Airfield Pipe Mines

For those that may be interested, have a look here at the second document:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/foi-r...ncing-5-january-2015

That's really interesting to see. Will have a browse later thank you.

I remember when the police and MOD sent Stubbington and Lee On The Solent into lockdown between 9am-5pm every Monday for a few weeks to remove the mines found during construction work at HMS Daedalus.
The traffic became a nightmare as there was an exedous to beat the lockdown those days.

Interesting document. At St Eval we (RAF Bomb Disposal) found a number of empty 'pipes' beneath runways. It was not part of our remit and we were looking to take the runway lighting cable into safe custody:wink:

Also, at Weston Zoyland (1966) we found similar pipes some of which appeared to be 'charged'. AM were informed and, in due course and 'expert' arrived and pronounced that they were cable ducts. Since we were in the process of liberating the lighting cable we knew darned well from knowledge gained on that and previous projects that they were not to do with runway lighting. As far as I know there was no further action.

Blasting gelatine was used in many pipe mines and as it ages exudes sensitive oils increasing the risk if recovery is attempted. Removal of a complete pipe from under a runway slab would be, I think, by using a contact vibrator to loosen adhesion along the tube length and mechanical withdrawal using a tracked vehicle.

David J. Smith's book 'Britain's Military Airfields' tell us that apparently altogether about twenty airfields were 'sown' with pipe mines, including Hurn, Roborough, Exeter & Westhampnett. In August, 1944, it was instructed to remove the explosive charges from all said mines, but with the shortage of skilled personnel, some were overlooked including Shoreham, as they discovered when the runway was extended some years ago - !

A UXO report for a solar farm at Woodbridge, may be of interest.   publicaccessdocuments.eastsuffolk.gov.uk...licDocs/01555838.pdf

I get a 404 error

try this , it should work although you will have to go to page 2 of the view associated documents link/list. publicaccess.eastsuffolk.gov.uk/online-a...tOawdm-WL5JkApD6GKfs