ST. PAUL’S SAVED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 246, 16 September 1940, Page 7

ST. PAUL’S SAVED.

TIME BOMB REMOVED. MAGNmCENT HEROISM. A stirring account of the manner in which St. Paul’s Cathedral, the architectural masterpiece of Christopher Wren in London, and the seventh largest church in Christendom, has been saved from destruction by a German time bomb by the heroism of British soldiers and civilians was given in the Daventry broadcast to-day. Three days before, said the commentator, a bomb fell close to the west end of St. Paul’s. Immediately the bomb disposal section of the Engineers began to dig it out. They found that a gaspipe had been hit, and three Engineers were gassed. Then the gas ignited, and employees of the Gas Company assisted in extinguishing the blaze. All the time the men were fighting the flames they had no idea how near they were to the bomb. They dug and dug—for twenty-seven and a-half feet before they found the |j om b—and in the words of the commentator, it was the father and mother of all bombs —a king bomb! It was eight feet long and weighed about a ton. Fitted with fuses that made it a deadly danger to touch, it had also become polished by its passage through the air and into the ground. But it had to be handled, because the whole of St. Paul’s would otkerI wise have been shattered. So a special tackle was fitted by the Engineers and the services of two motor-lorries were requisitioned to carefully haul tho. object from, the hole. At any moment it might have exploded, so all the streets in the j vicinity of St. Paul’s to Hackney I Marshes were cleared. The bomb was | loaded on to a truck which was driven ! by Lieutenant Davies as fast as posI B ihie to Hackney Marshes, where the bomb was blown .ut. The crater caused by the explosion was 100 ft. across. Had it exploded in St. Paul’s, the cathedral would have been ruined. “I think Lieutenant Davies and his men deserve the thanks of all Christendom,” added the commentator.