Cádiz Explosion
The Cádiz Explosion was a military accident which occurred at 9:45 pm, on 18 August 1947 at a storage depot in the Base de Defensas Submarinas (Submarine Defence Base) in Cádiz, Spain, when some 1,737 sea mines, torpedoes and depth charges (of a total of 2,228 distributed in two depots), containing 200 tonnes of TNT and amatol, exploded for unknown reasons.Official figures given at the time were 150 dead, a figure that has since been reduced to 147, and 5,000 injured, but other sources refer to much higher figures given the extension of the explosion and the populated districts and types of buildings destroyed.As well as the actual military facilities destroyed, the populated districts of San Severiano and San José were seriously damaged. Among the buildings totally wrecked there were the Asilo de Ancianos (old age peoples' home), the Casa Cuna orphanage (41 deaths), a nearby factory (100 workers killed), the Madre De Dios Hospital (no figures given). The Echevarrieta shipyard, right next to the storage depot, and which employed 2,500 workers, only lost 27 men because there were fewer workers on the nightshift. This shipyard had signed a lucrative contract in the mid-1920s to supply the German Navy with German-designed torpedoes and had also built a U-Boat for testing and training.The explosion also destroyed the Punic or Phoenician necropolis, whose excavation works had featured in National Geographic in 1924.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Cádiz Explosion (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).Cádiz Explosion
Avenida de la Marina, Cádiz Brunete
Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places Show on map
Geographical coordinates (GPS)
| Latitude | Longitude |
|---|---|
| N 36.5239 ° | E -6.2828 ° |
Address
Avenida de la Marina
11007 Cádiz, Brunete
Andalusia, Spain
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