Operation Sandcastle

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The Kotka , one of three ships sunk in Operation Sandcastle

Operation Sandcastle was a military operation of the British Ministry of Defense with the help of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy to remove a good 14,000 t of tabun and other chemical substances that came from Wehrmacht stocks and in 1955/56 together with the Hulks of three freighters in the North Atlantic were sunk. The model was u. a. the British / US “ Operation Davy Jones' Locker ”, in which ships with poison gas stocks and other war materials were sunk in the North Sea and the Skagerrak and the Baltic Sea from 1946 to 1948 .

The chemical weapons inventory in Wales, 1946-1955

After the end of the Second World War, the RAF took over extensive German poison gas stocks , mostly in the form of 250 kg aerial bombs . These were shipped from Hamburg to Newport Docks in Wales from October 1946 as part of Operation Dismal , transported by rail to Llanberis and from there by truck to the RAF airfield Llandwrod . The transports usually took place at night under the strictest security precautions, the trucks were accompanied by the police and ambulances. By mid-July 1947, 71,000 bombs had been delivered to Llandwrod, and a total of 14,000 tons of tabun were stored at the airport.

Llandwrod was considered an ideal storage location because the airfield was far away from settlements and it was also assumed that the constant wind prevailing there would blow any gas that might escape from the bombs out to sea. To protect the bombs from corrosion , they were immersed in lanolin ; the weekly conservation quota was 500 bombs. The staff wore protective suits during the work. Bombs that had already leaked were neutralized with sodium hydroxide in a special pit. By 1951, 21 hangars had been built to provide additional protection from the bombs .

The background to the storage was the potential use of the weapons in the Cold War or the Korean War , allegedly because the USSR had also captured German chemical weapons. In June 1954 the Ministry of Defense decided that the weapons no longer had any defense value and could therefore be destroyed. Obviously, this decision was in the context of the kingdom's nuclear armament after a British atomic bomb was detonated for the first time in Australia during Operation Hurricane in 1952 .

Operation Sandcastle

The disposal of British taboo stocks was code-named "Operation Sandcastle" and was carried out in two phases.

In the first phase, the 71,000 aerial bombs were transported by land and sea from Llandwrod to the port of Cairnryan , Scotland . Six LCT were used for sea transport . In the Scottish port, the material was gradually loaded onto three hulks to be scuttled:

  1. Empire Claire (ex Clan Matheson , built in 1919, 5613 BRT)
  2. Vogtland (ex Tiradentes , built in 1922, 4960 GRT)
  3. Kotka .

The first cargo was bunkered on the Empire Claire in June / July 1955 . She left Cairnryan on July 25 with 16,000 bombs on board and a crew of nine. Three explosive devices with TNT were already installed. Due to an incorrect loading plan, the Hulk was already clearly listing to starboard on departure . She was accompanied by the tug Forester and the guard boats Mull and Sir Walter Campbell . Immediately after sailing, parts of the Empire Claire's propulsion system failed , so that the Hulk had to be towed by the Forester . On July 27 which was Empire Claire on the intended position 56 ° 30 '  N , 12 ° 0'  W outside of the continental shelf by blowing sunk; their demise was filmed from an RAF reconnaissance plane. The demolition did not go entirely according to plan; possibly because the Hulk was already listing heavily. Instead of sinking slowly on a level keel as planned, the Empire Claire capsized over starboard and sank rapidly with the bow pointing upwards. The sinking point is at a depth of a good 1,000 nautical fathoms (about 1,800 m).

On May 30, 1956, the Vogtland was sunk in the same position with 28,737 bombs on board. The third cargo, consisting of 26,000 bombs, 330 tons of arsenic and 50 boxes of unidentified material, sank on July 21, 1956 at position 56 ° 31 ′  N , 12 ° 5 ′  W together with the Kotka .

The current state of the weapons

The state of the wreckage of the sunk Hulks and the bombs in them is apparently unknown. Presumably, the ship's hulls were at least damaged when they hit the seabed, if not torn open, and the bombs were at least partially driven off by the ocean currents. However, they do not seem to pose a direct threat.

literature

  • Roy Sloan: The Tale of Tabun. Nazi Chemical Weapons in North Wales , Llanrwst (Gwas Carreg Gwalch) 1998. ISBN 0-86381-465-4
  • Nick McCanley: Disasters Underground , Havertown, PA (Pen & Sword) 2003. ISBN 978-1-84415-022-9
  • Gas shells held for 10 years after war , in: The Times, August 14, 1969, p. 2.

Documentation

  • Documentary report Lethal Cargo , broadcast on BBC1 Scotland on 5th October 1995.

Web links