Butterfly Peril

The War was over before my birth but I remember strange, derelict areas my mother called 'bomb sites'. The strongest warning she gave was 'never pick anything up, especially a butterfly bomb (shown picture from local paper)
This remained a mythical object until the 60's when a friend made the papers by taking a butterfly bomb he had found to the Police station on the back of his motorbike.

Many years later, I learned from a history program on German weapons development, that the butterfly bomb (aeriel anti-personnel mine)was supposed to defeat civilian morale. It was dropped on Grimsby in a 20 minute raid but the Germans regarded it as a failure and never used it again.
Another unique entry in Grimsby's history!

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