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Fauld

The worst disaster was at Fauld in Staffordshire. A gypsum quarry had been converted to an underground ammunition depot and stocked to over-capacity in preparation for the D-day landings.

At thirteen minutes past eleven on Monday 27 November 1944 four thousand tons of bombs stored underground detonated en masse. The blast took two farms and much of the nearby village of Hanbury with it; seventy men and women lost their lives.

The explosion, which earned the dubious and lasting distinction of being the largest and most devastating on the British mainland, left a crater three quarters of a mile long and half a mile wide.

Aerial view of the crater left by the explosion

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