NAIA Juliet Taxiway: 28 WWII GP Bombs Recovered in Second Find Within Five Days

Sources: Manila Bulletin, Manila Times, Xinhua, UXO Info | Date: 27 April 2026 | Classification: Open Source — AI-Assisted Technical Assessment

UXO EOD WWII Ordnance Philippines Airport Safety

U.S. and Philippine Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel mark contaminated areas during bilateral EOD and CBRN training at Camp Aquino, Philippines, April 2026. — U.S. and Philippine Army EOD personnel during bilateral training at Camp Aquino, 20 April 2026 — six days before the NAIA Juliet Taxiway recovery. Image: Sgt. Austin Steinborn / DVIDS / U.S. Department of Defense (Public Domain).

Technical Summary

On Sunday 26 April 2026, a backhoe operator excavating the Juliet Extension Taxiway inside the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) complex in Pasay City uncovered corroded ferrous objects later identified by the Philippine National Police Aviation Security Group (PNP AVSEGROUP) Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team as ten 50-pound and eighteen 25-pound United States general-purpose (GP) aircraft bombs. All twenty-eight items were assessed as inert at the recovery site and were subsequently transferred to AVSEGROUP Headquarters for safekeeping pending formal disposition. The 26 April recovery is the second such event at the same construction footprint inside five days; a smaller cache of corroded WWII-era items was reportedly recovered from the same Juliet Extension excavation on 22 April.

The 25-lb and 50-lb weights are consistent with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) AN-M30A1 (100-lb) sub-class and AN-M38A1 (100-lb practice) family produced during the Second World War, of which the 25-lb and 50-lb practice variants (notably the AN-Mk-23 / AN-Mk-43 series and the M38 100-lb practice with reduced fill) were used during USAAF operations across Luzon. NAIA sits on the footprint of the former Nichols Field, a USAAF airfield contested during the 1941–42 Japanese invasion and again during the 1945 Battle of Manila, both of which generated documented surface-and-buried munitions concentrations. DATA GAP: photographic stencilling, fuze pocket condition, and fill identification have not yet been published by AVSEGROUP — pending those, the “general-purpose” designation reported in open source should be treated as preliminary.

Analysis of Effects

For WOME planning purposes, recovered items of this weight class — assuming high-explosive (HE) variants with intact energetic fill — would carry net explosive quantities (NEQ) in the order of approximately 4.5–5.4 kg of TNT equivalent for a 25-lb GP bomb (HD 1.1, CG D) and approximately 11–13 kg for a 50-lb GP bomb. Eighty-plus years of burial in tropical soil produce three competing effect drivers: (a) progressive desensitisation of TNT or Tritonal fills through moisture ingress and crystalline migration, which lowers high-order detonation probability; (b) potential exudation of TNT and the formation of more sensitive impurities (DNT/MNT migration) at the case interior, which raises shock and friction sensitivity locally; and (c) corrosion of fuze components — particularly AN-M103, AN-M101A2 and AN-M100 series mechanical impact fuzes — which can leave the firing train in an indeterminate armed/safe state. The Philippine reporting of all twenty-eight items as inert is consistent with practice-bomb identification but cannot be confirmed in open source without fuze-pocket inspection records.

The operational hazard at NAIA is dominated less by detonation probability and more by the consequence footprint of any low-order event in a live commercial airport environment. A single 50-lb GP item functioning low-order in an excavation pit would produce localised fragmentation hazard out to roughly 200 m and pressure injury hazard to unprotected personnel out to approximately 35–50 m, with closure cascades onto runway 06/24 and Terminal 1 stand operations entirely disproportionate to the energetic yield.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

The recurrence of finds inside five days at the same earthworks footprint is the most operationally significant element of the open-source reporting. It indicates either a cluster jettison pattern, a former bomb dump, or armoury debris from the 1941–45 Nichols Field period. WOME-relevant implications: (1) construction excavation should not resume until a formal non-technical and technical survey (NTS/TS) of the Juliet Extension footprint has been completed to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) Series 08 methodology, mapping anomalies to a depth consistent with the heaviest credible item (FFE 1,000-lb GP, ~3 m burial); (2) any future contact procedure should treat each recovered item as fuzed until proven otherwise, with positive identification of the fuze pocket condition before manual handling; (3) explosive ordnance risk education (EORE) for backhoe operators and trench supervisors should be embedded in the airport’s contractor induction. The Philippine practice of removing recovered items to a populated headquarters compound for “safekeeping” is a recognised regional pattern but is inconsistent with IMAS 11.20 storage-pending-demolition guidance, which favours render-safe-in-place or escort to a licensed demolition ground.

Aerial photograph of Nichols Field, Manila, 1945, showing the contested USAAF airfield that now occupies the footprint of Ninoy Aquino International Airport. — Nichols Field, Manila, 1945. The contested USAAF airfield was attacked during the 1941–42 Japanese invasion and recaptured during the 1945 Battle of Manila — both phases that generated the buried munitions concentrations the Juliet Extension Taxiway works are now intersecting. Image: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (Public Domain).

Regulatory Context

Recovery operations at international airports invoke a layered framework: International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 14 obstacle-management obligations, host-nation EOD regulation (in this case the Armed Forces of the Philippines EOD Command and PNP AVSEGROUP shared remit), and — for any items confirmed as US-origin ordnance — the residual obligations under the 1947 Military Bases Agreement and successor frameworks. International technical reference points include AOP-72 (NATO Land Mine Warfare — Survey, Detection and Clearance), IMAS 09.10 (Clearance Requirements), and the Defence Ordnance Safety Authority’s DSA 03.OME suite for the underlying explosive safety logic, even where the Philippine state is not a NATO party.

Data Gaps

DATA GAP — Type Confirmation: open-source reporting describes “general-purpose” bombs but no AN-designation, no fuze type, and no fill identification has been published. The 25-lb and 50-lb weight classes are more consistent with practice or sub-munition variants than with operational HE GP bombs of the period. DATA GAP — Fuze State: not reported. DATA GAP — Burial Depth: not reported, but Juliet Extension Taxiway works are typically 1.5–3 m below grade. DATA GAP — Survey Status: no public statement that a formal technical survey of the wider Juliet Extension footprint has been ordered. DATA GAP — Disposition: “turned over for safekeeping” is not a terminal disposal action; the location and storage configuration at AVSEGROUP HQ have not been disclosed. Confidence assessment: source reliability B (usually reliable Philippine national press, corroborated by Xinhua and UXO Info), accuracy 3 (possibly true, requires technical confirmation) per NATO STANAG 2022.

Reference photograph of an inert AN-Mk-23 / M38A2 100-lb practice aerial bomb, the type the recovered items most closely resemble by weight class. — Reference: AN-Mk-23 / M38A2 100-lb practice aerial bomb. The 25-lb and 50-lb weight classes reported at NAIA are more consistent with the practice/sub-munition family than with operational HE GP variants of the period. Image: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product. All technical figures are open-source approximations and should not be used for operational planning.