Is there an unexploded WW2 bomb under Stocks Road?

A chat with a local chap outside the Co-op on Maws Lane revealed this disturbing and long-hidden story. He grew up in Kimberley and believes that an unexploded 50kg WW2 bomb still lies buried under the houses and gardens in the Stocks Road area.

The High Explosive (HE) bomb was one of several apparently jettisoned over Kimberley by German bombers on the night of August 30th 1940. 

It fell in the old allotments that were behind Edinburgh Row (or Chalk Knob as it's known) in Kimberley. The crater was fenced off and forgotten about over the years apart from by the local "Chalk Knob" kids, of whom he was one, who liked to play there. The houses on Stocks Road and Lyle Close are now built on the site. See the map below.

His friend Alan relates the story as follows... "My father [Mr.Booth] and his friend Jess Marlow owned a two acre patch of allotments behind Edinburgh Row (Chalk Knob). It is suspected that one of these unexploded bombs is still in the ground there."

The person who told me about it says... "I would back Alan up on this as I lived on Edinboro row as a child... Been telling people this for years, those kids that live on Knob know, not many left now.." 

1940 - Nottingham had its own Army Bomb Disposal unit, No.3 BD Company. 
This is the Westland BD team holding a 50kg German bomb like the ones dropped over Kimberley.
A German Heinkel 111 bomber could carry up to 32 of these bombs.

Why was the Stocks Road bomb not dealt with? 

In August 1940, the Germans had began to use a sophisticated new type of delayed action bomb fuze. This new fuze, the type 17, started to cause increased casualties in the bomb disposal sections. The bomb disposal sections were overwhelmed, casualties rose and the number of unexploded bombs waiting to be dealt with increased each day. 

In the month of September 1940 alone, over 2,000 unexploded bombs (UXB's) were still to be made safe. With improved organisation and planning, a strategy for categorising UXB’s came into force. Unexploded bombs were categorised in order of priority:

A1: Immediate disposal essential. Detonation of the bomb in situ cannot be accepted on any terms.

A2: Immediate disposal essential. Bomb may, if the situation demands it, be detonated in situ.

B: Rapid disposal urgent, but less urgent than A.

C: Not necessarily calling for immediate action.

D: May be dealt with as convenient. 

Danger Area - The old allotments cover parts
of Stocks Road and Lyle Close and their gardens

Where were the bombs dropped?.

Kimberley historian Roy Plumb has interviewed Mrs. Joan Batty who worked for the local military intelligence unit based at Kimberley School during WW2. She confirmed that the German bomber did appear to be jettisoning its load at random. Their investigations showed 50kg High Explosive bombs were dropped at several locations and that the bomb detonators had activated but the explosives did not detonate. In a bizarre twist one of the bombs reportedly had a written message inside saying "From a friend.". The locations they recorded were "Field near Crabcroft Farm, property on Cliff Boulevard, Alandene Avenue, and Watnall Road."

It is unclear exactly how many bombs were jettisoned and there is some discrepancy with other researchers⁶ on the locations hit. Nor did German bombers necessarily have to drop all their bombs in one go. Another local military.historian who has also investigated the events of the night tells us... "At around 11.20 p.m. the Luftwaffe was over Kimberley. High explosive bombs fell at Norman Street, Parkham Road, Cliff Boulevard, two on Newdigate and two on Holly Road. Thankfully, all of these bombs were defective and failed to detonate."  

Do UXB's get safer over time?

In a word, NO... Even today, the Army have to deal with and dispose of an average of five German WW2 bombs per year in the UK. Most of them are 50kg bombs like those dropped on Kimberley, the most numerous type, with tens of thousands being dropped over the UK. 

“The thing to bear in mind is that bombs have never made themselves safe,” says David Welch, the senior explosives officer at Ramora Global, a leading disposal company. “It’s not a thing that bombs do. They’re an energetic article that is meant to function in a variety of ways, with a chemical reaction to cause heat, fire, damage and blast. They all deliver it in different ways and they all have a different mixture. But there’s no mix that you would look at and think, ‘Let’s leave that for 100 years and it will be safe.’

