Cleaning up the Baltic Sea from chemical weapons has been a debate for several decades now, but no one gets things moving.
Thousands of tons of chemicals
Nazi Germany's military arsenal had accumulated over 300 thousand tons of aircraft bombs of different caliber, missiles, mines, and grenades with chemical cartridges. Nazi Germany’s military had special machines that could quickly contaminate large areas with toxic chemicals.
Germany had accumulated large quantities of chemical explosives with yperite, lucite, adamite, phosgene, and diphosgene cartridges. Such hazardous materials as sarin, tabun, and soman, whose production started towards the end of the war, had been also used. On the whole, 14 kinds of chemicals had been used during the WW II.
Information about disposal of chemical weapons had been classified for a long time. Currently, Russia has partly declassified documents of chemical weapon disposal. Similar documents in England and the United States have been granted confidentiality for 50 years, but in 1997 it was extended for another 20 years till 2017.
According to the recommendation of scientists, after winning the war and dividing the chemical weapons among themselves, the allies had to dispose them in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 nautical miles from the Faroe Islands.
England and the United States got 260 thousand tons of German chemical weapons. About 60 thousand tons of chemical weapons had been found in the eastern part of Germany which at that time had been occupied by the Soviet Union.
To the German port of Volgast, chemical weapons were shipped in 42 rail echelons and loaded onto 42 transport ships. As the U.S. and British military convoy left the Skagerrak Channel, a huge storm was coming. Fearing that the Atlantic convoy ships would begin to drift and struck the coastal cliffs, they had been instructed to sink the vessels.
Their burial sites are located at the depths of Norway near Arendal, in Skagerrak, near the Sweden port of Lysekil, near the Danish Fiun Island, and near Skagen. Here, 150 and 200 meters deep, are buried over 140 thousand tons of chemical weapons. About 120 thousand tons of chemical weapons had been burried in La Mancha.
Bombs in fishermen‘s nets
The commission composed of three countries allowed the Soviet Union to sink 35 thousand tons of weapons, while the other 25 thousand tons could be transported.
Deprived after the war, the Soviet Union took part of better ships to itself and strung barrels of chemical weapons directly into the sea. Some of it sank to the Danish island of Bornholm, some were buried at the Lithuanian and Latvian coast between Klaipeda, Liepaja and Ventspils.
Now Russia claims that the chemical weapons scattered in the wider Baltic Sea region pose fewer risks than the vessels packed and concentrated with weapons buried by the allies.
Almost 400 cases have been recorded where Danish fishermen raised barrels and tanks in their nets, containing yperite or shells loaded with hazardous materials.
In the eastern Baltic region, the Latvian trawler "Jurmala" fishermen also caught an aviation bomb containing yperite. Half of the crew had been taken to the hospital.
It is believed that both the Danish and Latvian fishermen's nets caught the chemical weapons which the Soviet Union dropped into the Baltic Sea. Norwegian fishermen have also caught some hazardous chemicals, which shows that both the English and American buried weapons are dangerous.
Military archives hold records of what the Soviet Union buried in the Baltic Sea in 1945. The number of discharged weapons is the following: 71 469 aviation bombs with yperite, 14,258 chloracetophene bombs, 8027 adamsite bombs, 408,565 artillery projectiles with yperite, 34,592 chemical land mines, 10,420 chemical smoke mines, 1004 containers with 1,506 tons of yperite, 8429 barrels with 1030 tons of adamsite and divinilchlorarsine , 169 tons of containers of cyanide salt, chloroarsine and cyanarsine. The Soviet Union also sank 7,860 boxes of the cyclone gas in the Baltic Sea. The cyclone gas was used in 300 concentration camps to poison prisoners in gas chambers.
Cemetery near Lithuania
Various scholars have been long arguing that the chemical weapons buried in the Baltic Sea and the Straits of Denmark in 1945, are beginning to spread into the marine environment.
After examining the weapon disposal areas in the Strait of Skagerrak with a special deep-water equipment, it had been found out that 20 nautical miles from the Swedish port of Lysekil, at a depth of 208 meters, lies the sunken ship with chemical weapons. It is quite rusty, so the hazardous chemicals may begin draining away at any moment. The examination of the surrounding seabed soil samples showed that the soil was contaminated with the hazardous chemical sarin.
Interestingly, the Straits appear to be scattered with bombs, shells and barrels containing hazardous materials. They are buried in the area of 10 square kilometers, from 200 to 215 meters deep. However, the Skagerrak Strait is not considered the most dangerous place. It‘s the chemical weapon cemetery at the Bornholm Island. At a depth of 92 meters, five ships with chemical weapons had been found here. Chemical weapon disposal sites were studied by the scientists of the Russian vessel “Professor Stockman” and the Polish vessel “Doktor Liubecki”. Their representatives argued that the sunken ships with chemical weapons have already been severely rusted. The worst thing is that instead of putting the chemical weapons at their holds, they were left on decks and later scattered around.
One of the threatening factors is that the waters around the Bornholm Island are especially fishy, and the fishermen from Denmark, Sweden, and Eastern Baltic countries fish there.
No information is available on chemical weapon disposal in the least studied Lithuanian and Latvian waters. It‘s been reported that chemical weapons in Lithuania are buried from 84 to 126 meters deep. However, the precise burial place of these chemicals is unknown.
Few years ago, Lithuanian government appealed to the international organizations for help in carrying out thorough studies, but nobody seems to be doing anything.
The research vessels “Professor Stockman” and “Doktor Liubecki” have also explored the waters of the Gulf of Gdansk in Poland and the Kaliningrad region. Although the Soviet Union officially didn’t bury chemical weapons there, some of it had still been detected. It is possible that the Baltic Sea hides a much larger area of buried chemical weapons than it had been previously expected.
Cleaning the Baltic Sea from chemical weapons would require laborious work. The chemical weapon cleaning program “Skagen” was developed this year. Based on the program, clearing up the Skagen Bay alone of the chemical weapons would require from 3 to 5 years and about three billion U.S. dollars. So far, the program hasn’t been launched. In order for it to be implemented, it is required that the United States and England declassified documents on the weapon disposal sites.
Location: chemical weapons were buried tens of nautical miles way from Lithuanian and Latvian sea coast.
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