington High Street. Her neighbours had an incendiary bomb drop through their roof during a raid. It must’ve malfunctioned because they only discovered it the following day, nestled among their clothes in the bedroom wardrobe into which it had fallen ! I wish my parents had lived into the KZbin age, they would have been fascinated by videos like this. Thanks as always.

[@tinkmarshino]

Tough SOB's during those days.. to be able to endure that kind of bombing and come out sane in the end.. incredible...

[@AtheistOrphan]

My mother stood in my grandmother’s garden and was transfixed as a German plane dropped a bomb which flew over their row of cottages before detonating in the field at the end of their road. The shock from the blast knocked all the plates off the dresser. (Mother and grandmother completely unharmed).

[@tinkmarshino]

@@AtheistOrphan Man that is something. I had 500 pounders dropped close to my position a few times in the marine corps. Those were experiences I would not want to re-live again.. As I said tough folks to come outta the war still sane.. That constant bombing is hard to take. Your kin was luck they were shielded from the blast.. That can turn your inside to jelly if your to close or not protected.. Glad to hear they came through alright.

[@AtheistOrphan]

@@tinkmarshino - Thanks for the reply - certainly don’t envy you! My mother said it was like a very sudden earthquake and the loudest noise she had ever heard. 🇬🇧🤝🇺🇸

[@tinkmarshino]

@@AtheistOrphan I can agree with that brother.. It took a bit for our hearing to come back.. But.. it cleared the field enough for us to get away with out any more being shot.. so in the end it was worth it.. May I ask you my brother.. why atheist?

[@opathe2nd973]

I love my Brit cousins when they say keeping live ordnance is "strongly discouraged." A bit understated! Super video

[@travels-il1ih]

Does anyone else binge on these videos? They are epic.

[@Actual_Neanderthal]

We once found paperwork in our attic that showed that we were actually our dads secret second family, which is a bit like finding a bomb when you think about it.

[@vk2ig]

I have a friend with a similar story. His father passed away some years ago, and then his mother about a decade later. Sometime not long after the funeral (when the lawyers were sorting out the estate) they discovered that his parents were never married - apparently back in the day his mother already had a family, but one day got up and left to set up house with my friend's father and start a new family.

[@dennycraig8483]

25 mins posted and about 6.5k views already. It's amazing how many people view in such a short time. I do believe general terrestrial television is a outdated media format in general.. Great documentary as always, stirling job old chap..👏🏽

[@vk2ig]

Thankfully free-to-air TV is an outdated media format, and soon will go the way of the dodo. The owners will have no-one to blame but themselves - they could've improved the quality of how and what they broadcast years ago, but were too rusted on to the idea of telling us viewers what to watch and when. Well, they can cry into their beers nowadays, and if they have a problem with that then they should hunt down their former program directors and discuss it with them. Good riddance, I say.

[@the_lichemaster]

I'm glad you didn't bleep the expletive of the spectator at the Exeter detonation. Always makes me chuckle. Funnily enough was there on the day and heard the explosion a few miles away.

[@marvwatkins7029]

Dr. Felton: indeed, so proper and precise. And unlike some You Tubers, always enunciating correctly, never mumbling or slurring his speech.

[@bobschenkel7921]

Gives a whole new meaning to "Hey Mom, look what I found!"

[@vk2ig]

Or, "Look mum, no hands!"

[@wombatwilly1002]

LOL

[@manfredconnor3194]

Germany is still also full of allied bombs. Phosphorous bombs are far worse than thermite. To be fair you ought to do a piece in them too. For 2 years I drove to work over a 2000lb bomb that buried itself in the Volta Street in Frankfurt. They thought it was 3-4 meters deep and next to the road, but when they went to put in the tram line they found it only 30cm under the street. Thousands of people had to be evacuated. I thought I would be the ultimate irony for me to be blown up by one of "our" own bombs 70-some years after the war was over. Phosphorus bombs are particularly bad. They often show up on German beaches and a number of people, including children have been seriously burned or injured over the years. American bombs are pretty easy to defuse, but many brittsh bomb-fuses are incredibly perfidious and are designed to denonate if anyone tries to defuse them. The Germans and Brits had quite a competition going on about who could make the nastiest fuses. You should tell the folks at home about this. Not just the Germans were nasty, when it came to bomb fuses.