2015 - WW2 UXB discovered at Wembley

How serious is the threat to Stocks Road?

If the bombs failed to detonate and remain buried, will they will be degrading and potentially becoming more dangerous? It is true that the older mechanical fuzes can degrade and become sensitive to various factors - ground movement, impact, temperature changes and moisture. However the high explosive (HE) material itself is more stable than its name suggests. James Owen author of the WW2 Bomb Disposal book "Danger UXB" says...

"The British Army has been known in recent years to use it unofficially as a quick-burning cooking fuel in the field. High explosive needs to be relatively inert so that it can be safely transported and stored in bulk. Simply holding a match to it will not set it off. Rather, in a bomb its potential is released through a carefully built-up series of ever more powerful explosions. In a mechanical bomb fuze, that means percussion cap, which then triggers a detonator, the booster charges and then the HE."

So if Joan Batty's team were correct that the Kimberley bomb's detonators had already activated, perhaps the threat to Stocks Road is not so great.

Battle of Britain era Heinkel He 111H-2 taken shortly
before it was shot down on 15 September 1940
whilst on a bombing raid to attack the Becton Gas Works, in East London

The first local "air raid"

The first German bombs dropped in the Watnall/Kimberley area came on Friday August 30th 1940 and caused two fatalities on Alandene Avenue. This was still early in the war, before the Blitz had started, the country was not yet used to large scale airborne bombing raids and was still fighting the Battle of Britain. 

The Luftwaffe were trying to break the RAF by bombing airfields and aircraft-related factories. Many raids were inaccurate though, the Luftwaffe dropped bombs in the wrong places or jettisoned them at random in order to be able to fly back safely to Germany. They also had primitive fuzes that often failed to arm the bombs.. "...an especially common fault, as the BD [Bomb Disposal] squads knew: up to half of all bombs dropped at low-level failed to explode because they had not fallen for long enough to charge." 

The August 30th bombs dropped on Kimberley were perhaps in this category as none of them exploded. It also does not seem to have been a planned attack so perhaps it cannot be classified as a proper "air raid". The aircraft seen by eyewitnesses appeared to be in trouble and jettisoned its bombs from a low altitude which all failed to go off.

 

July 1940 - Within a month of this tranquil scene, Kimberley suffered its first Lutfwaffe air attack.
Crabcroft Farm seen in the background had a bomb dropped in a field.
Picture shows the C8 bus from Ilkeston to Kimberley with Forty Bridges viaduct in the background (Credit - GHF Atkins)

This one old photograph is from July 1940 just a month before this first "air raid". It shows the old C8 service bus between Kimberley and Ilkeston with the Forty Bridges viaduct in the background. It all looks so lovely and rural back in 1940 despite being taken during wartime and I've had many nostalgic comments from Kimberley residents about the bus³. It's sad to think then that the August 30th Luftwaffe bombers brought home the gruesome reality of the war to the area with two local people being killed on Alandene Avenue.  

Fatal Outcome on Alandene Avenue

Selection of German high explosive bombs.
A 50kg bomb is 2nd from left

Local lad Dave Hodgkinson whose grandad lived in the street next to Alandene says... "My Grandad lived on the corner of Beryldene Avenue on Newdigate Road at the time of the bombing, he told me he heard it come over as he was smoking his pipe at his backdoor after a shift at (I think) Stanten steel works, he told me that the German aircraft was "going down" and was dropping un primed bombs as ballast to keep it up."

There's no record of a crashed German bomber locally so it must have survived.

Germany's two main bombers during 1940, the Dornier Do 17 and Heinkel He 111, could carry 20 or 40 of the 50kg high explosive bombs respectively. So if the bomber described was carrying a full load of 50kg bombs and jettisoning them or simply releasing them too low, that's how many unprimed unexploded bombs could have been dropped over the area. Not all of these were accounted for. 

We know that RAF Watnall's Intelligence Office was on the look out for Heinkel HE 111s as one of their aircraft recognition pictures recently came to auction⁴...

