Original subtitles

Up and down the country,

..on ordinary streets..

It's an improvised explosive device.

..people are making deadly bombs and explosives.

The Army's 11 EOD & Search Regiment,

better known as the bomb squad,

is called out more than 2,000 times a year.

For the first time in the UK, we're allowed to go with them...

You are always worried.

You never know what you're going to come across next.

..as they investigate Britain's hidden bomb factories...

There's no limit to an IED.

It's only down to the bomb maker's imagination.

..and take deadly explosives off our streets.

It was almost like the ammunition that Rambo would take into war.

We'll follow the people inside the bomb suits.

There is that balance between adrenaline and fear.

You train to handle it.

Good to go over here.

..and with revolutionary 360-degree cameras...

..get closer to the action than ever before...

It's exciting. It is quite addictive, really.

That's why I love it.

.as we find out what it takes to keep Britain safe.

This time, in Liverpool,

are these devices home-made bombs?

I've had similar shaped items, like that,

that have been home-made by criminal gangs.

The battle over the bomb in the bedroom...

He doesn't want you taking it. Doesn't want us taking it?

No. Well, I'm gonna take it.

..and in the seaside resort of Llandudno...

Can I get you back about another 15 metres?

..there's a deadly discovery.

Violence from organised crime kills more people than terrorism,

war and natural disasters combined,

making it the UK's biggest threat to national security.

The bomb squad are often called out to investigate illegal weaponry

used in gang warfare.

What's actually gone on?

There's been a shooting believed to be gang related.

The police have raided the victim's home.

The guy was shot yesterday.

They made entry into his house today.

They've completed the search by the sounds of it.

Searched the property.

But they've found loads of weapons,

knives, and what they think is two modified fireworks.

Industrial fireworks are used by criminal gangs for building bombs.

Chester Troop's Podders must investigate.

The police sent through a photo.

For now, that's all he has to go on.

If they have been modified in any way,

then obviously it's an improvised explosive device,

not just a firework, so then we'd have to, obviously, act accordingly

and deal with them appropriately,

depending on what's going on and how they've made them.

There is some possibility with gang crime related stuff

that there's more of an intent.

Sergeant David Podmore, known as Podders,

has completed two tours of duty of Afghanistan and one in Iraq,

where his job was to make improvised explosive devices safe.

In Chester, we do get quite a lot

along the criminal gang related incidences.

We do quite a lot of crank work as well.

Basically, someone who's just got an interest in building bombs,

that they may watch and videos on YouTube, for example,

and see if they can make something explosive.

The police have cordoned off the house.

If the devices are found to be bombs...

..all the houses within a 100-metre radius will need to be evacuated.

Public safety is our first priority.

The philosophies that we work on is preservation of life,

followed by preservation of property.

Good to go over here.

I'm literally just going to X-ray them, basically.

Photograph and X-ray.

For now, the residents of the street have been told to stay indoors.

They remain unaware of the suspected IED in their neighbour's house,

or how this potentially dangerous drama is unfolding.

It was in quite a suburban area.

A lot of houses, really tight street.

The last thing we want is a very dangerous item

to potentially cause structural damage.

I'll just go through and do some X-rays now.

The suspect devices are in the passageway

that runs down the side of the house.

If these are industrial fireworks,

Podders has never seen anything like them before.

Ideally, when we get photographs from the police,

they will put something in front of it just to give us some scale.

In this case, that didn't happen.

So from the photographs, they looked like two quite small items.

They were considerably larger.

The bigger the bomb, the bigger the explosion.

In a built-up area like this, Podders needs to act fast...

..to ensure lives aren't at risk.

The bomb squad has rapid response units all over the country

on standby 24 hours a day.

Within just ten minutes of receiving a call,

they'll be on the way to the scene.

Buckinghamshire, 1400 hours.

From Northolt Troop, Sam Jones,

along with his number two, Corporal Matt Coogan,

are on their way to a housing estate in Aylesbury.

While searching the house of someone they arrested earlier that day,

the police have made a disturbing discovery.

I've seen a picture, and it is definitely a mortar.

A potential explosive hazard inside the house.

And the remaining occupants are, basically,

hostile towards the police.

I've had a chat with the police officer on the ground.

Let's just say they're not necessarily public minded.

They're not concerned, even though they've been advised that,

"Actually, you've got a potential live explosive device

"that you've been living with routinely."

The police have stopped the search until a bomb squad

have assessed the threat.

Sergeant Sam Jones has been with Explosives and Ordnance,

the bomb squad, for ten years.

He worked on bomb disposal in Helmand province, in Afghanistan.

Do you want me to show where it is? Yeah, I'll have a quick look.

If you go upstairs, and then it's in the back bedroom

on the left-hand side.

That one? That way. Straight ahead.

This one? Oh, right, yeah.

The device was found under a bed.

Have you handled it yourself?

Yeah, quickly. Just picked it up this morning.

It was pretty clear that it was a 81mm illuminating mortar.

Illumination rounds, such as these, are fired into the sky

to light up the battlefield.

