A ticking Time Bomb - The Lethal Legacy of Wrecks from World War II

danger is lurking off our coasts  and hardly anybody suspects anything a rusting legacy of the past ticking time bombs this threat on the beds of the oceans  is known to only a few experts worldwide   it's a race against time but can we win the race at the baltic port of gdynia in  poland an expert team from the marine   institute of gdansk prepares to put  to sea on the research ship emor on board are hydrographers divers and biologists  they've been working together for years their destination lies in the bay of gdansk   just half an hour sailing time from the port to a  site where in 1999 they made an alarming discovery head of the crew is benedict hack a  former commander in the polish navy   he's an uncomfortable warning  voice in official ears not every official likes what we do but it's  not our job to please them or make things easy it's more a type of mission okay i'll the spot benedict hack has been sailing  to these coordinates for years the position lies just two  kilometers off the polish coast the unspoilt beaches of the bay of gdansk   are seen as the polish riviera it's  a mainstay of east european tourism over two million europeans spend  their summer holidays here every year you can have a wonderful time in this area of  course holidays here are marvellous beautiful   beaches nice people something this will  always be so but sadly that's not the case   there's something here that only a few people  know about unfortunately it's very dangerous the ship picks up speed to  do a sonar scan of the seabed gradually the sonar images reveal what it is  that's threatening the nearby seaside idle   a relic from the past the wreck of the german  hospital ship stuttgart nearly 170 metres long   in the autumn of 1943 the ship lay at anchor  in which had been renamed gottenhafen by the   occupying germans ready to take on wounded  german soldiers from the eastern front on the morning of the 9th of october  the crews of the american 8th air force   in england were operational 378  bombers took off from their bases their mission to destroy the strategically  vital ports and dockyards of the then danzig   and gottenhaften after a flight of over  four hours they reached their target area the stuttgart received a number of direct hits   fire broke out on the hospital ship the flames  lit up the whole harbour to prevent the mooring   points from being blocked the stuttgart  was towed out to sea and sunk in the bay the event is just a side note in the history books  the wreck and its position fell into oblivion until 1999 benedict hack found the stuttgart  when he was mapping the seabed of the bay   for the gdansk marine institute since then he has regularly returned  to the position with his research to monitor the condition of  the 70-year-old wreck precisely   divers are braving the  ice-cold waters of the baltic the stuttgart lies a mere 20 meters  down overgrown with seaweed and shells not much is left of the former hospital ship   just a few remains stick out of the seabed  over a length of two football fields in the 1950s the wreck was partly  blown up to salvage the steel for sale   at first glance the wreck and its  surroundings look harmless enough as with every sortie to the stuttgart   the researchers use a grab to  take samples from the seabed even the first sample as it's slowly brought  up reveals why benedict hack is so worried   viscous drops of oil run out of the grab the  researchers call them the black tears of the sea over the years they've collected over a thousand  seabed samples from the stuttgart but what   benedict and his team are bringing to the surface  this time puts all previous samples in the shade an evil smelling sticky mass containing  very little sand and all the more heavy oil i've honestly never seen  anything like it here before what a sting the researchers will inspect the  mud more closely in the laboratory benedict hack intends to take another 200 seabed  samples in order to be able to assess the extent   of the pollution in the bay of gdansk is  the stuttgart just a tragic one-off case   what about all the other wrecks from the second  world war do they pose a threat to the environment less than 20 kilometers away from benedict  hack and his research ship lies the vesta   plata peninsula it was right here on the 1st of  september 1939 that the second world war broke out at 4 45 a.m the german ship schleswig  holstein opened fire on polish positions it was also the prelude to a six-year naval war   with huge losses gigantic fleets fought  for supremacy at sea around the world merchant shipping was also  very much in the firing line   germany's naval and air forces tried to  cut the supply lines of allied troops dreaded above all were the  german u-boats the grey wolves in june 1942 they sank an average  of one ship every six hours but how many ships altogether were sunk back then   and how many of them pose a threat  today like that of the stuttgart these questions take us to tampa on the  gulf of mexico in florida every year   representatives of the u.s coast guard scientists  and salvage experts come together for the clean   gulf conference a forum of the leading minds and  companies involved in combating oil spills at sea   they include dagmar schmidt edkin an american  biologist in worldwide demand back in 2004   she was commissioned to find out how  many dangerous wrecks lie in