"For advanced recognition of aircraft"
RAF Watnall's No.12 Group Intelligence Office
had this painting of a Heinkel HE 111 on the wall.
Source: Militaria Zone. Artist: H. Wyllie.

One of the unprimed high explosive bombs that was dropped still proved deadly to a young, engaged couple on Alandene Avenue in Watnall. The 50kg steel bomb smashed through the roof right into the room they were in. It did not need to explode to cause catastrophic damage. They were killed outright and are touchingly buried together in Kimberley Cemetery. 

Touchingly, the young engaged couple killed during the air raid were buried together.
It is one of few hard pieces of evidence to accurately date the Kimberley air raid.

Jack Davidson, a newly-recruited, 18-year-old RAF Watnall gunner helped with the immediate clear up... "A bomb dropped on a house not far away from the camp. The next morning, which happened to be my morning on drill, Chiefy asked for six volunteers to go and help to clean up the mess in the house, as there had been two people in the front room when the bomb dropped. Our orders were to go into the house and put the bodies into a couple of coffins that the local joiner had knocked together. The house was still standing but in a bit of a mess. The police were in attendance and had cordoned the area off. In we went. It was a minute or two before I could recognise anything resembling a house, everywhere was dust and rubble. We searched half-heartedly amongst the bricks and bits of furniture... If this was what war was all about, I didn’t like it." 

And Barbara Bond tells us..."We lived on Allendene Avenue at the time the bomb landed. I'd be about 2 years old but from what my mother told me the bomb didn't explode but the whole avenue was evacuated, including my mother and me. My mother had to beg them to let her go back home to collect our dog who was still in the house."

Kimberley ARP HQ Destroyed by Fire

Somewhat ironically, just a month before Kimberley's very first air raid (which included dropping hundreds of fire-starting incendiary bombs), the local Air Raid Precautions (ARP) HQ at the Great Northern Hotel burnt down. 

Kimberley historian Roy Plumb says... "The former Great Northern Hotel was destroyed by fire on the afternoon of Monday 29 July 1940. At that time it was the headquarters of the local A.R.P. (Air Raid Precautions) wardens, Home Guard and Medical Transport Depot.". The pub in the downstairs part of the hotel was locally known as the Pig and Whistle. The cause of the fire was accidental. Roy's father was a local volunteer fireman but they had to be quick about removing the rifles and ammunition before the fire took hold.

 

School bombing raid diary

A local girl, Margaret Cocker, kept a school diary (first published by local historian Maureen Newton in the Hucknall Torkard Times in 2023) which gives us a candid first hand account of what must have been a terrifying time. It's difficult imagining that Ukranian and Gaza school girls are still suffering from the same anxieties today. She does not mention the air raid over Kimberley on August 30th 1940. Her diary entries begin in November 1940 with very neat writing detailing the days, times, comments and length of time the raids lasted...

 

"Records of raids during WW2 1940 - 1945, recorded by Miss M.R. Cocker"

Tuesday 12th November 1940 -  No warning, Heavy barrage to the south. 

Wednesday 13th Nov -  No warning, Afternoon barrage 20 minutes, sheltered under desks. 

Later that month  'Heavy barrage, Coventry; shrapnel in Veaseys garden' 

28th Nov -  planes all night. Record length 9 hours 9 minutes, 

November summary - 20 warnings for month, lost 25.18 hours'.

December 1940 comments include 'sheltered at school' several times, then another record 9 hours 25 minutes Sheffield. Incendiaries around H.E. on Wighay. Heavy gunfire. At canteen. Another record 9 hours 37 minutes - Liverpool'. The following day 'Manchester plus 28. warnings for the month 68.73 hours lost. 

The new year of 1941 gives a similar picture of planes passing over but bombs were dropped in the distance, however there was a severe snowstorm which continued and Margaret comments 'Nowt doin'. Then she states more passing bombers. heading for Mersey side, Wallasey, and Birkenhead often she notes that gunfire is heard and 89 planes down 47 by night fighters. 