Time fuse. It would go up to a certain altitude or to burn out.

A small charge would create pressure inside it or crack it.

There'd be a candle and a parachute.

But Sam's concerned that the mortar has been modified.

Everything here is wrong.

It's basically been repainted from what it's supposed to be.

That's just...tape that someone's put round it.

The new paint job is an indicator that it contains CS gas.

Specific colours have specific connotations,

because the colour will indicate the possible threat

that this item could pose.

The bomb squad will not remove ordnance

if it's certified to be FFE - free from explosives.

But as the mortar has been tampered with,

Sam is not convinced it's safe.

We'll...take this away.

It's almost certain that it would have had explosive contamination

or explosive residue of some description.

It was in everyone's interest

that this is removed from the public domain.

I'll go and let him know, basically.

I think taking it is the most sensible way of resolving this.

How would you come about that coming in your possession?

Buy it on the internet.

Yeah, you can buy anything online now, can't you?

Sort of antique fairs. It's militaria, that's probably

what it would come under.

He doesn't want you taking it. Doesn't want us taking it?

No. Well, I'm gonna take it.

He just wants to know what power you're taking it under.

What power?

I'm not going to give him documentation

to say that this is free from explosives.

This is military ordnance. How's he got it?

He needs to tell me what that is,

because this is telling me it contains CS.

Whereas I know that that isn't... It's been re-roled unofficially.

Yeah. So this is problematic.

Anyone in legal possession of explosive devices

must be able to supply the correct paperwork.

How did he get it? He hasn't said. Literally hasn't said.

He's just said it's been in the house for years.

It's been out in the garage, mainly.

And then I think they've been clearing the garage out

in the last few months, and then they've brought it in the house.

There's other people who live here as well.

Lots of people come and go as well.

With no certification forthcoming,

the police agree the best course of action

is for Sam to take the mortar bomb away.

I'll take him with you.

If the correct paperwork is provided, it'll be returned.

Otherwise, the mortar will be safely destroyed.

Chester Troop has the largest patch of the regiment,

stretching from Lancashire to the Wirral,

taking in Greater Manchester and even North Wales.

A piece of ammunition has been discovered at a garage.

It poses an unknown threat.

From Chester Troop, Swansea and his number two, Tony,

are on their way back from another job

when they're diverted to the scene.

On our way to there, it became apparent that local police

were under a bit of pressure from the Fire Service to extend

the cordon due to the nature of where that item was.

It was in close proximity to a number of gas cylinders,

which would have meant evacuating a major retail park.

Thankfully, we were only five minutes away.

Swansea's been in the bomb squad for ten years.

He's one of the most experienced operatives in the regiment.

I've been directed straight into the garage.

I've had to identify the item relatively quickly,

which was a two-inch mortar.

The mortar had been brought in to work by one of the mechanics.

He caught it a few days earlier when magnet fishing.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

What is that? I've no idea what that is.

Magnet fishing is a growing obsession

that rivals metal detecting.

People do it not just for the value of anything they might find...

It's definitely a bullet.

..but because footage of their discoveries goes viral online.

Check that one out.

It's led to a series of dangerous discoveries across the UK.

I found it easy.

Magnet fishing is not ideal for us.

That is a magazine for the Uzi.

It's dangerous. There's no other way of saying it.

They're pulling items out of bodies of water, wherever it might be,

canals, lakes, whatever it is.

Like a hand grenade.

If you are lifting a grenade, for example, out of the water

and you pull the pin out with that magnet,

you know, there's the potential that, at some point,

this is going to lead to a fatality, really.

That is my find. I've never found a gun, there you go.

She's happy with that.

They want to keep it as like some sort of trophy they've found,

or chuck it in the boot, take it home, and then somebody else

will point out to them that you have no idea

whether that's now dangerous or not.

In Llandudno, the location of this find is causing Swansea concern.

It was surrounded by gas cylinders.

We're talking a very, very large explosion

if that was to occur in that building.

Will an X-ray of the Liverpool explosives

prove that they're home-made bombs?

Up until that point, it could literally come back with anything.

And on the beach in Llandudno,

Swansea goes it alone

as he attempts to make safe the bomb from the garage.

up to 300 times a year,

the bomb squad is called out to deal with IEDs,

or improvised explosive devices.

It's not just terrorist organisations that are attempting

to make bombs in the UK - we also have some incidences when there's

criminal gang activity involved.

We also get incidences where someone with an interest, and they just

enjoy playing around and making stuff,

and sometimes they inadvertently make something

a little bit dangerous,

probably, than what they thought they were going to make.

In Liverpool, the bomb squad has been called out to investigate

a pair of suspected home-made bombs.

Podders hopes that by X-raying the devices in situ,

he'll be able to tell how dangerous they are.

Right, I'll just go and develop these

and then I'll come back down to...

Any commercial firework that you could buy over the counter,

any form of modification to that is classed as an improvised

explosive device, which could potentially be lethal.

Podders returns to the van to see whether the X-rays he's taken

of the devices can help him determine how dangerous they are.

