Blast from the past; Wartime bombs are detonated.

Byline: Vicky Robson

IT WAS a scene that could have easily happened 70 years ago. The sight and sound of seven Second World War bombs exploding on the Northumberland coastline was a shocking reminder of the preparations taken to protect the region from the imminent threat of an enemy invasion.

The wartime weapons that had lain buried and undisturbed beneath the surface of the sea at Goswick Sands, near Holy Island, for the past few decades were carefully detonated in a series of controlled explosions yesterday.

The operation was carried out by a specialist Royal Air Force bomb disposal squad in front of crowds of fascinated onlookers.

The ammunition had been dropped by British fighter pilots on training missions before the D-Day Landings.

Bomb disposal squadron leader Nick Haygarth said there could be any number of reasons why they did not explode at the time, including the angle they were dropped at.

During the explosions, access to and from Holy Island via the causeway was disrupted and the area was cordoned off to the public.

Squadron leader Haygarth said: "These bombs were dropped during the Second World War when the area was used as a practice range so there will obviously be more bombs to find.

"It is exciting for a lot of people and it does attract a lot of attention.

"These were dropped by planes who had practised here before going out on bombing raids over Germany. The area was used to train the pilots how to drop the bombs on the enemy.

"When the bombs explode you get bits of fragments flying everywhere. We can only get to them when the tide is right.

"They are buried between one and 2m beneath the beach but we would still need special excavating equipment to dig down to them, you couldn''t dig them up with a shovel."

He reassured members of the public using the beach, saying: "We have had to use excavating equipment to get to these bombs so it is not something people could just stumble across.

"People walking around on the beach wouldn''t have come across these at all."

As well as ammunition dropped in training, artillery had been tactically hidden under the sea in 1939 to deter an enemy invasion, after the area was identified as a potential landing spot for German assault troops.

It was during the UK''s preparations for war that the North East coast of Northumberland, at Goswick Sands, was highlighted as an ideal target which could be readily utilised by German forces.

To deter the threat of an invasion, the beach and coastline at Goswick Sands, near Holy Island, was reinforced and protected by landmines, concrete tank traps, vehicle obstacles, pill boxes, machine gun revetments and anti-glider poles.

Between 1945 and the mid-1990s, bomb disposal experts had regularly visited Goswick Sands to carry out searches of the beach and undertake the disposal of items discovered in the area.

But in 1995, a permanent RAF bomb disposal presence was set up at Goswick.

MEMORIAL TO MOVE A WAR memorial is to be moved so that it can take centre stage in a County Durham community. Belmont Parish Council has received a donation of pounds 27,000 from the County Durham Environmental Trust to relocate the Belmont War Memorial to a newly created memorial garden on Carrville High Street. The memorial to the fallen of two world wars will be moved from its existing site in the graveyard of St Mary Magdalene Church in Belmont.

Walter Meikle, chairman of The Friends of Belmont War Memorial, said: "We felt that its current setting doesn't do justice to those that it commemorates."

CAPTION(S):

BANG Second World War bombs that had lain buried and undisturbed beneath the surface of the sea at Goswick Sands, near Holy Island, are detonated by a specialist Royal Air Force squad.