Thursday 8th May 1941, Nottingham blitzed, 11.35pm to 5am' then in June she notes 'Record time of quiet June 12 th to July 8th. From this date fewer planes are flying over.

Sunday 24 December 1944 Margaret notes 'V bomb for Sheffield and on 

Sunday 4th March 1945 she writes 'First piloted aircraft over NE since June last'. 

The final date in the book is 20th March 1945."

Maureen Newton speculates... "Margaret was at school working but doing war work as well. What could it be? Fire watching? Was she an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) warden? An aircraft spotter? A firefighter? Did she work in the canteen she mentions? A wartime canteen for service personnel was located at Reynolds factory on Watnall Road, now demolished". 

Blacked out headlight(s)

The German air raids were anticipated though, the clue being on the front of the C8 Kimberley bus, the single blacked out headlight. Nationwide air raid precautions were imposed in late 1939 and strict black out rules had to be followed with no lights being allowed to show through curtains and street lights turned off. Public transport had its own black out rules as "The Times" newspaper of November 22nd 1939 explains...  "In the provisions published on October 4 it was stated that a vehicle having two headlamps must have the mask fitted to the offside headlamp, but this has been amended to allow the mask to be fitted to either headlamp, in order to focus the nearside light on the kerb in towns and the offside lamp on the white lines in the centre of country roads.”

Notes and Sources

Local interviews and contributions, Ilkeston Bygones Facebook group; Andrew Knighton collection; GHF Atkins of Nottingham.

Jack Davidson "The Ragged Trousered Airman"

Hucknall Torkard Times. http://www.hucknalltorkardhistory.co.uk/httpdfs/issue-109.pdf  an excellent set of booklets from the website of local historian Maureen Newton.

Battle of the Flames: Nottinghamshire’s fight for Survival in WWII by David Needham

1 - Blackout lights http://www.aj-wilkinson.co.uk/blackout.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawKpAO9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFqRk5ZZnhLWkdMY3JZMmhoAR5ZX60oJFvFnJej497aWOl8EYdSoMtWxYCtONa4DbPDELsKQMTdMqXflDyH1A_aem_y2hjPbQowbG8qZEjzjofPw

During WW2 bus headlights were indeed blacked out according to this story from BBC's WW2 People's War and it is interesting to read why only one headlight in the pic was...

"This is a tribute to the bus drivers and conductors of Derby, who worked during World War Two at the bus station. Derby was home to the Rolls Royce company, which meant that it was a potential target for the enemy to bomb, therefore all buses were blacked out at night, headlights of the buses had to be covered, and there was no street lights to guide the drivers. Many of the lad's from the Force's, would use the buses and bus station when visiting home on leave, and travelling back. There was always a warm welcome for the lads in the Upperdeck cafe at the bus station when they arrived home. The bus station never let anyone down, and everybody always got to where they wanted to go. At very busy times, only passengers with permits (such as those in the Forces) were allowed on board. The conductor would ring the bell twice to stop, and once to go!"

https://www.homesweethomefront.co.uk/web_pages/hshf_blackout_pg.php

2 - BBC WW2 People's War https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/06/a4185506.shtml?fbclid=IwY2xjawKpAQ1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFqRk5ZZnhLWkdMY3JZMmhoAR5oailLorz35b5J0DMuPL-Uif7qrlsFIL3KLKE1EDCsJxwOOGyJkTtLL8wqcQ_aem_q-pBrhmwdfgpX92sHK5l8g

3 - The bus is a Midland General AEC Regal. New in 1938, it had been withdrawn from service by October 1959. The house on the left in the 1940 picture is Crabcroft which is still there. Thanks to A. Knighton of Ilkeston Bygones FB group. Image may be originally from GHF Atkins of Nottingham who published several books of old buses.

July 1940 - Within a month of this tranquil scene, Kimberley suffered its first Lutfwaffe air raid.
Looking from the foot of Maws Lane towards the Forty bridges viaduct. (Credit - GHF Atkins)

Same location nowadays. The bottom of Maws Lane
looking down the old Awsworth Road.
It somehow doesn't look as steep as it really is!

