Big Bang at Lee-on-the-Solent

[ColinHuggins]

It's hardly epic news even tho local media have highlighted the plight of families being evicted from their homes while WWII pipe bombs are dug up from the HMS Daedulus airstrip.

What will impinge on mariners is the 400 metre exclusion zone to be established around the slipway at Lee-on-the-Solent throughout the weekday operation which lasts until November 6. You could plot the limits 01 12.3W to 01 13.4W, while those with RYA Advanced PWC Certificates will presumably have no probs riding jet skis with gps in one hand and radio in the other.

Radio? There'll be reminders from Solent Coastguard too, so please don't go clogging the airwaves with Radio Checks as usual.

Missed all that? Just look out for the police launch then.

 

[Rabbie]

Pipe-mines!. That takes me back to my BD days 40 years ago. Those things are BAD!. With passage of time and deterioration there will be pure nitro lying at the bases. Only way to deal with them is to blow in situ. Hence the racket.

 

[ColinHuggins]

Gosh, there's a danger of any boaters running close inshore getting a kick in the groyne then!!

 

[DJE]

I seem to remember them doing this at Eastleigh airport a few years ago. I thought they steamed out the explosive there.

 

[RichardTaylor]

They have not gone bang in over 60 years so leave them there. Or does SEEDA want to build another 1000+ homes on the site?

Writing as one whose home has to be evacuated for this fiasco, I suspect the later

 

[Rabbie]

When I was 'disposing' of a few hundred which were laid at the old Lympne Airfield near Folkestone in the 60s, we were experimenting with steaming etc when one went off and took one of my mates with it. After that, we decided that the nitro was far too unstable to do other than uncover the pipe, lay a small charge and BOOM !. They are much more unstable now, so expect lots of bangs.