Hundreds of residents were evacuated Monday as Polish military divers began a delicate operation to reduce World War II large bombs in a channel near the Baltic Sea.
The five-ton device – nicknamed “Talboy” and also known as “Earthquake Bomb” – was dropped by the Royal Air Force in a 1945 attack on a Nazi warship.
It was discovered last year while dredging near the port city of Svinojski in the west of Swainmund in northwestern Poland.
“This is the first of its kind in the world. No one has ever defended a Talboy that is so well-preserved and underwater,” Graz Zorz Lewandowski, a spokesman for the 8th Coastal Defense Flotilla of the Polish Navy based in Svinojski, told AFP.
The Navy announced on its Facebook page that the operation has begun and it is planned to take it by Friday depending on the weather.
Mitchell Jodlowski, head of the diving team, told reporters later Monday that the operation was “going according to plan” but that work was slow because at one time only one diver was allowed to work on the bomb.
A total of 750 locals are being evacuated from the 2.5-kilometer (1.6-mile) area around the bomb, and the operation is expected to last five days.
But some residents told AFP they would be put down.
Halina Pasazkowska said the “main danger” for her was the risk of catching the Covid-19 in a playground where residents are sheltered during the operation.
Paskoska said he would also have to take care of his 88-year-old mother, adding: “I’ve been here for 50 years and there have been other bombings, but this is the first time someone has been evacuated, before that, we just had to stay home. Inside. “
– ‘Very delicate work’ –
Marine traffic will be suspended on the navigation channel and surrounding waterways in an area of 16 kilometers around the bomb disposal operation.
“The first two or three days will be a preparation. Our bomb disposal divers will scratch around the bomb, which is embedded at a depth of 12 meters at the bottom of the channel. Only its nose is sticking out,” Lewandowski said.
“It’s a very delicate job … the smallest vibration can detonate a bomb,” he said, adding that the option of a controlled explosion had been ruled out for fear of the bridge collapsing about 500 meters away.
Navy divers will instead use a technique called defragmentation to burn explosive charges, without using explosive functions, to use a remote controlled device to pierce through a shell to start combustion.
The bomb is six meters (19 feet) long and contains 2.4 tons of explosives – about 3.6 tons of TNT. Equivalent of.
TLBOY were built for an underground explosion next to the target, triggering shock waves would cause destruction.
– ‘Dembusters’ raid –
The area was home to some of the most important Baltic naval bases of the German navy during World War II and was heavily bombed, said historian Piotr Laskowski, author of a book on the Royal Air Force’s raid on the German Lutzo Cruiser in April 1945. .
Ship cannons were being used to stop the Red Army’s advance in the dying days of the war.
On April 16, 1945, the RAFA sent 18 Lancaster bombers from the 617th Squadron – known as the “Dembusters”.
The bombers freed 12 tailboys on Lutzo, but failed to detonate one and the plane crashed on Carsibor Island, killing all seven crew members aboard.
The ship survived the raid but was eventually captured by the Soviet Army and used for post-war targeting. It sank in the Baltic in September 1947.
bur-sw / dt / mas / lc