our oceans i collected data on different wrecks in  different places including a number of   german databases which i translated from german   into english and some of those were based on  you know which u-boat had sunk which vessels for two months dagmar schmidt atkin meticulously  searched through archives and gathered data   worldwide from all the shipwrecks she  inspected from sona pictures like these   she included only those with combustion  engines of over 400 gross registered tons   and over 150 gross registered tons for tankers   so i found 8 500 and something wrecks uh worldwide  and about three quarters of those were world   war ii related it was a was a surprise you know  they're lying outside ports at the sites of naval   battles and along trade routes the precise number  of wrecks from the second world war is 6338. whether italian freighters in the red sea or  japanese battleships in the pacific six years   of war were responsible for the majority of all  wrecks in the last hundred years of navigation sunk with the ships were tons of fuel  and freight crude oil stored in tanks   in the ship's steel hulls but no one  knows exactly how much oil is involved   so dagmar schmidt edkin first produced an estimate  for all large wrecks with combustion engines   if i had no information i looked at the size of  the vessel and the type of vessel a tanker or a   non-tank vessel or you know like a bulk carrier  or a victory ship or something like that   and i assume well let's say at least 10 percent  of the oil may still be on there maybe 90 percent   maybe all we don't know so i have a range of  values so i estimated using that methodology   estimated about 2.5 to 25 million tons of  oil could potentially be on these wrecks   and that was something of concern because they  could potentially leak out and cause the same kind   of damage as we see in other oil spills that occur  now one of the most serious catastrophes so far   the oil tanker exxon valdez run aground off alaska  in 1989 and lost over 37 000 tons of crude oil   a mere fraction of the amount of oil lying  dormant in the wrecks from the second world war   according to dagmar schmidt atkins study these  wrecks could still hold up to 15 million tons of   oil 400 times the amount the exxon valdez spilled  into the sea i presented my results on the numbers   and the reaction was this is too big a problem  when we can't deal with it at least here in the   united states but also in other parts of the world  we're sort of buried it's too complicated we're   not going to be able to deal with it it's too  expensive and so we there's nothing we can do survey has been known for more than  12 years for more than 12 years   experts have been discussing the problem at  conferences virtually nothing has been done this delay has fatal consequences some ships  have already started to leak because no one   has done anything about the toxic contents of  the ships and the tanks are now rusting through a great many wrecks from the second world war  lie off the east coast of the united states a research vessel puts to sea it's from the u.s  national oceanic and atmospheric administration   known as noaa the researchers regularly look  for lost ships from the second world war   as here of north carolina before dagmar schmidt atkin's study it was mainly   underwater archaeologists  who were interested in rex increasingly the researchers at noaa are realizing   they know far too little about the  sunken ships of the second world war they therefore check the condition  of every wreck they discover   how badly is the ship rusted is it losing oil finally they measure the wreck  with millimeter precision by laser one of the principal goals of the administration  is to protect the environment at noaa headquarters   in maryland marine researcher lisa simons is  responsible for monitoring wrecks in u.s waters she was alarmed by dagmar schmidt edkin's study   she hadn't realized that there were so many  wrecks containing millions of tons of fuel well there was a lot of concern and that was  something that we were we were very aware of   because there's been a lot of allegations about  the waters of the united states the waters of   germany europe um japan being full of ticking  time bombs with the 20 000 uh points on it there   are actually lisa simons wants to know exactly in  2010 the us congress granted one million dollars   for noah to find out whether and what dangers  are posed by the sunken ships in u.s waters   characterizing sanctuaries it has taken a lot of  very painstaking research effort with the archives   going back to the newspaper records  sometimes you can find living crew members   who remember being on a vessel or  hearing about what happened to a vessel   what's the size of the ship how much oil had it  taken on board what sort of fuel was it using   21 separate criteria they're ranking the  wrecks off the u.s coasts in terms of risk   lisa simons is currently gathering information  on the freighter coast trader in 1942 a japanese   submarine sank the ship off seattle according  to the records they found there could still be   a thousand tons of fuel on board and there's  the edge of a hatch with the combing okay   look at the decking there you see how  such information can be unreliable   or simply wrong sometimes the researchers can test  their assumptions with underwater robots with the   coast trader they're particularly interested in  