Deep beneath the surface there lies a mystery that looks like it came straight out of Star
Wars.
From military vessels to valuable natural resources, here's what's been found at the
bottom of the Baltic Sea.
The Baltic Sea is the largest body of brackish water in the world, bordering Denmark, Sweden,
Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland.
It's also home to the largest amber deposits in the world.
Shards of amber often wash up on the Baltic shoreline, especially in Kaliningrad [kuh-LIN-nin-grad],
Russia, which exports 90 percent of the world's amber.
Perhaps the most famous use of Baltic amber was in the construction of the Amber Room.
Fitted with large amber panels and other ornate details, this elaborate structure was made
for King Frederick I of Prussia in Danzig, which is now called Gdansk, a city in Poland.
In 1716, the Amber Room was given to Czar Peter I of Russia, who placed it in St. Petersburg's
Catherine Palace, where it remained until 1941, when the German Wehrmacht stole it during
the invasion of the Soviet Union.
The panels of the original Amber Room are yet to be recovered, so the Soviet Union commissioned
a painstaking replica in 1979, which was finished in 2003.
The controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline runs 765 miles along the Baltic Sea floor, connecting
Russian gas with Germany and Europe.
Construction began in 2018 and was completed in September 2021, at a cost of $11 billion.
The project called for extensive underwater surveys to locate the best route for the Nord
Stream 2, as it risked disrupting fisheries, causing excessive underwater noise, and striking
shipwrecks and unexploded bombs.
But the biggest problem was political.
The United States long opposed the project, with both Democrats and Republicans citing
the risks of Europe depending on Russia for energy.
The issue came to a head in February 2022, when Russia formally recognized breakaway
regions in eastern Ukraine, which it then invaded.
The pipeline, which was being assessed by European regulators at the time, was to be
blocked by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said,
"Now it's up to the international community to react to this one-sided, incomprehensible,
and unjustified action by the Russian president."
"We will bring an end to it."
The SS Karlsruhe was a cargo ship involved in Operation Hannibal, an evacuation mission
during World War II.
It was launched in January 1945 to avoid total destruction by the Soviet Union, which was
storming toward Prussia and Berlin.
German forces used any vessels they could find to carry hordes of injured soldiers and
refugees.
Vessels ranging from cruise ships to even fishing boats were used frantically to evacuate
approximately 900,000 German civilians and 350,000 soldiers, but not everyone was so
fortunate.
In April, during the operation's fourth month, the ​​Karlsruhe departed from Pillau bound
for Copenhagen.
Carrying 1,083 passengers and a substantial load, Russian submarines torpedoed the ship
dozens of miles off the Polish coast, sending it to the seafloor and killing 970 people.
Decades later, in October 2020, a team of Polish divers located the wreck at a depth
of 290 feet.
Among the wreckage were vehicles, china, and dozens of chests, all in good condition.
Another casualty of Operation Hannibal was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945, whose
sinking is known as the worst maritime disaster in history.
The ship had been seldom used, so in order to avoid engine failure, the Captain, Friedrich
[FREE-drik] Petersen went no faster than 12 knots, which is about 14 miles per hour.
This sluggish speed gave an advantage to Russian submarines patrolling the area.
At 9:15 PM, the Gustloff was struck by three Russian torpedoes, sending it to the seabed
in just 60 minutes.
About 9,000 people died, the majority of them civilians.
There was also a sizable military element on board, with at least 1,000 personnel and
significant military equipment.
The wreck has since been visited by several diving expeditions, including Mike Fletcher
from The Sea Hunters TV documentary, in which Fletcher revealed,
"We were seeing a part of the ship that was very much like it was on the night that it
sank [...] We were caught up in a sense of eerieness, you could only see what your light
could illuminate."
Bombs are scattered along the Baltic sea floor, serving as another relic of the First and
Second World Wars.
According to one estimate, the Baltic and North Seas contain 1.6 million tons of munitions.
This vast carpet of bombs doesn't pose an immediate threat, although it is possible
for anchors to cause detonation.
The bigger concern is corrosion, which damages casings and releases harmful chemicals into
the environment.
Not all of the weapons on the Baltic floor were dropped in combat.