That one first.

A normal, typical firework, you would expect to see some sort of

firework composition, whether it be a low explosive powder, for example.

In this case, it was actually very dark and shadowed,

marble-sized balls.

So, it kind of took me by surprise a little bit.

Usually on the X-ray, any form of, like, gunpowder or firework

composition would normally show up as a sort of light scale.

Concerned the devices have been modified,

Podders sends the images back to base for further analysis.

He had a quick look at that, called me back

and said that it's perfectly fine.

The reason why the ball shapes and size appeared dark

was just by the material that they were made from.

Pretty much a similar compound to what you would find

inside these industrial fireworks.

Industrial fireworks are powerful enough to kill.

They're used by criminal gangs across Britain as explosive devices

targeted at rival gangs.

It's now up to the police to investigate

possible criminal intent.

There's still dangerous in the fact that they're quite large fireworks.

However, they've not been modified in any way

or improvised in any such manner,

and there's no need for us to take them away.

Protecting the public is the bomb squad's number one priority.

Places where crowds of people gather,

like royal weddings and sporting events,

are particular targets for terrorist attack.

The bomb squad has a dedicated search unit

that's specially trained to find hidden explosives.

CHEERING

They were on duty for the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

And today they're at Newbury Racecourse on a training exercise.

They wear civilian clothing to prevent alarming the public.

A lot of people forget that somebody has to find the device first.

Some young 19-year-old lad is actually going to look

for that bomb, to then pass it over on to the operator to make it safe.

Terrorists can place explosives or weapons at a potential

target location long before any event takes place.

Could stick it up there.

Dummy devices and guns are planted throughout the venue

for the search teams to locate.

So, inside is packed full of false plastic explosives,

and we just try and put it somewhere where it doesn't look

too out of place.

The devices are set.

The search team move in.

For this type of mission, the squad often work with sniffer dogs.

Eight-year-old Kumilk is an arms and explosives search dog.

Rachel Mather is his handler.

So, he's worked in the UK, he worked in Germany for a few years.

He's been on excises to Jordan and he's been on tours to

Afghanistan as well.

He's always excited to work. He absolutely loves it.

So, let's leave him to it.

Kumilk is able to detect a bomb,

even if it's been buried beneath the ground.

So, Kumilk works in lines because we would be working

with the advanced search team,

and we need to be very precise as to where we're sending the dog.

We need to be slow, steady. We need to be systematic,

and make sure that we've covered as much of the ground as possible.

Go, seek. Good boy.

Back inside the building, two searchers make a discovery.

We've just found a short-barrelled, weapon with no magazine,

buried underneath the gravel.

We're just taking pictures now to record the evidence.

Nearby, Springer Spaniel Quest is sniffing out explosives.

So, with this dog, I let him have a good free search,

and he runs around by himself...

Get, over. Get, over.

..and then we'll systematically work around the room.

So, a human might not think to search somewhere,

but the dog has got the scent of something there -

and that's what we're looking for.

So, he's highlighting an area to us now that will be of interest.

So I will note that down

and pass that information on to the searchers.

Once the dogs have identified areas of interest...

Good boy. Come on.

..it's time for two human searchers to go in.

They're known as a rummage pair.

So, they searched with him around here. He was getting a reading

on the door and he was getting a reading on the

dipping as well. He checked with the dipping, all the way around it,

but it's definitely inside he's getting a reading on.

As a rummage pair, you've just got to be nosy. So, they're just

checking everything that can be moved, taken off, pulled apart.

They're doing that now to make sure there's nothing hidden in there.

Find. What is it?

Cool, what is it? Looks like a timed device.

They've made the find. What they need to do now is mark that find up.

They're going to mark a safe route out of here,

and then they're going to make sure that the building's evacuated.

Training like this is crucial.

In the past 12 months, the bomb squad has found and made safe

bombs planted in public places from Stansted Airport to Aberdeen.

In Llandudno, a magnet fisherman found a live shell

and brought it into work at a garage.

It was surrounded by gas cylinders, which would heavily enhance

the effect of an explosion.

Swansea has safely recovered the shell.

He now needs to destroy it in a controlled explosion.

He decides the beach is the safest place to blow it up.

Generally, it's a large, open area.

We don't have to worry too much about the cordon.

It's good visibility there, so you can sort of see if people

are coming towards the area.

There are downsides.

Obviously the area can become wet, tides coming in and that sort

of thing, you may have to sort of speed up what you're doing.

Can I get you back about another 15 metres?

Stand by for firing!

Firing!

Swansea will now head back to Chester,

still on call...

..keeping the north-west safe.

Next time...

..police raiding a garage find the ingredients to make a bomb.

A member of the public has made a threat

that he wanted to blow somebody up.

..the coastguard makes a disturbing discovery on the Wirral...

Something's washed up on the beach.

Potentially could be a torpedo.

..and the military site in the Thames Estuary,

where Britain's biggest bombs are blown up.

What's the danger?

How am I going to get rid of it?

Stand by. Firing now!