A 1,500lbs (680kg) high explosive WWll mine was brought to the surface by a dredger six miles north of Sheerness. Before carrying out a controlled explosion a four-man Navy team from Southern Diving Unit 2 in Portsmouth had to carefully remove the device from the vessel's dredge head. Chief Petty Officer Ian 'Scouse' Fleming, who led the team, worked for seven hours through the night in atrocious conditions to safely extract the mine and hoist it onto the dredger's upper deck. He said: "I had to crawl along a pipe to reach the mine to attach chains.