The extraction of the sunken German fleet from the Danube has begun

Yesterday, we pulled out the first Nazi river boat that belonged to the Danube and Black Sea Fleet of the Kriegsmarine from the Danube near Prahovo, wrote the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic on his Instagram profile.

- In the coming months, we will remove 21 ships that have been at the bottom of the Danube on the waterway through Serbia for the last eighty years. In the next phase, around eighty more ships will be taken out - Vesic stated.

The Nazis sank around 200 of their own ships in 1944 in order to stop the Soviet river fleet from entering Danube.

Every ship that is taken out undergoes a detailed inspection with the dismantling of the explosive devices that remained in them. This usually lasts ten days. The pictures of the first ship show how many explosive devices are left on the ships. All this was laying on the bottom of the Danube for eight decades, the minister wrote.

The Red Army removed some of the ships in order to free the waterway by the end of 1944 and then in the spring of 1945 in order to make certain ships fit for navigation in their river flotilla, which they needed to end the war. Since then, for almost eight decades, nothing has been done about taking out the Kriegsmarine river fleet.

- When this process is completed, we will allow the public to see part of the sunken Nazi fleet, which has been making navigation on this part of the Danube difficult for eight decades - said Vesic.

Ministarstvo građevinarstva, saobraćaja i infrastrukture Republike Srbije

Ministry of Construction

Transport and Infrastructure

Goran Vesicć

Kriegsmarine

removing Nazi ships from the Danube