the point where the torpedoes struck the ship   the damage is a lot worse than they assumed the  ship must have lost a substantial amount of oil   as it sank so this wreck now  seems less of a danger than feared   other ships though could just as well  contain a lot more oil than calculated   the problem is they don't have the means to  examine all the wrecks with underwater robots   even with the coast trader though the  potential danger is far from averted the researchers suspect that its tanks might  still hold 400 tons of oil specialists simulate   on the computer what could happen if the toxic  freight leaked the first scenario all 400 tons   spill out great stretches of nature reserve  on the pacific coast will be contaminated all together they work through 200 simulations  with varying wind directions and amounts of oil   in a bid to assess the threat and devise possible  deployment plans for the worst case scenarios   hey lisa pull up the seat i'll show you what  we're working on okay the results are worrying   they put the coast trader in a higher risk  category because in most of the simulations the   oil slick reaches the coast lisa simons knows what  that means when the freighter was sunk in 1942 the   beaches were covered in oil reservation um during  world war ii the population was very used to   having oil on the beaches as well as having other  detritus from war and adults would go and check   the beaches before they would allow kids down to  the beaches people kept cans of kerosene and baby   oil outside their back doors to basically wipe off  their feet if they had been walking along the surf   so i don't know that that's something that  people are going to accept as a as a way of   life if that becomes an ongoing issue whether  it's here or or any place else in the world   the researchers examined 573 major shipwrecks  more closely for 87 of them they produce detailed   reports 36 would be a threat if all their oil  leaked out and five wrecks from the second world   war are rated in the highest risk category with  catastrophic results should just one tank leak   the target audience though is the united states  coast guard these are the wrecks in your area   of concern that we did analysis of this is what  our findings are these are the wrecks that we   recommend that you put into active  monitoring and it's up to the u.s   coast guard to determine whether or not  they want to do an in-water assessment   and then determine whether or  not they want to remove the fuel but the u.s coast guard has hardly reacted to the  report from noah they have so far not examined   more closely a single one of the wrecks rated  extremely dangerous let alone pumped out the oil instead the watch word is wait and see and not  just in the usa a perilous playing for time but the marine researchers are  not prepared to wait and see   noaa operates its own satellite  and information center here analysts evaluate data in real time for the  u.s weather service and work out long-term climate   models they also monitor the surface of the oceans  around the clock on the lookout for oil spills   the experts can recognize even the smallest  irregularities from the radar images with the   naked eye like this ship on the high seas since  noah's risk analysis they pay special attention   to the areas in which potentially dangerous  wrecks are cited above one second world war   wreck which is not in the high risk group the  analyst notices an unusual pattern probably oil he marks the dark patch in order to measure it  it's nine kilometers long and 150 meters wide   an area of about one and a half square kilometers  he immediately sends the finding to lisa simons the wreck is no stranger to her oil slicks  are regularly spotted over the coimbra   a tanker that's broken up steve we need to talk about coinbra again  despite this the coast guard has so far   no plans to pump the oil out of the wreck  because it lies 50 kilometers off the coast   in the past the oil slicks have dispersed in  the sea but with a bigger leak the oil could   reach the coast of new york a risk that  the authorities are prepared to accept it is a question of money but for some people   they're more concerned about trying to deal with  their their issues now than a potential threat   salvaging oil from sunken ships is possible but  expensive that was seen in 2015 when the russian   trawler oleg naidenov caught fire and sank off  the island of gran canaria salvage companies   pumped out over a thousand tons of oil which had  gone down with the ship a technically demanding   undertaking because the wreck lies at a depth  of over 700 meters the cost 30 million euros at this point i believe we can take care of  any wreck we can operate in any operational   environment and any ocean depth at this point  it's just a matter of uh making the decision   to go and look for the wreck and then to to solve  the problem that's all we knew right we only had   a newspaper jim elliot is a former officer of  the u.s coast guard and vice president of the   american salvage association a recognized expert  for difficult salvage operations around the world   the first thing to happen nowadays after  a shipping accident if the oil threatens   the environment it's pumped off otherwise the  owner of the ship is liable for environmental   damage in the case of the oleg nydenov underwater  robots cut open access holes to the fuel tanks   by remote control