Recycled Wartime Bomb 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is a tale told to me repeatedly through the years by my father of my father managed to blow himself up and loose three of his friends in a home made bomb experiment circa the 1940's period.
The location was the suburb of Parkstone near Poole in Dorset.
Now during this time the Luftwaffe was dropping potential bomb making material all over the area due to the strategic nature of the vacinity being a large port and natural harbour.
A lot of these bombs didn't go off but the fall usually caused them to split open allowing access to the AMATOL explosive inside. It has a consistancy of Parafin Wax and actually can be used as firelighters being non-explosive unless confined.
Well there was a lot of these broken bombs to be found around the waste ground and heathland that surounded the area at that time.
Needless to say to a groups of 14 year old boys these things are like a magnet!!
Well my father and his friends collected a fair quanity of AMATOL and made serveral small homemade bomblets before confident in their aquired expertise, built a bomb in a biscuit/cookie tin (about 8 Inches across by 4 Inches deep).
The divice was taken to waste ground and the fuse lit. After nothing happened my father and his three friends went to investigate. The fuse had fell off so they lifted the lid and one of them (my father never says who) threw a lighted match into the explosive detonating it. My father was the only survivour and suffered flash burns to the face and hands. He managed to stagger, still smoking half a mile from memory, as the blast had welded his eyelids shut) to a nearby aunt's house where he knocked on the door. His aunt fainted immediately on seeing my father still smoldering stood in the doorway.
My father spent over a year in hospital and became one of the youngest patients to receive minor plastic surgury at that time. He was lucky as flash burns seldom scar and the younger the burns victim the less the scaring potential apparently.
His friends never survived the experience though.
On the Explosive Expert Gene thing I to experimented with explosives as a teenager but we had to make our own in after school chemistry. The big difference is that I used remote electrical detonation and always stuck to very small "pops" plus safety equipment and eventually became interested in artillery sized ballisitics. It's best to learn from the mistakes of others!!
My father is alive today and did manage to pass on his Explosive Expert Gene to a second generation but with a Common Sense Gene attached firmly!!
Submitted on 02/19/02
Submitted by:
Andy Reid.
Reference:
My father's medical records!!
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