The RAF Fauld explosion was a military accident which occurred at 11:11am on Monday, 27 November 1944 at the RAF Fauld underground munitions storage depot. The RAF Fauld explosion was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history and the largest to occur on UK soil. Read more
On the 27th of November, 1944, 4,000 tonnes of bombs stored at an underground ammunition depot in a former gypsum mine at Fauld, Staffordshire, were detonated. The blast destroyed two farms and destroyed a large part of the nearby village of Hanbury and 70 men and women lost their lives. The blast was so powerful that measuring equipment in Geneva and Rome actually recorded it as an earthquake. It created a mushroom cloud stretching between 2,000 and 3,000 feet high. Fauld during World War Two, was the UKs biggest bomb store, and subsequently, the site of its biggest ever explosion.