Photo: Hernando County Sheriff's Office
Construction workers discovered a 1,000-pound World War II-era bomb at a regional airport on Tuesday (February 6). Crews were working on the future site of the Wilton Simpson Technical College Campus on airport grounds in Brooksville when they unearthed the "very old" explosive, Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis explained in a video statement.
Officials believe the military ordinance is a Mark 65 bomb, a general-purpose explosive the military used to destroy reinforced infrastructure like dams or bridges over a century ago.
Because the bomb was "so rusted and decayed," authorities couldn't immediately confirm whether the explosive was live or inert. Nienhaus said deputies evacuated an area "about half a mile of every direction of the bomb" as the Citrus County bomb squad assessed the old ordinance.
The bomb squad determined the 1,000-pound bomb was inert, and a team from the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa later arrived to dispose of the explosive, officials wrote.
The sheriff's office didn't provide any more details about the incident.
According to FOX13 Tampa, the airport used to be the site of the Brooksville Army Airfield, where World War II bombers trained. Dr. Angie Zambek of UNC Wilmington told reporters the explosive is an "unguided gravity bomb... It was essentially just TNT in metal casing."