A woman had a lucky escape when she dug up an old mortar shell while gardening and casually tossed it aside after mistaking it for a rusty exhaust pipe.

Carole Fisher-White, 56, unearthed the deadly Second World War device while clearing out her sprawling garden and threw it onto a pile of rubble and garden waste.

It was only when her sons Nick, 22, and Ollie, 18, returned home from college and said the two-foot long object looked like an old bomb she realised the danger.
Her neighbour, a policeman, had a look at the shell and confirmed it was a bomb before calling the police.

Three officers arrived to inspect the device, a 29mm Spigot Mortar - also known as a Blacker Bombard - and contacted a Royal Navy bomb disposal team.

As the device was at the end of a 100-metre long garden backing onto farmland the family were told to stay away from the shell and the bomb disposal experts arrived the next morning.
Carole's home in Holton Heath, near Wareham, Dorset, is close to where a Royal Navy cordite factory was often targeted by German bombers in the Second World War.

Carole, a carer, said: 'We only moved in last March and I have been trying to clear the garden.

'I noticed this thing poking out of the ground near the shed after I had cleared some leaves. I just pulled it up and tossed it aside because I thought it was an old exhaust pipe.
Furrow: the spot where Mrs Fisher-White, discovered the bomb

Furrow: the spot where Mrs Fisher-White, discovered the bomb

'When my boys came home from college they said it looked like an old mortar shell and I couldn't believe it.

'One of them stood and looked at it and said 'it's definitely a mortar bomb, mum. I think we ought to ring the police'.

'We took a photo and took it round to my neighbour who is a policeman and he said it was an old bomb and he called the police.

'I couldn't sleep the following evening. I just kept thinking about what might have happened.

'I just thought it was a rusty old exhaust pipe. But as soon as my boys saw it they knew what it was.

'There are no houses at that end of the garden so it was perfectly safe.'

Dorset Police were contacted at around 6.45pm on Monday and photos of the device were sent to the Ministry of Defence.

A police spokesman said: 'Their bomb disposal team was unable to carry out a controlled explosion at the location as they cannot detonate explosives at night.

'The shell was secured overnight in the garden and all necessary steps taken to make sure the occupants were safe.

'The garden is around 100 metres from the house and surrounded by fields. Residents in the local area were made aware and no further police action was required.

'The MoD then organised for a petty officer from the Navy to collect the shell and take it away after it was deemed not to be dangerous.'

The shell was safely destroyed.

The 29mm Spigot Mortar device was an infantry anti-tank weapon devised by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Blacker in the early years of the Second World War.

They were to be used by Dad's Army-style Home Guard units in the event of a German invasion.

Although there were doubts about the effectiveness of the 29mm Spigot Mortar many were issued, although few saw combat.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276076/Mother-digs-unexploded-WWII-bomb-garden-casually-flings-rubbish-thinking-exhaust-pipe.html#axzz2JxrAM02m

No danger in that...