After 80 years, Nazi ships see light of day: Removal of sunken German fleet from Danube in Serbia has begun

Photo: Instagram/vesicg/Predrag Mitic

Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic shared today the news that the operation to remove German WW2-era ships from the Danube in eastern Serbia successfully started on Tuesday.

Recommended

He said that the first batch of Nazi warships that were part of Germany's Danube and Black Sea fleet has been pulled out of the river near Prahovo. The fleet numbered about 200 ships that the Germans sunk in 1944 in a failed attempt to stop the Soviet fleet that was progressing along the Danube.

"In the coming months, we will remove 21 ships that have been at the bottom of the Danube in Serbia for 80 years. In the next phase, about 80 ships will be taken out of the river," said Vesic.

He added that every ship will be inspected in detail in case there are any explosive devices left in them, and that this process will take ten days.

The minister also published a photo of one ship, which shows how many explosive devices remained there.

He recalled that the Red Army removed some of the ships at the end of 1944 to clear the path for itself, and then again in the spring of 1945, in order to repurpose some of the sunken German ships and put them in service of its own fleet. The Red Army needed this as it was finishing the war.

Since then, for almost eight decades, nothing had been done to pull out the rest of the Nazi ships.

"When this process is complete, we will let the public see a part of the sunken Nazi fleet, which has been making navigation on this part of the Danube difficult for eight decades," concluded Vesic.

(Telegraf Biznis)