RAF Fauld Explosion
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The RAF Fauld explosion was a military accident which occurred at 11:11am on Monday, November 27, 1944 at the RAF Fauld underground munitions storage depot.
Between 3,100 and 3,600 metric tons (3,500 and 4,000 tons) of ordnance exploded – mostly comprising high explosives but including a variety of other types of weapons and including 500 million rounds of rifle ammunition. The resulting crater was 120 metres (400') deep and 1,200 metres (0.75 miles) across and is still clearly visible just south of the village of Fauld, to the west of Hanbury Hill in Staffordshire, England (Latitude 52.847117N, Longitude 1.730608W). A nearby reservoir containing 450,000 cubic metres of water was obliterated in the incident, along with a number of buildings. Flooding caused by destruction of the reservoir added to the damage directly caused by the explosion.[1]
The RAF Fauld explosion was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
Whilst much of the storage facility was annihilated by the explosion, the site itself continued to be used by the RAF for munition storage until 1966, when No. 21 Maintenance Unit (21 MU) was disbanded.[1] After France pulled out of NATO the site was used by the US Army, between 1967 to 1973, to store US ammunition previously stored in France.[1]
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[edit] Casualties
At the time, there was no careful tally of the number of workers at the facility. So whilst the exact death toll is uncertain, it appears that about 75 people died in the explosion:
- 23 workers at the site - divided between RAF personnel and some Italian prisoners of war who were working there.
- 41 people from a nearby plaster mill.
- perhaps a dozen farm workers who had been working nearby.
[edit] Cause
The cause of the disaster was not made clear at the time. In 1974, it was officially announced that the cause was probably a worker at the site who was working on removing the detonator from a live bomb. There is a conspiracy theory that a German V2 rocket hit the site and caused the subsequent explosion - a fact which would have been very embarrassing in 1944 and might, therefore, have been suppressed. The site of the explosion would, however, have been well out of the range of the V2.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- "Britain's big bang" by Peter Grego, Astronomy Now, November 2004. ISSN 0951-9726
- Reed, John, (1977). "Largest Wartime Explosions: 21 Maintenance Unit, RAF Fauld, Staff. November 27, 1944", After The Battle, 18, Pp 35 - 40. ISSN 0306-154X.
- Grid Reference: SK182277
