Świnoujście (Poland) Probably the largest bomb in Europe since World War II exploded underwater in Świnoujście in northwestern Poland on Tuesday. According to the onet.pl portal, nothing happened to anyone and apparently no material damage occurred. Pyrotechnicians originally wanted to destroy a British Tallboy-type bomb by subsonic combustion.
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“The building can be considered destroyed, it will no longer pose a danger on the Szczecin-Swinoujscie fairway,” onet.pl quotes Grzegorz Lewandowski from the Coast Guard. Some residents of Świnoujście said they had noticed the explosion: the ground shook slightly and they heard a strong blow. Now divers will look at what’s left of the bomb.
The bomb, which weighed more than five tons, was discovered last September while deepening the canal between Świnoujście and Szczecin. The target of Tallboy was the German heavy cruiser Lützow (originally the pocket battleship Deutschland before it was renamed and reclassified), which was hit by British bombers in 1945. But one of the bombs apparently missed the target and its detonators failed.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) dropped such bombs in 1944-45 using Lancaster bombers, including Nazi missile launch sites. Tallboy bombs, translated as “Tall Boy”, were designed to explode underground next to the target and cause shocks that would lead to destruction, writes the British server BBC.
The destruction of Tallboy began on Monday and was originally scheduled for five days. As a result, 750 people living about 2.5 kilometers from the bomb had to leave their homes. Then divers set to work to clear the bomb of deposits at the bottom of the canal.
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