Hitler’s warhead found

131209 An elderly Adolf Hitler, left, as he might have looked had he survived, and a wax figure of him at the Madame Tussauds Berlin Wax Museum.

131209 An elderly Adolf Hitler, left, as he might have looked had he survived, and a wax figure of him at the Madame Tussauds Berlin Wax Museum.

Published Mar 30, 2012

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London - They killed thousands in the final months of the Second World War, fired from occupied Europe at London and the south-east.

But at least one of Hitler’s V2 rockets missed its target...and is still lying unexploded in the mud off the coast of East Anglia.

For 68 years the missile’s existence has been part of local folklore. It has lain undisturbed and approached only by the occasional sailor using the 2ft of metal which protruded from the mudflats at low tide to moor their boats.

Only now has it been decided that the rocket, one of nearly 1,500 fired at Britain, should be made safe. Six Royal Navy bomb disposal experts are working urgently to make sure the rusting weapon’s one-ton warhead won’t detonate.

It is the first time that a V2 has been found in such good condition in the UK.

The 46ft-long missile is thought to have been fired at the port of Harwich in Essex, in October 1944. But instead of hitting its target, it plopped nose down into mud about 600ft off the shore, leaving only 2ft of its tail visible at low tide. The Navy was called in when the V2 was mentioned at a meeting of harbour users on Tuesday and local police decided something had to be done.

Lieutenant Dan Herridge, the commander of the Navy’s Southern Diving Unit 2, based in Portsmouth, said his team can only work for about a two hours at low tide. So far a few more feet of the rocket have been exposed.

They are due to be joined by experts from 33 Regiment Royal Engineers who are expected to use dredging equipment to excavate all the mud from around the rocket. If it is still thought to be volatile, the team will carry out a controlled explosion further out to sea. Lieutenant Herridge, 30, said: “I don’t think a V2 has been discovered since the end of the Second World War, certainly not in such good condition. It’s a very unusual beast.”

A Royal Navy spokesman said: “At first we were sceptical that it was a V2 because these missiles came down at three times the speed of sound and normally there’s nothing left of them.”

Great grandfather Reuben Day, 82, claims he was working as a teenage fisherman when he witnessed the missile falling. He said he was picking up some fish when he heard a “terrific explosion” overhead.

He said: “I have always maintained that it was just the propellant that must have exploded. If it had been the warhead, there would have been nothing left.” - Daily Mail

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