[@dave8599]

Our " nasty" fuses were made for good purposes, to kill nazis. The german " nasty" fuses where made to murder per hitlers command, evil! Big difference, I dont care how nasty we had to be to stop germany, germamy, the nation that shoved naked, head shaven children into gas chambers!

[@chrisbrent7487]

White phosphorous is also highly toxic so even if you survive a burn there is a fair chance of dying fro the toxicity.

[@manfredconnor3194]

@@chrisbrent7487 Yup.

[@davidferrara1105]

Don't start none, won't be none.

[@manfredconnor3194]

@@davidferrara1105 Do not follow you dude. What do you mean?

[@ELMS]

An excellent summary of a neglected corner of the blitz. I’ve seen many videos about large explosive bombs (and of course there was the television series ‘Danger UXB’) but I’ve never seen such a detailed and concise video on the incendiary bomb. Well done Dr. Felton.

[@nmr6988]

Thank you as always, Dr Mark. I appreciate the Cold Comfort Farm reference in the title of this video.

[@RagingPaganFilms]

Both my grandparents used to light their coal fires with a bit of thermite from incendiary bombs, and both my grandfathers were ARP wardens. My Dad and his mates used to take unexploded incendiary bombs apart and sell the thermite for a penny a cup. Apparently both these were common practice.

[@ibnewton8951]

I’d like to hear more about this story. I have some experience with thermite. You cannot light it with a match; it needs a powerful and energetic heat source to get it going. If those people used thermite to get their coal fires going, then by my understanding of thermite they wouldn’t need thermite in the first place because they already had a primary igniter for their coal fire. Something doesn’t add up here.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

@@ibnewton8951 What other explosive bomb filling would burn well with just being lit with a match?

[@zackhawn5944]

​@@ibnewton8951 Thermite is just Aluminum and Iron Oxide (Rust) and adding just a pinch of sulphur powder makes it ignitable with just a match. I still don't see why you would need thermite to start a coal fire but it's very easy to make thermite easily ignitable.

[@davidwood4303]

Another superb roundup. Thank you, Mark! Absolutely fascinating. During the war, my father (aged 14 or so) and his mates found a live incendiary in the ruins of a bombed-out building in Hartlepool. Of course, they did what any bunch of healthy teenaged boys would do: they tossed a brick on it :D

[@HighWealder]

Over 40 years ago when I bought a house in London I noticed some old and repaired fire damage in a bedroom. Burn marks on the floorboards, door and a replaced section of skirting. Some time later I discovered the metal tail fin of an incendiary bomb lodged in the attic above the area. I still have it as a souvenir.

[@waggsish]

Thank you once again, Dr Felton!~

[@lightfootpathfinder8218]

I remember a few years back they were building a new IKEA store on the site of a former steel works in Sheffield and found two unexploded bombs when digging the foundations. It makes you wonder how many bombs from the blitz are still laying underneath British towns and cities with thousands of people in close proximity

[@Shinzon23]

Hundreds of thousands likely. Even more over in Europe.

[@Alex000113]

I remember my father telling me quite often in the 60's and 70s that "another butterfly bomb had been brought to the police station". Apparently Grimsby on the NE coast of England had many of these anti-personnel 'cluster bombs' dropped in WW2 killing or terrorizing many and halting normal war time activities.

