Lake Garda WWII Devices Await Detonation After Discovery
The “D-Day” for the detonation of the hundreds of World War II-era devices discovered this spring in the stretch of Lake Garda between Punta Grò di Sirmione and the Peschiera del Garda shoreline is approaching. This is a certainty, as the news has been confirmed by the Prefettura di Brescia.
Yesterday, a summit was scheduled to take place—organized by the same prefect Alberto De Muro—to which the mayors of Sirmione and Peschiera, Maurizio Ferrari and Umberto Chincarini, were invited, along with a delegation from the Comando Subacquei Incursori della Marina Militare. These Navy divers have been scouring Garda’s waters for over a year.
However, at the last minute, as reported by the Prefettura, the meeting was postponed due to a deployment issue involving the military.
Methods of intervention and investigations
Nevertheless, this is only a delay of a few days. Within a week, the Underwater Operations Group of the Navy plans to outline how they intend to recover the devices, bring them to the surface, and neutralize them.
Alternatively— a very evocative but practically unlikely hypothesis — is to explode them in the same waters.
The divers have been in our waters for over a year now, since the NATO Command announced the coordinates where the infamous six laser-guided bombs — dropped from a jet on a war mission in Kosovo on the afternoon of Friday, April 16, 1999 — were believed to be located.
This search has now lasted a year without any results.
The discovery of an arsenal and prohibition orders
What happened? Instead of discovering the sophisticated NATO devices, the divers uncovered an arsenal just a few meters deep off Punta Grò.
This prompted the Port Authority of Verona and Desenzano to issue two ordinances banning navigation and any surface activities, including fishing. The ban is still in effect.
The matter has also been addressed by Senator Massimo Wilde, a member of the Lega party, through numerous parliamentary questions (which have yet to receive a response), mainly to understand if and for how long this ban might continue, given its potential damages to the tourism image of Lake Garda.
Military authorities have so far maintained the strictest confidentiality. It was only confirmed that the Prefect of Brescia had issued an invitation to decide on the safety plan for detonating the wartime devices.
“I believe that the Prefect of Brescia is not the appropriate authority to initiate this recovery plan; rather, it should be the Prefect of Verona,” states Hon. Umberto Chincarini, the Lega mayor of Peschiera, reached by our newspaper in Rome. “I also do not understand the sudden postponement of the meeting scheduled for today (yesterday for those reading, ed.). Clearly, this is a situation that needs clarification: are these NATO jet bombs or World War II devices?”