funnel-shaped  collecting vessels were then installed   into which the viscous fuel oil  could flow under supervision   but are the salvage operators also called  out for wrecks from the second world war   which have been rusting away for decades to be honest with you it's uh it's very rare  that we we do this it's amazing that we're   still talking about these wrecks and they haven't  been the issues haven't been solved but there's   an argument that if that oil releases if you're  an environmentally sensitive area it could be   a lot more catastrophic and and definitely a lot  more expensive in the long run to do that so for   example you're dealing with the pollution  recovery costs and once oil is released   from that wreck you can only recover say 10 to  25 percent with current technology on the surface   so really it's a losing game once  you've once the oil is released the bay of gdansk is one of the losers here oil  already leaked out of the stuttgart years ago   and benedict hack has himself experienced  the wait and see attitude of the authorities luger in the hope that someone or other  will deal with it sometime or other slowly the government is starting to  reconsider but it has to be pushed   to act and that's what i do it's a bit  like david and goliath or donkey shot that's my job benedict hack employs persistence and facts in  a bid to get the polish environment ministry   to remove the environmental damage  caused by the wreck of the stuttgart chemists are to analyze the seabed samples  he's collected from around the wreck   for two months crates of new samples land in the  institute's laboratory every day the chemical   content of more than 200 plastic sacks of oil  contaminated sediment is being determined here the findings are alarming the pollution is  much more serious than assumed some environment   ministry thresholds for cancer-causing substances  in the seabed are exceeded over a thousand fold that was a shark so we took the results to other institutes but  all they said was not possible you're imagining early morning benedict hack  wants to find out just what   these values actually mean for the bay of godansk if there's an environmental impact then  one group in particular must be aware of it fishing in the bay of gdansk for centuries  that's meant hard manual labor in small boats family businesses in which knowledge  about the best fishing grounds is   handed down from father to son wrecks  are especially popular with fishermen   they're a sort of artificial reef and offer  marine life protection against enemies   benedict hack is therefore sure that the fishermen  are also casting their nets around the stuttgart and he's right the fishermen confirmed that just  two days earlier there was an intensive smell of   oil at the site of the wreck they've sometimes  caught place in their nets there they say   that have been sticky with oil or burnt by it   they don't land them but throw  them right back in the water we're now joking at the institute that you don't  need oil to fry these tasty fish from the wreck   because they bring their own because the area is now contaminated and that is   very very dangerous the fish ingest  poison and ultimately we then eat it benedict hack is working on his final  report for the polish environment ministry   with the data he's collected in the laboratory and  from the fishermen he hopes he'll finally be able   to persuade the authorities to tackle the unsolved  and hazardous problem of the contaminated seabed only are all countries reacting the same  way to the slowly disintegrating wrecks   don't look wait and see because of its rugged fjord landscape  norway has a coastline of over twenty   thousand kilometers oil escaping here would  be an even greater catastrophe than elsewhere that's why the norwegian  coastal authorities have adopted   a different strategy kanspetter morton's  home is in charge of all wrecks off norway   he's heading for the site where a  german second world warship sank   what he finds shows clearly  that waiting is not an option marine diesel is surfacing drop by drop people in norway along the coastline  i think they're they're used to seeing   oil on the surface from the shipwrecks nazi  warships discovered along the entire coastline   started steaming up the norwegian fjords these are the long-term effects of one of the  biggest military operations of the second world   war the invasion of norway by german forces in  april 1940 a british counter-offensive led to   fierce sea battles especially for the port of navi  the allied formation sank 10 german destroyers   altogether the german navy lost a third of  its total fleet in the battles around norway the traces of the fighting are still visible today some of the german wrecks lie directly on  the coast like the destroyer georg thiele during the second world war some 900 ships  were sunk in norwegian waters the norwegian   coastal authority has classed 29 of them as  extremely dangerous because of the fuel on board the wrecks are a magnet for divers even  though or perhaps because they are war graves   more than four thousand sailors on both  sides were killed in the sea battles what very few of the divers realize is  that the wrecks are an ecological time   bomb relentlessly ticking away again and  again oil leaks out of one or the other hanspeter morton's hall monitors all  the wreck sites with high definition   cameras like the military use  to spot the