The war years would have been left embedded deep inside Sahu’s memory if it were not for the unexpected discovery of an undetonated bomb that was found in Bhulanpur village on June 22, a stone’s throw away from his home, by the banks of the Subarnarekha River.
The undetonated bomb was discovered by happenstance, says Shibsankar Senapati, a resident of the nearby Panch Kahania village who has been keenly observing the developments since. “A few workers were using JCB excavators to level an agricultural field when they found the bomb. They took photographs of it and news spread,” he says.
Crowds from neighbouring villages began to gather and the nearest police station, in Gopiballavpur, was informed. “We approached the IAF (Indian Air Force) for help as the CID (Crime Investigation Department) said it seemed to be a weapons-grade munition,” Arijit Sinha, Superintendent of Police, Jhargram, had told The Indian Express.
For public safety, the local police began evacuating residents in a 1-km radius of the site where the bomb had been found. “Security is necessary to prevent locals from playing with the bombs, because usually villagers try to break open the bomb and steal precious metals like brass, which leads to casualties. The police prevented people from touching the bomb out of curiosity,” a source familiar with the operation tells indianexpress.com on the condition of anonymity.
“This bomb was found some 2 feet under the ground. It took 84 labourers to help with clearing the area and securing the space,” says Senapati. Sand from the riverbed was brought in sacks to form a safety perimeter around the bomb, to absorb shock waves and shrapnel.
It would take the Indian Air Force one more week to reach Bhulanpur village to begin its own inspection, due to a combination of heavy rain and administrative clearances.
Since the bomb had been found in a civilian area, the district magistrate sent requests for approval to the home department, which among other roles, also provides administrative sanctions. By July 2, the Indian Air Force received clearance to detonate the bomb and by July 5, the procedure was undertaken with no damage.
The undetonated bomb was 250 kg of a military-grade explosive, making it clear very early on that the police would not possess the capabilities to handle the munition, requiring local administrative authorities to make a request to the Indian Air Force to step in to assist.
Allied forces in Gangetic Bengal
Although some eight decades have passed, sitting on his porch in his Jhargram home, Sahu still remembers his first brush with British soldiers stationed in Bengal during the Second World War. That day, as he worked in the fields, he watched a British aeroplane fly in the sky above, only to suddenly dive and crash by the banks of the Subarnarekha river. “I ran to the plane and tried to see what had happened. The villagers then rescued the pilot and took him away from the site of the crash to recover,” says Sahu.
The next morning, British army officials arrived and took the pilot away, along with Sahu and other villagers for questioning. “The British spoke to us but I did not understand their language,” he says.
Over the next few days, the military aeroplane that had crashed near Sahu’s village was dismantled and taken away by the British army. Unable to remove the heavy bombs, the soldiers buried the bombs underground and left, says Sahu. As the years passed, the undetonated bombs got further pushed underground till they were forgotten over the years from the village’s collective memory.
Bombs have intermittently been found over the years in the region that is now southern West Bengal. In 2018, two separate bombs from the Second World War were found—one in Kolkata and the other in Kalyani, some 100 km from the state capital.
“The bomb was extremely corroded, and there were no markings. But the parts of the bomb could be identified. Once we correlated these, we assumed that it was a specific bomb that had that same vintage. We know it was a 450-pound bomb,” says a military expert interviewed for this report.
In the absence of markings, the military expert said the discovered bomb was most likely a 500-pound AN M-64 General Purpose (GP) high explosive aerial bomb. According to the archives of the Australian War Memorial, these bombs were manufactured in the US for both army and navy use and were used extensively by all allied forces during the Second World war.
Bengal and the China-Burma-India Theater
The reason why bombs from the Second World War continue to be discovered in southern West Bengal has to do with the China-Burma-India Theater, a military classification adopted by the United States military during the Second World War for combat operations that occurred in China, Burma and British India between 1941 and 1945.
The allied forces set up several military bases across what is now West Bengal. “When the allied forces came to Kolkata, they were spread across southern West Bengal,” says Manas Dutta, an assistant professor at Aliah University’s department of history, whose area of research covers issues related to war and conflict in South Asia.
Several former military bases exist in West Bengal today. While some of them have been converted to bases used by the Indian armed forces, some others have remained abandoned since 1947.
It is difficult to ascertain details about the bomb, particularly when focusing on specific geographic areas, because a significant amount of military history pertaining to the subcontinent is still classified, says Dutta.
Some 45 km from Bhulanpur village is the Dudhkundi Airfield in Jhargram district, presently abandoned. Before the Second World War, the area was the property of the Malla Deb royal family of Jhargram, which offered it to the allied forces during the war years. It is likely that the bomb found in Bhulanpur in June and the aeroplane that 108-year-old Sahu witnessed crashing all those years ago may have originated at the nearest military airbase, which was the Dudhkundi Airfield.
During the Second World War, the airfield hosted the United States Army Air Force 444th Bombardment Group and was built in 1942. Dudhkundi was originally designed for the use of a B-24 Liberator, an American heavy bomber aircraft capable of carrying the largest payload of air-to-ground weaponry, usually bombs. In 1943, Dudhkundi was designated as a B-29 Superfortress base, an American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, for the planned deployment of the United States Army Air Forces XX Bomber Command to India during the Second World War.
Dudhkundi, like the many other airfields found in and around West Bengal today, was a part of what was called the “airfield construction programme” of the allied forces in this part of the theatre during the Second World War. In his book The War Against Japan: The Decisive Battles, Stanley Woodburn Kirby writes that in the Calcutta area, “There were 12 all-weather airfields capable of operating very heavy bombers; they were used mainly by the Strategic Air Force and the fighter squadrons allotted for the defence of the city and the surrounding industrial area. A group of five all-weather airfields was under construction near Kharagpur, some 65 miles west of Calcutta, as the main base for the American very long-range bombers which were to operate from advanced bases in China against Japan.”
That the bomb found in Bhulanpur this year may have originated in the Dudhkundi Airfield that belonged to allied forces is only speculation, gathered through oral histories of surviving villagers who still remember the war years. “Some bombs from the Second World War that were found in the past in Purulia, Malda, Balurghat, Dinajpur, Panagarh, Asansol are Japanese bombs. That is confirmed. However, it is also possible that the one that was found (in June) may have belonged to the allied forces that were conducting drills in that area,” says Dutta.
“It is not unusual that a bomb was left behind, because the aeroplane equipment would be more valuable. During the war, bombs were being made in large quantities. So a few being left behind would not be a loss,” says the military expert.
While it has been difficult to identify the specifics of the crashed aeroplane all those years ago, Sahu’s story is not implausible, the military expert says. “Bombs can be dislodged from the plane and fall onto the ground after making an impact, and the plane can skid for 500 m beyond that point,” the expert explains.
Instead of being a site of active bombing, it is likely that the bombs that fell and were found so many years later in Jhargram may have been a part of military drills conducted during the Second World War from the Dudhkundi Airfield.
“Aircraft drills would also involve the carrying of the load of an unarmed bomb. There are several safety mechanisms in place that have to be dislodged before which a bomb explodes. If these mechanisms don’t fail, the bomb doesn’t explode,” says the military expert.
There are a few reasons why the bombs from the Second World War continue to be found intact. “The outside temperatures and pressures aren’t changing much. So if it is stable, it will not explode. But after it was excavated, there was concern that the bomb may be triggered due to a change in temperature and environmental conditions,” the expert says.
The discovery of the bomb in his village has unexpectedly triggered memories of the war years for Sahu. Not all of them are what he would like to remember at this age.