Military bomb disposal teams faced an unusual challenge on 14 January 2026, responding to two unexploded Second World War bombs discovered in Devon and Cornwall on the same day. One 50kg bomb was unearthed at a building site in Plymouth, while a larger 250kg bomb was found floating on a dredger in Exmouth Marina.
The discovery of two such devices on the same day was reportedly unprecedented since the immediate postwar period, according to Brig Darren Fisher, who oversaw operations at the time. The 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Regiment (11EOD), based in Didcot, handled the incidents.
The Exmouth bomb was discovered by Steve Hockings-Thompson, manager of Exmouth Marina, after a dredging vessel crew called him to their boat. In Plymouth, Luke Templeton, director of S.I UXO, a private contractor, had been actively searching for bombs at the building site based on historical risk assessments.
Unexploded Second World War munitions account for approximately 2,000 of the 2,500 incidents military bomb disposal teams respond to annually in the UK. The Ministry of Defence estimates that about one in 10 of the 60,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Britain during the war failed to explode on impact.