leaks in good time at least once a week morton's home and his team  fly over all the wrecks classed as dangerous   today's destination is the oslo fjord  a fifth of norway's population lives   close to this narrow estuary an oil  spill here would reach land in no time the fjord flows past the coastal fortress of  oscarsborg which played a key role during the war in 1940 its guns sank the heavy cruiser  blusher in the narrow fjord the german   ship was an easy target and sank  with over 1400 tons of fuel on board the wreck of the blucher now  lies at a depth of 70 meters what's not visible is that it now contains  only a fraction of its original load of fuel   the norwegian coastal authority had most of it  pumped out in a controlled operation in 1994   to avert a catastrophe there is still some left about 40-50 estimated cubics of diesel because they  didn't empty the tanks close to the   ammunition storage rooms due to the  risk and and in addition when you empty   a wreck of remaining oil you will always have  small pockets with diesel still in the wreck from the air hanspeter morton's  home again and again spots some   of the remaining oil leaking out of the blue shell   if it gets worse he may have to conduct another  pumping operation despite the risk of an explosion we also react because something is starting to  leak more but we have also empty wrecks because   of a risk they might pause in maybe 10 to 20 years   and the reason why we do these kind of  measures now is mainly due to the corrosion in   10 to 20 years it might be too late to  do any physical operations on the wreck norway is the only country in the world which  is already investing in safeguarding its coasts   while other countries like the united states  prefer to wait and see rather than pumping the   wrecks continue rusting away depending on salt  content water depth or temperature steel plate   loses between 0.5 and 2 millimeters in thickness  per decade it doesn't sound much but it adds up   over time in the pacific australian researchers  discovered that if steel plates lose between   3 and 10 millimeters of thickness they become  unstable and can break under even light pressure   many wrecks from the second world war are already  entering this critical phase or will do soon the norwegian government does not intend  to wait until a catastrophe happens   it ordered seven more wrecks  to be pumped out preemptively   the steel walls of the tanks are still stable  enough to insert valves without breaking the engineers also pumped out the german destroyer  irish giza but they discovered something unusual especially the german bankroll has  an extremely strong smell so we were   interesting to see how how toxic is the  oil the bankroll from the second world war hans peter morton's home sent a  sample for analysis to trondheim   to one of the world's leading  laboratories for analyzing marine oils oil slicks in norway are so devastating  because the oil is hard to deal with   in the icy arctic waters the  cold means it hardly disperses the size of the droplets is  also crucial in an oil spill   it determines how broad and thick an oil  slick is because one oil differs from another   the researchers here have already  analyzed over 3000 different types of oil at first analyzing the fuel pumped  out of the german destroyer irish giza   looked like a routine assignment an early  test simulated whether and how far the oil   mixes with water in wave swells the sample  had to rotate in this device for 24 hours meanwhile the scientists determined the precise  chemical constituents of the irish giza oil   that brought a surprise some of  the values were exceptionally high we had never seen that before so we thought  first it was some kind of contamination   in our laboratory but then we we did a new setup  and it was the same and we looked at the chemistry   we understood that this is a really strange oil  we have never seen anything as toxic as it before shortly afterwards came the next worrying find sea  water and oil had resulted in a sludgy emulsion   in a leak this mixture would be hard to  pump away while a comparison sample of   british oil from the second world war  hardly mixed with the sea water at all what no one knew so far how would living organisms  react to the strange oil tiny crustaceans form the   basis of the food chain and are therefore  the engine of the north atlantic ecosystem the researchers prepared a mixture of 40-part  sea water and one part of the unusually heavy oil   the copepods have to spend 96 hours in this liquid after four days the results were clear  all the crustaceans were either dead   or virtually paralyzed it was a mystery to the researchers  why this oil was so exceptionally toxic they looked for more information and stumbled  across an american intelligence report from 1945.   