Unexploded bombs from World War 2 in Glasgow - where are they and are they dangerous?

Hundreds of bombs and tens of thousands of incendiary devices were dropped over Glasgow during the Second World War, and with a 10% failure rate, many of these bombs still lie inactive below Glasgow, waiting to be dug up.
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During World War 2, there were more than 500 German air raids on Scotland, dropping thousands of tonnes of incendiary and explosive bombs, many of which remain unexploded and inactive across the country.

The attacks ranged from single aircraft hit-and-runs on rural towns like Campbeltown, and mass bombing of the Clydeside by 240 planes.

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During the air raids in Scotland, 2500 people died and 8000 were injured. The largest air raids in Scotland were directed against Clydebank in the spring of 1941.

Over two nights on March 13 and 14 1941, Clydebank suffered an intense attack from the Luftwaffe as they tried to destroy shipbuilding and industrial targets in the town.

Afterwards only seven of the 12,000 houses in the town were left undamaged, with 4,000 completely destroyed and a similar number severely damaged.

In total, 236 aircrafts dropped 272 tonnes of high explosive bombs and 59,400 incendiary devices.

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Many explosives dropped, for one reason or another, didn’t go off as planned (the failure rate of all explosives and aircraft projectiles used at that time were around 10 per cent) and have embedded themselves underground across the UK.

Experts estimate that around 45000 pieces of unexploded ordnance have been found since the war finished, and more are being found all the time. It’s a common enough phenomenon that it makes up the bulk of the work done by the police’s explosive ordnance disposal team in Scotland.

It’s not common for the average Glaswegian to stumble upon a piece of unexploded ordanance, and is most often found during intrusive groundworks by workers in construction and related fields.

It’s hard to know exactly where bombs could be now after eighty years of development in Glasgow, but higher risk areas include coastal and industrial areas. For construction in high-risk areas for unexploded ordnance, it’s recommended that an unexploded ordnance survey is conducted - in which the site is carefully probed to look for damages.

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Although efforts were made during and after the war to locate all unexploded ordnance, the remnants of the eighty year old war continue to impact development today.

Just last month, on September 29, 2022, an unexploded bomb closed a railway line in East Renfrewshire when Taylor Wimpey construction workers unearthed a bomb the size of a fire extinguisher.

A group of magnet fishers on Dalmarnock bridge pulled four pieces of unexploded ordnance from the River Clyde in one day in winter of 2020, which caused the bridge to be shut not once but twice in one day after the fishers pulled up another grenade after the original ordnance had been disposed of by the Royal Navy.

Members of the Glasgow magnet fishing club pulled up two grenades, a shell, and an unexploded bomb from the river.

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In February of 2020, workers from McTaggart Group were clearing a 22-acre industrial wasteland site for the Dalmarnock Riverside project in Glasgow, when they found an unexploded anti-aircraft shell which was promptly destroyed by the Royal Navy.

In July of 2020, forestry workers found an inactive explosive on a small hill near Largs - after reporting the find to the Police, they attended with Royal Navy officers to destroy the bomb in a controlled explosion so powerful that it ‘shook the ground.’

On September 30, eyewitnesses claim they saw an unexploded bomb in the water of the River Kelvin at a bridge in Kelvingrove Park, which prompted a reponse from Police and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team.

It’s not only German bombs that Scots need to worry about however, as many British bombs have washed ashore on the West Coast of Scotland in the last 30 years.

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In 1995, more than 4500 incendiary bombs from the Second World War washed up on beaches around the west coast of Scotland.

A four-year-old, Gordon Baillie, picked one up while playing in his uncle’s garden near Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre. It burnt his hand and leg, and made his clothes smoke.

At first, the Ministry of Defence insisted that the bombs had no ‘UK military origin’, and that no evidence existed that they had ever been dumped at sea.

Later, they admitted that the devices came from decayed 13.6 kilogram (or 30 pound) incendiary bombs dropped from British aircraft in the Second World War.

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The implication is that the bombs had been sent for dumping in Beaufort’s Dyke, an underwater trench 50 kilometres long, 5 kilometres wide and about 250 metres deep, which runs within 10 kilometres of the Scottish coast.

Between 1945 and 1976, the Ministry of Defence dropped about 1 million tons of munitions into and around the trench, making it by far the largest known British military dump.

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