Record Details

Summary

The site of a former RAF maintenance unit, located within the disused portions of the gypsum mines at Fauld. The mines were requisitioned by the RAF in 1937 for the storage of bombs and ammunition and Maintenance Unit 21 at Fauld was the site of the largest non-nuclear detonation of the Second World War when it accidently blew up leaving a massive crater (see PRN 50422) and killing 81 people.

Monument Type(s):

• BOMB STORE (Mid 20th Century - 1937 AD to 1937 AD)

Full description

Since 1937, with the prospect of war in Europe looming, the RAF requisitioned disused underground sections of the gypsum mines of Peter Ford and Sons at Fauld (PRN 50420) as a storage dump for bombs and ammunition. Commercial working continued underground to the southwest of the RAF dump. Originally the Air Ministry's intention was to store some ten thousand tons of high explosive bombs, but a 'new area' was added in 1941-42. The high explosive bombs were stored in underground galleries ninety to a hundred feet below the surface and transported by light railway to and from the mainline siding at Scropton, from whence they were delivered to airfields in Lincolnshire and East Anglia.
On Monday, 27 November, 1944, at ten minutes past eleven in the morning, a large section of assorted explosives stored underground at RAF Maintenance Unit No. 21 at Fauld, blew up (see PRN 50422). Excluding the nuclear explosives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the largest single detonation of the Second World War. Buildings within a radius of ten miles suffered varying degrees of damage (see PRNs 50423-4 and 02142) and eighty-one lives were lost.
The RAF station, used by the US Air Force until 1962, it today in a state of near-dereliction. (JM, 29/4/03) <1>

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