TERRIBLE EXPLOSION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 3, 1 December 1944, Page 4

TERRIBLE EXPLOSION

The explosion of bombs in an R.A.E. maintenance depot within a few miles of Burton-on-Trent appears to be one of those incidents . in war against which even the strictest precautions cannot adequately safeguaild human life and property. Probably the cause will never be known • and can only be conjectured. German propaganda has been quick to ascribe it to a V2 weapon, but that has no basis of support. Even if it had security would not release, the information at this stage. *The depot contained a vast number of bombs—4ooo tons, according to an official statement. The damage done is almost incredible. In Coventry, 30 miles away, places swayed from the explosion. In the immediate vicinity of the dump the land has been converted into a desert. Farms, homes, and buildings have disappeared. Great craters have replaced farm lands and the sheep and cattle that grazed them lie dead. Life has disappeared from the area and with it people who lived and worked there. That makes the task of compiling the death roll one of extreme difficulty. There have been other explosions during this war, in munition factories and in other places. In the north an ammunition train blew up and devastated a large area, but there has been nothing to equal the. Burton-on-Trent tragedy. Its impressiveness has been heightened by a wall of gas preventing rescue operations in the storage galleries where men were working at the time of the disaster. Such tragedies bring home the nearness of war to civilians.