Watch WW2 bomb explode in Poland
The biggest World War Two bomb ever found in Poland exploded underwater yesterday as navy divers tried to defuse it. It was embedded at a depth of 12m with only its nose accessible.
The chance the bomb – at the bottom of a Baltic Sea shipping canal – would detonate had been put at 50-50 and all the divers were unharmed, according to the BBC.
The shock of the detonation was reportedly felt in parts of the city. The bomb was 6m long and weighed 5.4 tonnes, nearly half of which was explosives.
About 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain’s Royal Air For was found. It weighed nearly 12,000lbs, including almost 5,300lbs of explosive.
“The deflagration process turned into detonation. The object can be considered as neutralised, it will not pose any more threat,” Grzegorz Lewandowski, the spokesman of the 8th Coastal Defence Flotilla, was quoted as saying by state-run news agency PAP.
“All mine divers were outside the danger zone.”
The Piast Canal connects the Baltic Sea with the Oder River on Poland’s border with Germany. The bomb was dropped by the RAF in 1945 in an attack on the German cruiser Lutzow.
