I was going through some old photographs looking for a particular one of a friend/colleague in order to surprise him at his Golden Wedding Celebrations when I came across this one.
It was taken in 1953/54 at RAF Hornchurch in Essex. I was in the RAF at the time and serving on a Bomb Disposal Unit (that was literally disposing of bombs.) I was 23/24 at the time and totally sure of my own immortality had no conception of being turned into instant heat by the work that I was doing.
In the photo:
1) Yours truly at work in the "Pit" standing on a live 1000lb H(igh) E(xplosive) bomb.
2) Using an electrically driven 'trepanner' to cut a four and a half inch hole in the casing of the bomb.
3) Steam at 350 pounds per square inch being blasted into the body of a previously trepanned 1000 pounder to melt the explosive and
4) Comp B2 TNT lumps of HE from the previous steaming of another 1000 pounder which are due to be moved by the common or garden(!) wheel barrow in the background and to have a match applied to them (truly, literally) to burn them.
5) and 6) These are German, what were called "Land Mines" during the Blitz. (they weighed about 1000 kg) and were known as H(igh) C(apacity) bombs (thin cased, lots of explosive) They came down by parachute and were exploded in the air to give the maximum blast effect. These two were recovered UXB's U(n) X(exploded) B(ombs) and made safe by our Unit earlier. I steamed them out.
7) In true Blue Peter style: Two 1000 pounders that I prepared earlier. The trepanned hole can be seen in the lower of the two bombs.
8) Difficult to make out but if you follow the lines carefully you will appreciate that it is quite a large bomb when you compare it with the 1000lb bombs. It is in fact the largest bomb that the Germans used during WW2. It was code-named 'Herman' after a well known Luftwaffe boss at that time. It was listed at 2500kg but I think it was a bit heavier. The heaviest RAF bomb was the 22000lb Grand Slam (ten tons. near enough 10000kg) and I steamed one of those out in this pit, It took 7 days and nights continous steaming to empty it.
9) Pigeons Milk ??? Every Engineer and turner will know what I am on about but for the uninitiated it is a lubricant for metal cutting machinery.
I, together with the rest of the people that I worked with at that time were no different from anybody else. We were well trained . We obeyed the rules. We were enabled to, legally, disobey(?) any order that would put our fingers in danger. It was never life or death. I was as happy as a pig in **** .

How to finish???

Ho hum!