[@oldestnic]

We had several incendiaries in the shed in the garden. My Uncle, on firewatch aged 15 used to collect them from the roofs of buildings. Mostly they were in perfect condition. He told me they were nearly all dud, as the slave labour used to assemble them used to push newspaper in to the centre, instead of the thermite filling. The outer was inert as it was just magnesium metal. The detonation mechanisms were also obviously missing. When my grandmother sold the house, the contents of the shed were collected and sent to a jumble sale in the 1960's. They were so common that no one really considered the possibility of them being live! I unscrewed the tails from all of them when I was about 14 years old, and the internal cavities were shiny magnesium.

[@MrBothandNether]

also to be found at military training grounds. I was a child at camp surf in San Diego in the 70s, it was an old Marine base from WWII. We found an unexploded shell (mortar round) in the sand and the authorities had to be called. My Mom was thrilled.

[@MrBothandNether]

It was cool, sleeping in the Quansett hut in the collapsible bunk hammocks

[@meijiturtle3814]

Very interesting. I purchased my first house in 1967 and when exploring its attic I came across an incendiary bomb in perfect condition. It transpired that the vendor's late husband had been an air raid warden and had kept the bomb as a souvenir . Despite assurances that it was harmless I telephoned the police who arranged for bomb disposal to collect it!

[@robertphillips6296]

I remember reading an article in I believe Smithsonian Magazine years ago concerning Unexploded Ordinance in France. They had One Hundred Thousand Acres that they hadn’t yet cleared up from WW1. Also Prince Charles frequently slept In a bed with its headboard against a wall that had an unexploded German Bomb on the other side of it. This was at a country estate and the family had kept the bomb that they had found on the property after an Air Raid thinking it harmless. They showed it to a British Army Major who was visiting one day and he promptly called for O.D..

[@stuartharper3968]

Another masterful presentation from this world class historian and author of numerous books.

[@stevenhershman2660]

Thank You Mark for your Video. Watching your videos really makes my day!

[@15-Peter-20]

Wow. They're have been lots of different types of explosives found sporadically round the city of Coventry. Again Dr Felton great video. Thank you

[@lesliefranklin1870]

These things can end up far from where they are initially dropped. Recently, a US family on vacation in Israel was stopped by airport security on their way to take a return flight. They had a bomb in their carry-on that they were intending to bring home as a souvenir. Also, occasionally WW2 hand grenades are found in the US. Some are inert, some are not.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

The Golan Heights were the scene of tank batles...that "bomb" looked very much like anti-armour solid shot. Now if it had been antiaircraft.... that would have been ironic... since they were flying home....

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

A lot of GI's souvenired stuff they shouldn't have. A gent I worked with years ago told me of a hunting buddy who brought a grenade along on a hunting trip. "JEEZ! YOU GOTTA GET RID OF THAT THING!" he told him. So he did, pulled the pin and tossed it in a gully. BOOM!

[@danepcarver4951]

My grandfather had a British hand grenade that he defused after Danmark was liberated in 1945. He brought it with him when he and family immigrated to the United States, and it was on display in the livingroom. This hand grenade is still in the family.

[@JohnSmith-yv6eq]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 He was lucky he didn't have an instantaneous fuze grenade used in ambush...as soon as the spoon flies off and the striker hits the cap....BOOM!

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

@@JohnSmith-yv6eq I'm sure he knew exactly what he had being ex-infantry. Honestly I never saw or heard of an instantaneous fuze grenade when I was in the Marines. I suspect they've been dropped from the inventory or the Corps never had them to begin with. Ever throw a grenade? I have. Once was enough! Trust me, they ain't cherry bombs!

[@stevejohnstone5163]

Another great video, Thank you for your great research & dedication.

[@miaohmya92]

Thank you as always Mark Felton! I promise when I get some extra funds I will pay toward all the videos I've watched.🤗

[@mattmack222]

While stationed in Nuremberg in the early 80s, I was briefly acquainted with a member of the local bomb squad. He told me about an American 250 lb bomb they had just defused in the attic of a private home. I still wonder why it wasn’t discovered when they repaired the big hole it must have made in the roof.

