German City to Evacuate as 2-Ton Bomb Is Defused
Nearly half the residents of the German city of Koblenz are being forced to leave their homes this weekend after the discovery of a 2-ton, unexploded World War II bomb, marking the biggest bomb-related evacuation in Germany’s post-war history.
Some 45,000 residents of the Rhineland city—including those in a jail, two hospitals and several nursing homes and hotels—are under orders to evacuate by Sunday, when a bomb-disposal squad plans to defuse the 10-foot bomb dropped by British fliers, most likely in a 1944 bombing raid. Found lodged in the bed of the ebbing Rhine River earlier this week, the bomb has the explosive potential to create a crater 60 feet wide and 16 feet deep and demolish a city block, authorities said.
Six and a half decades since the end of World War II, undetonated aerial bombs from the war are still routinely discovered across Germany, relics of the Allies’ nearly five-year bombing campaign aimed at crippling German industry and infrastructure and withering domestic support for Hitler’s war. Roughly 2,000 tons of bombs, artillery shells and other World War II munitions are discovered in Germany every year, officials estimate, by construction workers, amateur diggers or even children at play.
But in one of the driest Novembers on record, Rhine River levels have dropped dramatically, revealing an unusually large trove of unexploded bombs in its bed. In addition to the massive British bomb, bomb experts on Sunday will also dispose of a 275-pound U.S. bomb and a German smoke grenade found nearby this week. Officials say they expect to discover more devices in coming days.
The British bomb in Koblenz, now covered by just 16 inches of water, is thought to have been dropped in the night of Nov. 6, 1944, when Royal Air Force planes blanketed Koblenz with bombs and destroyed much of the inner city. By the war’s end, air raids had deployed some 80% of the city.