German warships from World War II emerge in Danube river amid drought

Weeks of scorching drought across Europe have seen water levels across rivers and lakes plunge to never-before-seen levels. As the continent struggles to deal with its latest crisis, the drought has led to some eerie outcomes, apart from the obvious calamitous impact that severe water shortage always has on its surroundings. 

Notably, as a result of the drought, one of Europe’s mightiest rivers, the Danube which originates towards the west of the continent, in Germany, and passes through the heart of the continent before draining into the Black Sea at Ukraine, has fallen to its lowest levels in about a century. This has exposed the hulks of several old sunken German warships, many of them still explosives-laden, that went down during World War II. 

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Images of these ghostly relics can be seen below:

These vessels, which were a part of Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet were sunk in the Danube in 1944 as they retreated from the advancing Soviet forces, and they still hamper river traffic and pose a hazard when water levels are low.

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However, the present drought has exposed at least 20 such warships largely concentrated around the eastern Serbian town of Prahovo, with many still containing tons of ammunition and explosives inside. Some of these ships,  still possess turrets, command bridges, and broken masts, and their emergence in this drought has narrowed down the navigable sections in the river to a mere 100 metres in some parts, as river traffic across vital arteries in Europe struggles to deal with the impact of the drought. 

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In a similar discovery owing to the drought, a 450kg World War II bomb was discovered in the dwindling waters of River Po, near the northern Italian village of Borgo Virgilio. 3000 people had to be evacuated and military experts called in to defuse the bomb which was still active and a catastrophe waiting to happen.