[@ZaHandle]

“Must’ve been the wind”

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

Often these bombs caused so much damage from sheer kinetic energy that people assumed a smaller bomb had detonated. There’s an old WW2 training film about how to tell the difference and we were still being shown it when I did my course. It’s still valid today in more recent conflicts.

[@mandowarrior123]

@@bob_the_bomb4508 250lbs is just over 100kg. It's a small bomb, which is why it was stuck in the attic, but it could indeed have been lost in the others going off. The size of the bomb might've only taken a single tile out, but there would've usually been a tear in the roofing felt. There was so many events that unlikely ones tend to crop up quite a lot.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

@@mandowarrior123 250 lb bombs falling from 10,000 feet do more than take out a tile and cut some roofing felt…

[@kavasir7042]

A neighbouring farmer near me had a unearthed bomb, my friend who is a bit of a poacher was on his land and had came across it where the farmer had ploughed. He actually picked it up and carried it to the side incase the farmer on the tractor had came back and accidentally detonated it. Certainly not something you'd expect in rural Northumberland . I should add as I was talking about it to someone who is into the local history of the surrounding area and he believes it was part of a bombing run which killed a person in the small village of Barlow near Blaydon when he was unfortunately in the outside toilet. His thoughts were that the bomber was pitching bombs to lighten the load for the return back to Germany.

[@Shinzon23]

*ditching. And yes, the rural communities were often designated as places to dump bomb loads if the crew in question missed their target city or got turned around. Odds are theres thousands of tons of bombs in random forests and fields around small towns across Britain and Europe because a bomber crew got lost!

[@kittymervine6115]

Thank you. I was reading an autobiography by a young woman who lived through WWII. She mentioned that her neighbor spread sand all over the attic floor of his house, as was recommended. The attic collapsed under the weight and she thought it rather funny that all that sand ended up falling on the homeowner as he was asleep in his bedroom. BUT the recommendation to sand your attic was changed, and she wrote about having to fill buckets with SAND, and keep them ready to go help your neighbors or save your own home. The cooperation of this group of middle aged and elderly living near the coast of England was very moving. Also she found annoying the refugees from London sent (why there I wouldn't know), that complained the residents had it "too soft", until of course this town began to be bombed also.

[@shanespence4063]

Everything you put out ,I watch. I've been watching this channel for a few years. Great work 👍

[@rlauder7210]

Our family still own the remnants of one of these that landed in my Great Grandfather's vegetable patch during a raid in 1941 or 1942 in the East Midlands. He was petrified that the bloody thing would ruin his vegetables, so he dumped a bucket of sand on it and then quite a bit of water. Amazingly it went out and we still have a chunk of the nose as well as the steel tail fin. I even took it to a Royal Engineers open day at Carver Barracks in Essex to make sure that it wouldn't one day accidentally ignite in my Dad's study!

[@davemcbeard]

Fascinating stuff Mark! Thanks for sharing.

[@jensenwilliam5434]

This is something else. Thank you mark.

[@patrickblock2477]

Got one older than that , my uncle's neighbor blew up the left side tires on his tractor from running over a civil war sword!

[@Rs73Rs]

The Exeter controlled explosion was one of the worst screw ups for the RN uxo teams ever undertaken. The removal of the UXO was extremely straight forward, unfortunately as time goes by the expertise diminishes. Any UXO clearance team would have removed it from site. Sadly the RN has very little expertise nowadays. This should have been left to a private UXO company that has the required expertise. Very sad to see such a poorly mishandled demo.

[@mikebrown3772]

Also priorities have changed as the years pass, now it's the case that a probable risk of damage is preferable to even a very slight risk of death to anyone dealing with or moving it.

[@Littleofthisandthatt]

You have to be one of the finest Historians I've come across. I have a BA in History and I love your channel

[@B61Mod12]

Fantastic as always Mark, thank you

[@Lifeandother]

I live in north rein Westfalen (NRW) in Germany. Practically every 2nd week some part of the cities around are closed because some bomb from ww2 was found :)