THE solitary figure is crouched over a device packed with enough explosives to bring down an office block.

A Birmingham Evening Mail photographer captured the scene in the heart-stopping, where a young bomb-disposal officer knows that a single error of judgment would end his life.

The soldier is all too aware that the last man who tried to defuse a bomb in the city was killed just a few months before.

An ambulance parked nearby is an empty gesture because the duffel-bag device is packed with 15lbs of high explosives.

The tense silence was only shattered when the rookie recruit turned slowly before sprinting 50 yards and hurling himself behind an Army Land Rover.

A charge he had placed close to the bag rang out a sharp blast down Stephenson Street in the heart of Birmingham – but the bomb failed to respond.

Such was life in the city on Saturday, April 6, 1974, when the West Midlands was in the grip of a terrifying campaign of bombings at the hands of the Provisional IRA.

The attacks which claimed the lives of 21 pub-goers later that year are forever burned on the minds of a generation, but less well known is the year-long spate of bombings that targeted shops and offices

The Stephenson Street bomb was eventually defused by the Royal Army Ordnance Corps from Hereford after six hours without causing any harm.

Birmingham had become a second home for that same unit since August 20, 1973, when three incendiary devices were placed in New Street shops.