The Fauld Explosion

The tiny village of Hanbury in the peaceful countryside of Staffordshire U.K, seems an unlikely place to have witnessed the largest wartime explosion ever to have taken place in mainland europe, only the two atomic bomb explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were larger.

During the second world war safe places for the storage of large quantities of bombs would have been at their minimum, Hanbury had been selected due to a Gypsum mine being located here deep underground and safe from any stray German bombers.

It is not known for certain who or what triggered an explosion which occurred just after 11am on the 27th of November 1944, it is suggested that an ex Italian prisoner of war of which many were working at this bomb storage facility at R.A.F. Fauld may have accidently triggered a bomb to go off, the workers were not very well supervised and it is thought one of them may have caused a spark when using a metallic tool which were prohibited for obvious reasons.

Some witnesses claim to have heard a small explosion first which suggests one bomb blew up which then caused a chain reaction detonating somewhere between 3,500-4,000 tons of bombs, the blast from this incredible amount of high explosives trapped in an enclosed space created a massive crater three quarters of a mile long, by a quarter of a mile in width and three hundred feet deep. The blast was so great that it removed one million tons of earth and the flash from the blast was seen one hundred miles away by a pilot. The shockwave measured 4.3 on the Richter scale and was detected in mainland Europe. Having taken place in war time the news would have been suppressed for morale reasons and also to stop the Germans capitalising on the unfortunate event.

Many deaths were caused by a reservoir being destroyed causing a tidal wave which destroyed a plaster board factory, this event alone killed 31 people, a farm which was sited above the Gypsum mine was never seen again along with the family and workers who would not have known what hit them, presumably they would have been vapourised from the intensity of the explosion. The Cock Inn public house in the village of Hanbury along with many houses in the village were destroyed, in the aftermath of the event a cow was found still standing upright, although dead it had been inflated like a balloon due to the pressure wave from the explosion.

These days peace once more has come to this quiet village of Hanbury and it seems to want to forget about this tragic event which took place all those years ago, no signposts can be found which would lead a curious person wishing to view the crater where one of the largest explosions ever to have taken place can be found. I myself had to ask for directions before I was able to locate it, and when I was able to visit it I could detect an atmosphere at this spot where 70 peoples lives came to an abrupt end in this terrible accident.

Although trees are now growing in the crater, a person can still get some idea of the size of the explosion from the hole 300ft deep. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

Even today the crater is fenced off due to the possibility of unexploded bombs being present. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

The path that follows the perimeter fence leads to a memorial to the people who lost there lives here. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

An information board can be found close to the memorial stone. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

Another view of the Fauld crater. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

The Cock Inn which was destroyed, and rebuilt after the explosion. Photo by Gary Tacagni.