Nostalgic local comments about the C8 bus include...

Steve Lacey - Great photos, I can remember going under the 40 at the bottom of Maws Lane in my dads Austin 1300 (VVO 543G), and later cycling in my school hols with Julian Buckley to watch them being blown up!! Looking back we were thrilled at the sights, and of course, without the A610 local journeys would be much harder! They were a magnificent structure, albeit in quite a state of neglect when they were demo'd!!

Kim Allcock - That's brought back memories. I used to get that C8 back to Kimberley from Awsworth most days after going to my friends house who lived in Awsworth that's was if I had any pocket money or I walked down from Nuthall.

Linda Fisher - Kim Allcock - was on the C8 with my mum it was snowing and the bus couldn’t get up the hill so we all had to get off 😂 them were the days

Carolynn Hobbs - Used to catch the F2 regular to Ilson with my mum,run to the back seats of the bus when the bus was going under the bridge and if the bus driver saw you doing this he sometimes went faster so you'd fly out the seat 😂😂happy days no health and safety in those days

Ian Reynolds -Nice photos thanks for the reminders of 40's life.

Terence Mulligan - Used to live there in the 50s,see the trains steaming over brilliant, love the photos

Another Kimberley-bound Midland General Regal
at the Midland Railway Centre in Butterley

4 - German Bombers

Germany's two main bombers during 1940, the Dornier Do 17 and Heinkel He 111, could carry 20 or 40 of the 50kg high explosive bombs respectively. So if the bomber described was jettisoning its entire load, that's how many bombs would have been dropped over the area. Not all of these were accounted for. We know that RAF Watnall's Intelligence Office was on the look out for Heinkels as one of their  aircraft recognition pictures recently came to auction.

The Dornier Do 17 could carry an internal 1000 kg (2,205 lb) bomb load, either 20 × 50kg (110 lb) or 4 × 250 kg (551 lb) bombs. The Heinkel He 111 could carry up to a  2000kg bomb load, so 40 x 50kg bombs.

RAF Watnall recognition painting

https://www.militariazone.com/paintings/ww2-raf-intelligence-office-heinkel-painting-signed-by-harold-wyllie/itm52277

5 - UXB 

https://www.dangeruxb.co.uk/royal-engineers-bomb-disposal.html

https://www.yeovilhistory.info/westlands-bdu.htm

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/07/why-unexploded-second-world-war-bombs-becoming-dangerous/

Danger UXB by James Owen https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310299/The-Blitz-heroes-saved-countless-lives-diffusing-unexploded-bombs.html

https://archive.org/details/dangeruxbheroics0000jame/mode/2up?view=theater

6 - More details of the Kimberley air raid on the blog of local military historian who has also investigated the events of the night... "At around 11.20 p.m. the Luftwaffe was over Kimberley. High explosive bombs fell at Norman Street, Parkham Road, Cliff Boulevard, two on Newdigate and two on Holly Road. Thankfully, all of these bombs were defective and failed to detonate."  

7 - Battle of Britain events on  30 Aug 1940

The official Battle of Britain website recounts the day's increasingly hostile events...  "This day would see the hardest fighting of the Battle of Britain thus far with four major attacks mounted during the day and widespread bombing throughout the night.  In the morning raids centered on Eastchurch and Biggin Hill aerodromes.  The evening attack had a devasting effect on the Vauxhall Motor Factory in Luton with more than 30 killed and Biggin Hill aerodrome.  The airfields at Kenley, North Weald, Hornchurch, Debden, Lympne, Luton and Detling were all bombed.  During the night, London, Midlands, Manchester, Wrexham, Derby, Nottingham, Leatherhead, Dorking and Essex were bombed.  Civilian deaths numbered more than 40 killed and 285 injured.  The Luftwaffe lost 41 aircraft and 11 damaged."

https://www.battle-of-britain.org.uk/history/august-1940-day-by-day

There seems to be some discrepancy here as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission list 124 civilian deaths due to enemy action in the England that day. Their detailed record can be found here.