according to this germany had massive  shortages of crude oil in the second world war   as an alternative oil was produced from coal   a process resulting in a much more dangerous  fuel than conventionally refined oil it has a high potential for actually causing  adverse effects on the biota so there is something   that should not be left around for waiting it  for corrode into pieces and then start to do   action about it but it's something that should  be preferably removed in a controlled manner benedict hack has also heard of the  findings in trondheim and is worried   his chemical analysis of the  stuttgart oil is very similar he knows that highly toxic oil is contaminating  the seabed what he doesn't know is how many   tons of it have leaked into the bay of  godansk since the sinking of the stuttgart   he looks for answers in the archives  of the national maritime museum the documentation reveals the first clues before  it sank the stuttgart was ready to set out to sea   so its tanks must have been full full  of highly dangerous synthetic fuel targets this heavy oil simply spilled into  the sea and sank immediately to the seabed   according to my research it was between  850 and 1000 tons that's an awful lot and this amount is spreading further and further  as the results of all his seabed samples show   when benedict hack found the wreck in 1999 25  000 square meters of seabed were contaminated 10 years later it was already 32 000 square  meters and the rate of spreading is accelerating   the oil is flowing down an underwater slope in the  meantime an area of over 50 football pitches is   affected benedict hack knows that a solution has  to be found for 450 000 cubic meters of seabed yes if we raise the remains of the wreck and the  contaminated seabed and then remove it all it   will cost hundreds of millions of euros and  we'll have the problem of where to put it   but if we seal the site with sand  cover it with a sort of sarcophagus   then we're talking of a sum of  maybe 15 to 20 million euros benedict hack believes it will be worth it so  the ecosystem of the bay of godansk could recover but with money it's always the  same there's not enough of it   so the authorities take cover  and push the problem away they say sadly that's how it is but why should the polish  authorities pay the costs alone   why doesn't germany pay the  stuttgart was a german ship after all   the question is who is responsible for harm  caused by wrecks from the second world war at the university of hamburg  a professor of international   maritime law has been addressing  the sensitive issue for years henning yesen is one of the few experts worldwide   who are well-versed in this  complicated legal position there is no international agreement  applicable to war wreckage   it's a legal situation that's unsettled  you could say it's a grey area the generally recognized view according to yesen  is that a warship belongs to what's called the   flag state under whose flag the ship was fighting  even if it sank and became a wreck in the coastal   waters of another state shouldn't then the owner  also be responsible for damage from oil spills   venison einer krieger   if it sunk in armed conflict from being shelled  or torpedoed or if it's scuppered by its own   crew in a hopeless situation then according  to applicable martial law no liability ensues   because it's gone from being a ship to a  wreck in the course of a military conflict in other words a flag state like germany  to which the ships still belong can legally   extricate itself from the matter and pass  the costs on to those suffering the damage normally a voluntary commitment or at least an  accommodation with a coastal state suffering   damage would be indicated but from a juridical  position a flag state can indeed act precisely no state wants to create legal precedents benedict  hack has also come across this attitude when he's   talked to german colleagues about the unsettled  problem of the stuttgart in the bay of godansk   i said to them hey we've got  some wrecks of yours and they say   is there any gold yes i say no yeah  there's none and they say it's your problem so after 70 years it's no longer a german problem and the stuttgart is only one of the problems as  benedict hackwell knows in the bay of gdansk alone   there are over 30 wrecks from the second world war   he's particularly worried about the german supply  ship franken that was sunk by the soviet air force   shortly before the end of the war a direct hit  blew a huge hole in the ship but the oil tanks   remained intact they could hold six times the  amount of oil that has leaked from the stuttgart   but it's likely that neither poland nor germany  will feel responsible for pumping out the oil   another wreck from the second world war one of  over 6 300 worldwide whose future is uncertain   it is a problem that's not  visible until it really happens   so it's it's if the vessel breaks up if  there's a spill then we'll deal with it these ships are doing nothing but deteriorating  they're sitting in salt water since the early 40s it's going to become a chronic process  and you can either deal with it in place   or you can deal with cleaning up oil  on the beaches on a more routine basis the question is not whether  but when it will happen   the decision as to what we  do about it is ours alone so you

Channel: Free High-Quality Documentaries

Views: 619,012

Keywords: Free High-Quality Documentaries, HD, Full HD, Quality, World War II, ships, wrecks, coast, bombs, oil, spill, sunk, rusting, sea, threat, catastrophes, tanker, pollution, Poland, Norway, USA, Pacific coast, seabed, contamination, salvage, experts, coastguard, fragile, rust

Id: Rt1njaxDM6w

Length: 52min 12sec (3132 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/postmodernLogic]

This documentary inspired a science project of mine that I got a perfect score on! It's a fantastic video. Also, the harbor of Charleston, SC has more oil in it's sand than water. It took GoJo to get it off of my hands after I collected some samples