Biggest Second World War bomb ever explodes as divers try to defuse it
Topics: News, World News, World War 2
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: AP
Topics: News, World News, World War 2
Astonishing footage shows the moment an enormous piece of World War Two ordnance detonated underwater.
Naval bomb disposal experts had been trying to defuse the enormous explosive, but were caught in a dangerous moment when it detonated.
The explosive was some 5.4 tons and was called a 'Tallboy' bomb. It was in September 2019 in a waterway which led to the post of Szczecin in northwest Poland.
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Even nearly 80 years after the war ended, pieces of unexploded ordinance are still buried in Eastern Europe from the apocalyptic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
This saw millions of shells fired back and forth between pieces of artillery, as well as the bombs dropped from planes.
The Eastern Front saw terrifying military strength brought to bear, and the impact of that is still felt decades later.
Navy demolition experts attempted to neutralise the bomb on Tuesday October 14 2020, but the bomb, which contained around 2,400kg worth of explosives, went off causing a massive explosion.
Thankfully, things could have been a lot worse, with Navy spokesperson Lieutenant Commander Grzegorz Lewandowski confirming nobody was hurt.
Divers were a safe distance away as they attempted to defuse the bomb through remote deflagration, whereby the explosive charge is burnt without causing a detonation - well, if successful, that is.
More than 750 residents had to be evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal, outside the town of Swinoujscie, with authorities imposing a 2.4 kilometre exclusion zone around the bomb.
Lt. Cmdr. Lewandowski said: "The deflagration process turned into detonation.
"The object can be considered neutralised, it will not pose any more threat to the Szczecin-Swinoujscieshipping channel.
"All divers were outside the danger zone."
The blast could even be felt though by residents in Swinoujscie, which was part of Germany when the RAF dropped the bomb in 1945.
This occurred during a raid which sank the Lützow warship.
Speaking at a press conference prior to the detonation mission, Lt. Cmdr. Lewandowski said the dangerous mission was a 'world first'.
He said: "Only its nose is sticking out. It's a world first.
"Nobody has ever defused a Tallboy that is so well preserved and underwater.
"The bomb is dangerous because it contains a lot of explosives.
"The chemical processes that have been taking place in the bomb over time means that any impact, any vibration, any change of pressure caused by moving it could cause it to explode."
Well, he wasn't wrong there, eh?