You can sweat submerged in water. If not physically, one can psychologically sweat before the horns of an underwater mine or the nose of an aviation bomb asleep under the sea.
When you get to the vestige of a past war knowing the danger that its rusty metal shell contains, “something does sweat & rdquor ;, ironically Juan Pedro Sauraa 49-year-old from Cartagena, an explosives deactivator diver by profession.
Lieutenant Saura, second in command of the Anti-Mine Measures Diving Unit (UBMCM) that the Navy has based in Cartagena, belongs to a small group of enrolled in an underwater battle endless. It is fought against weapons from almost a century ago that lurk today at the bottom of the sea, and also against flares and other modern explosives that also carry the currents.
The Navy TEDAX divers have already passed the 325 performances recorded since 2006, and have extracted, neutralized or detonated in that period more than 600 explosive devices of all kinds. The largest discoveries occur in the Mediterranean, the most dangerous Spanish sea in this matter, followed by a portion of the Atlantic in the Bay of Cádiz.
The pump yard
“In a patio, when there is wind, the leaves pile up in a corner. And the Mediterranean is like a patio& rdquor ;, explains the anti-mine diver and ship lieutenant Rafael Carreno, Head of Operations of the Cartagena unit. Storms and currents corner aviation projectiles from the Civil War and orinque mines from World War II, which once floated anchored at medium depth, placed by the Germans to prevent access to the port of Marseille.
Winter storms leave a crop each spring, which crops up in summer, when there are more sport fishermen who can see a foreign object and report it. In the western Mediterranean, the corner of the lost bombs is formed by the gulfs of León and Roses, Cape Creus and the Balearic Islands. But explosives also appear, for example, against Barcelona. “90% of the mines that we neutralize are found on the Catalan coast,” says the Lieutenant Commander Victor Romerothe head of the UBMCM.
On August 26, 2019, Juan Pedro Saura was astonished by the public in Barceloneta when he returned from neutralizing an aviation bomb in the water, one of those that in the Civil War was called “Catalan & rdquor;” 70 kilos of TNT. “There were so many people… It seemed that all of Barcelona was facing the beach & rdquor ;, she recalls.
There are numerous interventions that these divers have to carry out between Catalonia, Cartagena and the Balearic Islands of the total of 274 that were recorded by the four units of divers that the Navy has between 2010 and December 2020, and without counting those of 2022. Of those 274 bounded in For a decade, 124 have been in the Mediterranean arc and 112 in the stretch of coast between Almería and Huelva controlled by divers based in Cádiz. The other two units, in Ferrol and the Canary Islands, point to 27 and 11 findings respectively.
active explosive
And what they find is varied, but almost always lethal: orinque mines capable of sinking a ship105-millimeter artillery shells, or larger than 155, mortar grenades, bombs dropped by Italian aviation and the Condor Legion near Valencia and Menorca, or modern flares, and even a lost Iris T air-to-air missile in the waters of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
The enemy is not always an isolated object. The greatest discoveries have been made on the Barcelona coast of Garraf, in Cala Cortina in Cartagena and in the Cádiz areas of Torregorda and Camposoto. In the Garraf, in May 2018, they neutralized 65 field artillery shells of 37 millimeters, ten of 70, six of 100 caliber, 25 mortar grenades, three hand grenades and 15 fuzes.
“On the Catalan coast, at the end of the Civil War, the Republicans threw a lot of ammunition into the sea so that the other side wouldn’t get it,” explains Saura, who still remembers the submerged arsenal they found in Sitges in the summer of 2013. : “They warned us about a projectile, we cleaned the bottom and others appeared; and we cleaned more and more and more appeared…& rdquor;.
In Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona) and Sancti Petri (Cádiz), there were only three days left until last Christmas Eve when the divers made their last catches: a 55-kilo German aviation bomb and a 105-mm projectile. On the Cádiz coast, the main accumulation took place in 1947. That year 1,600 charges from a powder magazine exploded in the city. The Franco regime stored them in case it had to mine the Strait of Gibraltar one day. The explosion killed 152 neighborss. In full mourning, the authorities ordered another large arsenal to be thrown into the sea.
Both wanted to get rid of the threat, perhaps without knowing that it is still active under the sea. “The main explosive in a bomb is military, very stable, it is barely affected by the passage of time -explains Captain Romero-. Another thing is the initiation explosive; that one is very sensitive, and you almost always find it damaged & rdquor ;. A collision with a fishing net, a yacht anchor or a diver’s hand can end in tragedy.
sacred rules
What the commander of the UBMCM divers says has to do with the enormous danger of these missions, and that they try to circumvent by being strict with the rules of their singular trade. The first: “do not touch the device, just mark it & rdquor ;, orders Romero.
The second is distance, because these divers don’t wear the thick suits of land-based TEDAXs, and have often seen the pitiful number of minnows killed by the shock wave of an explosion at sea. “It impacts the hollow cavities of an organism, the lungs, the viscera… You see them floating in the water. They seem intact, but they are bursting inside…”, says Carreño.
“In the water there is no protective equipment; the only protection is distance & rdquor;, emphasizes his commander. And more before an underwater mine, a sphere one meter in diameter with 200 kilos of TNT, like the one that threatened a beach in Dénia. Or another similar one, weighing 150 kilos, in Montjoi (Girona), near the shore and the restaurant El Bulli by Ferran Adrià.
“They are difficult to see if they are covered by algae, but the mines are unmistakable; their horns give them away& rdquor ;, explains Romero. AND those bumps are especially dangerous. “It’s like a crystal glass covered in lead,” says Carreño. inside is the electrolyte that will initiate ignition by contact. It is very delicate & rdquor ;. And it is not the only problem: “You try to open the shell and it is very damaged it falls apart…”
watch out for the fuze
When faced with a discovery, five divers usually intervene, but only two go down to the bottom, and when the explosive has to be handled “only one, to minimize the risk & rdquor;says Carreno.
And in that solitude, sometimes deep where sunlight is already scarce, danger is perceived more. Not only the one with the bomb, but also the one with narcosis, a fizzy binge that can appear from 40 meters and lead the diver to death.
“Right away the metal fills with rose hips, it looks like garbage & rdquor ;, describes Saura. And under that crust of marine life that camouflages a bomb, you have to look for the fuse, because “you never know how the fuse is. You do know about the explosive: it always works & rdquor ;, she adds.
The fuze is also key in the most frequent finds, aviation bombs like those of Nazi planes, the SD50, with 17 kilos of TNT, or “the bold ones & rdquor; that they unloaded, every day at least two or three, for example against Valencia.
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The sea spits out the ammunition. These divers affirm it from experience. Today it is the Black Sea that has the greatest danger of floating mines, due to the war in Ukraine. Someday, sailors like these will have to dig them up from the bottom. In Europe they do not lack work. World War II plagued the Baltic, and dredgers from the North Sea often find bombs, as happened here with the dredging of the port of Valencia for the America’s Cup.
“I know I won’t get rich, but at least I won’t get bored,” says Carreño. This 30-year-old from Almería says it with the same calm with which he summarizes that the job consists of not forgetting that “human error is more treacherous than bombs & rdquor ;. A law that Saura applies “like an old dog & rdquor; on every dive: “An explosive can never be trusted. You never know if there is a millimeter left for a rusty spring to come loose and…”