Hitler's Buried Bombs Threaten Cleanup of London Olympics Site
One man may delay preparations for the 2012 London Olympics: Adolf Hitler.
Construction crews are scouring the 500-acre Olympics site for bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe during World War II that failed to explode, adding time and expense to a project whose costs have already more than tripled to 9.3 billion pounds ($19 billion).
Of the 19,000 tons of bombs that pounded London during the Blitz in 1940-41, about 10 percent didn't explode and remain buried around the city, according to the Imperial War Museum. A 500-pound bomb packed with explosives led to the evacuation of an east London neighborhood in May.
"They were aiming for docks, and a lot of them missed, so they're all over the place,'' said Richard Pawlyn, managing director of Landmark Information Group, which developed a bomb site database using maps and government records.
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Construction crews are scouring the 500-acre Olympics site for bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe during World War II that failed to explode, adding time and expense to a project whose costs have already more than tripled to 9.3 billion pounds ($19 billion).
Of the 19,000 tons of bombs that pounded London during the Blitz in 1940-41, about 10 percent didn't explode and remain buried around the city, according to the Imperial War Museum. A 500-pound bomb packed with explosives led to the evacuation of an east London neighborhood in May.
"They were aiming for docks, and a lot of them missed, so they're all over the place,'' said Richard Pawlyn, managing director of Landmark Information Group, which developed a bomb site database using maps and government records.