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German submarine menaces the North Sea 61 years after its sinking
By Alan Cowell and Walter Gibbs
International Herald Tribune
Thursday, January 11, 2007
FEDJE, Norway: World War II was edging to a close as Kristoffer Karlsen peered from this rocky outcrop off Norway's coast and saw what he took to be a huge explosion some way out to sea. Twelve years old at the time, he could hardly have realized that he had witnessed a remarkable moment that revealed something of Adolf Hitler's intentions toward America in the closing stages of the war, and presaged a potential ecological disaster 61 years later. "I knew it was a submarine," said Karlsen, a 73-year-old retired ship's pilot, gesturing across the choppy gray expanse of the North Sea toward the site of the blast on Feb. 9, 1945. On that day, he said, he was out gathering peat with his grandmother on this island, then, like the rest of Norway, under Nazi occupation. "It was a big explosion but soon after it was calm and there was nothing to see," he said. "But in the German garrison there was a lot of activity." That is hardly surprising. The plume of water and debris, rising 60 meters, or 200 feet, into the air, was the result of a torpedo fired from a prowling British submarine, the Venturer, that struck the German sub U-864 amidships at the very start of a clandestine voyage to Japan.
As the German vessel sank in two parts into more than 120 meters of water, it took with it not only the 73 men on board, but also 65 tons of mercury for the Japanese munitions industry and, some historical accounts say, a newly developed German jet-fighter engine — technology that was supposed to give the Axis powers an edge in the closing stages of the war. Much later there were rumors — and they remained just that — that the vessel was carrying fabled Nazi gold or even Hitler's last will and testament. In 2005, a study published in Britain by Mark Felton, a naval historian, said there had been a longstanding submarine trade between Japan and Germany in aircraft and missile parts, and in information related to the development of an atomic bomb. Eric Grove, a naval historian at the University of Salford in northwest England who has studied the submarine wreck, said: "The idea was to keep the Americans tied down in the East" to draw forces away from the campaign in Europe. "Hitler was getting increasingly desperate," he said.
The long saga of the U-864, however, is far from over. Many of the canisters containing the liquid mercury are corroding. Small amounts of mercury have seeped out and Norwegian government tests around the wreck have detected slightly raised amounts of the metal in crabs and fish, the country's second biggest export after oil and gas. Kristian Hall, an environmental consultant with a Norwegian engineering firm, said the corroding canisters could produce a threat comparable to the disaster at Minamata, Japan, where 27 tons of industrial mercury compounds were released into a local bay from 1932 to 1968, causing nerve and brain damage to hundreds of townspeople whose main diet consisted of local seafood. "If it is not taken care of properly," Hall said, "it could develop into a catastrophe, with corroding canisters beginning to fail one after the other."
Last month, the authorities in Norway proposed entombing the submarine in a sarcophagus, as has been done with other underwater hazards elsewhere. But, Lisbeth Stuberg, an environmental protection officer who is one of the 630 people who live here all year, said many of the islanders want the wreck removed altogether and planned to conduct a torchlight procession on Thursday to protest the plan.
"There are so many questions and no answers," Stuberg said. "If you cover it you do not know the consequences. You are only postponing the problem." While islanders like Karlsen knew all along where the wreck lay, the authorities seem to have paid it little heed until a German engineer and amateur historian, Wolfgang Lauenstein, discovered details of its cargo in the late 1990s and the Norwegian Coast Guard pinned down its precise coordinates in 2003.
Officials in Norway believe that up to a third of the 1,857 flasks of mercury carefully stowed along the keel of the submarine now lie strewn over the seabed, many of them buried in mud, their condition unknown. Cleaning up the mess is a tricky matter. "You can't just go down and pick up the wreck with all the mercury and deposit it safely ashore," said Gunnar Gjellan, a senior official in Norway's Coastal Administration. "At least 20 to 30 percent of the mercury would remain on the bottom regardless."
Gjellan said other options — such as raising the wreck or removing the mercury using a remote-controlled mini-sub — would be too risky because they could simply spread mercury contamination.
So the plan is to pour up to 300,000 tons of sand down a vertical chute to create a burial mound. The mound would rise about 10 meters feet above the surrounding sea floor, enough to cover the highest points of the wrecked vessel. The sand would then be covered by a half-meter- thick layer of rocks to prevent erosion. "There is nothing temporary about such a solution," Gjellan asserted. "We have been told it would last forever." Walter Gibbs reported from Horten, Norway.
