Qualla: RAF Fauld Explosion

RAF Fauld Explosion: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 3.0. At 11:11 on the morning of 27 November 1944, the Staffordshire countryside heaved. An underground munitions depot at RAF Fauld, built within disused gypsum mine workings, detonated with a force that was felt miles away. Between 3,500 and 4,000 tonnes of high explosive bombs went off simultaneously, blasting a crater 100 feet deep and over 1,000 feet across. It was the largest non-nuclear explosion in British history, and one of the largest accidental explosions anywhere on earth. Roughly seventy people died. The blast obliterated farms, destroyed a reservoir dam, and buried entire buildings under displaced earth. And then wartime censorship ensured that almost no one heard about it.

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Image: Andy Mabbett | CC BY-SA 3.0

RAF Fauld Explosion: The Bomb Store

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer, Public domain. No. 21 Maintenance Unit RAF had repurposed abandoned gypsum mine tunnels near the village of Hanbury as a bomb storage facility. The underground network housed a staggering arsenal: thousands of tonnes of high explosive bombs alongside up to 500 million rounds of small arms ammun...

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Image: Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer | Public domain

RAF Fauld Explosion: The Crater and the Flood

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer, Public domain. The blast annihilated everything nearby. Upper Castle Hayes Farm simply ceased to exist. The Peter Ford and Sons lime and gypsum works north of Hanbury was obliterated. Purse Cottages vanished. The explosion also destroyed a reservoir dam, sending floodwater cascading across the ...

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Image: Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer | Public domain

RAF Fauld Explosion: A Crater That Endures

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer, Public domain. The explosion left a scar on the Staffordshire landscape that remains visible today. The crater, roughly a thousand feet across, is still there, filled with vegetation but unmistakable from the air and on foot. Despite the devastation, the RAF continued to use the surviving porti...

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Image: Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer | Public domain

RAF Fauld Explosion: Remembered at Last

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer, Public domain. For forty-six years after the explosion, there was no memorial. In 1990, a campaign to commemorate the dead finally succeeded. The memorial stone was donated by the Italian government, in recognition of the Italian prisoners of war who died, and flown to England on an RAF aircraf...

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Image: Daventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer | Public domain