MoD gives up on lost warheads
The Ministry of Defence has given up searching for 20 live missile warheads which fell off a ship in the Bristol Channel, junior defence minister Lewis Moonie disclosed yesterday.
The decision was condemned as "ridiculous and irresponsible" by Ian Liddell-Grainger, Conservative MP for Bridgewater - a former territorial army major in the Royal Fusiliers.
The missiles - 20 British-made SwingFire warheads - are capable of penetrating tank armour at a distance of 2.5 miles and are widely used in the Middle East, notably by the Egyptian army. They are very versatile and can be fitted to any vehicle from military carriers to backs of lorries.
Mr Liddell-Grainger said yesterday: "Given the number of vulnerable targets in the Bristol Channel, including oil refineries, and the large number of ships using the channel as well as the danger to the public if the pallet was washed up on a beach, it seems to me both a ridiculous and irresponsible decision. The ministry has obviously only made a cursory attempt to find them."
According to a letter from the minister, a team of six Royal Navy divers spent four days looking for the warheads which were lost with eight mines, eight plastic explosive charges and detonating cords and boosters.
The report says that divers concentrated on the area around St Thomas Head, where the pallet was lost using metal detectors. They recovered two tonnes of scrap and eight other unexploded bombs.
The report says: "The search concluded that the missing pallet is no longer within the area of the range that was searched. Surveying and clearance conditions throughout the range are particularly difficult sue to the extensive areas of very soft mud and sand, rocky outcrops, heavily covered areas of seaweed patches and the tidal streams."
Mr Moonie says that the ministry has produced a classified report on the loss of the warheads which it will not publish.
He adds: "The presence on the range of so much scrap metal and shrapnel would make further clearance operations difficult, protracted and expensive. There are no current plans for the diving group to return to Weston-Super-Mare in the foreseeable future."
Mr Liddell-Grainger has written to Mr Moonie insisting that the report should be made public - or at least that he should have access to it as a local MP.