By Alan Cowell and Walter Gibbs
International Herald Tribune
Thursday, January 11, 2007
FEDJE, Norway: World War II was edging to a close as Kristoffer Karlsen peered from this rocky outcrop off Norway's coast and saw what he took to be a huge explosion some way out to sea. Twelve years old at the time, he could hardly have realized that he had witnessed a remarkable moment that revealed something of Adolf Hitler's intentions toward America in the closing stages of the war, and presaged a potential ecological disaster 61 years later. "I knew it was a submarine," said Karlsen, a 73-year-old retired ship's pilot, gesturing across the choppy gray expanse of the North Sea toward the site of the blast on Feb. 9, 1945. On that day, he said, he was out gathering peat with his grandmother on this island, then, like the rest of Norway, under Nazi occupation. "It was a big explosion but soon after it was calm and there was nothing to see," he said. "But in the German garrison there was a lot of activity." That is hardly surprising. The plume of water and debris, rising 60 meters, or 200 feet, into the air, was the result of a torpedo fired from a prowling British submarine, the Venturer, that struck the German sub U-864 amidships at the very start of a clandestine voyage to Japan.
As the German vessel sank in two parts into more than 120 meters of water, it took with it not only the 73 men on board, but also 65 tons of mercury for the Japanese munitions industry and, some historical accounts say, a newly developed German jet-fighter engine — technology that was supposed to give the Axis powers an edge in the closing stages of the war. Much later there were rumors — and they remained just that — that the vessel was carrying fabled Nazi gold or even Hitler's last will and testament. In 2005, a study published in Britain by Mark Felton, a naval historian, said there had been a longstanding submarine trade between Japan and Germany in aircraft and missile parts, and in information related to the development of an atomic bomb. Eric Grove, a naval historian at the University of Salford in northwest England who has studied the submarine wreck, said: "The idea was to keep the Americans tied down in the East" to draw forces away from the campaign in Europe. "Hitler was getting increasingly desperate," he said.
The long saga of the U-864, however, is far from over. Many of the canisters containing the liquid mercury are corroding. Small amounts of mercury have seeped out and Norwegian government tests around the wreck have detected slightly raised amounts of the metal in crabs and fish, the country's second biggest export after oil and gas. Kristian Hall, an environmental consultant with a Norwegian engineering firm, said the corroding canisters could produce a threat comparable to the disaster at Minamata, Japan, where 27 tons of industrial mercury compounds were released into a local bay from 1932 to 1968, causing nerve and brain damage to hundreds of townspeople whose main diet consisted of local seafood. "If it is not taken care of properly," Hall said, "it could develop into a catastrophe, with corroding canisters beginning to fail one after the other."
Last month, the authorities in Norway proposed entombing the submarine in a sarcophagus, as has been done with other underwater hazards elsewhere. But, Lisbeth Stuberg, an environmental protection officer who is one of the 630 people who live here all year, said many of the islanders want the wreck removed altogether and planned to conduct a torchlight procession on Thursday to protest the plan.
"There are so many questions and no answers," Stuberg said. "If you cover it you do not know the consequences. You are only postponing the problem." While islanders like Karlsen knew all along where the wreck lay, the authorities seem to have paid it little heed until a German engineer and amateur historian, Wolfgang Lauenstein, discovered details of its cargo in the late 1990s and the Norwegian Coast Guard pinned down its precise coordinates in 2003.
Officials in Norway believe that up to a third of the 1,857 flasks of mercury carefully stowed along the keel of the submarine now lie strewn over the seabed, many of them buried in mud, their condition unknown. Cleaning up the mess is a tricky matter. "You can't just go down and pick up the wreck with all the mercury and deposit it safely ashore," said Gunnar Gjellan, a senior official in Norway's Coastal Administration. "At least 20 to 30 percent of the mercury would remain on the bottom regardless."
Gjellan said other options — such as raising the wreck or removing the mercury using a remote-controlled mini-sub — would be too risky because they could simply spread mercury contamination.
So the plan is to pour up to 300,000 tons of sand down a vertical chute to create a burial mound. The mound would rise about 10 meters feet above the surrounding sea floor, enough to cover the highest points of the wrecked vessel. The sand would then be covered by a half-meter- thick layer of rocks to prevent erosion. "There is nothing temporary about such a solution," Gjellan asserted. "We have been told it would last forever." Walter Gibbs reported from Horten, Norway.
