Experts at the Royal Navy have discovered 61 explosives at the nudist Leysdown beach on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, some of them dating back to the 19th century.
The experts were called in after 26 bombs washed up on the beach, which included two submarine depth charges and at least six 10lb mortars, and the explosives in the sea near the shore were detonated by the elite team of bomb disposal officers.
“It is quite a find. A lot of shooting and plane exercises happened around Leysdown. Sometimes the shells wouldn’t go off when dropped from a plane or shot from a rifle,” the Mirror quoted North Kent coastguard manager Colin Ingram as saying.
“They were cushioned by the mud and did not explode,” he stated.
A sunken Second World War wreck, the SS Richard Montgomery, lies two miles off the coast and is packed with 1,400 tonnes of explosives, but the bombs on the beach are not thought to have come from the stricken US vessel which went down in 1944, as there is an exclusion zone around the ship.