In 1961, large reserves of chemical weapons were dumped five miles off the Lübeck coast
in Germany.
In the ensuing decades, over 5,000 gallons of bottled poisons such as chloric gas and
laughing gas have dispersed across the seabed.
If any of those bottles break, it could be a serious health hazard.
In 1994, the MS Estonia passenger ferry sank off the coast of Uto Island, Finland, resting
at a depth of about 260 feet.
The catastrophe killed 852 people, making it among the worst peacetime disasters in
maritime history.
A 1997 investigation conducted by Estonia, Finland, and Sweden found that the disaster
started when the bow door locks failed to open during a severe storm, causing serious
flooding.
Then in 2020, a pair of Swedish documentarians revealed that they found several holes in
the ship's hull, casting doubt over the official version of events.
However, their investigation was faced with legal action, as the wreck is classed as a
graveyard that must not be disturbed.
Nevertheless, the documentary led to another official report, which determined that the
holes were too small to have sunk the Estonia in one hour.
It was determined that the newly discovered damage was likely caused by hard contact with
the seabed, which was found to be unusually rocky.
In June 2011, a team of Swedish divers produced a sonar image of a strange object resembling
the Millennium Falcon, the spaceship from Star Wars.
The "Ocean X" team located it in the Gulf of Bothnia, which separates Sweden and Finland
in the northern Baltic Sea.
After another visit to the anomaly, Ocean X leader Peter Lindberg claimed to have found
an entrance on top of it.
He noted that it was surrounded by charred, sooty rocks, suggesting that these were the
detritus of entry into Earth's atmosphere.
As news of the anomaly gained media attention, experts were quick to dismiss Lindberg's conclusions.
For example, Dan Fornari, marine geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
noted,
"I would not place too much confidence in any interpretation until a better processing
is done and the details of the type of sonar and particulars are provided [...] The whole
thing is pretty unbelievable, frankly."
"It's definitely something, at least."
Another maritime tragedy of the Second World War occurred in May 1945, when the RAF sank
the SS Cap Arcona, killing thousands of concentration camp victims.
Adolf Hitler had died just a few days earlier when the Cap Arcona traveled out of the Bay
of Lubeck in the Baltic Sea.
The British were informed that the ship was carrying members of the SS, which proved to
be true.
However, these individuals were far outnumbered by the scores of concentration camp survivors
who may have thought that their suffering was finally over.
Armed with this incomplete intelligence, five squadrons of Hawker Typhoon fighter bombers
approached the Cap Arcona as she left the German coast.
Commander Derek Stevenson recalled to The Independent in 2000,
"We had been in action for days blowing up railways, refineries, and ships.
For us, this was just another job, but knowing the SS were on board made us all the more
determined to destroy the ships.
We came in at 9,000 feet, dived to 3,000 feet and I fired all eight rockets and every cannon
round at one ship."
The Cap Arcona was decimated by this heavy fire, plunging it into the Baltic's icy waters.
When it became clear that thousands of innocent victims had died, the British ordered the
local German population to dig mass graves for them.
The Vasa is a 17th-century ship that sank just 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage.
She remained in Stockholm harbor until 1961, when she was salvaged.
The Vasa is now housed in a museum and is among Sweden's most popular tourist attractions.
She was built in 1627 and had impressive proportions, measuring 226 feet long and over 165 feet
high.
She weighed 1,200 tons and had 10 sails, 64 cannons, and 120 tons of ballast.
There was, however, a problem.
Captain Söfring Hansson had 30 men run up and down the deck, causing the ship to roll
so badly that Söfring halted the exercise, afraid that it would sink the ship in the
quay.
Under pressure from the king, and against his better judgment, Söfring ordered the
ship to sail.
On August 10, 1628, the Vasa began her maiden voyage before a crowd of Swedes and foreign
visitors.
Just 4,265 feet into her journey, a gust of wind caused the Vasa to tip, allowing water
to gush through the gun ports.
Within minutes, the ship sank to the seabed 100 feet below.
Diving teams managed to visit the wreck using a rudimentary diving bell, a technology that
wouldn't become practical until the late 1700s.
However, they managed to salvage Vasa's cannon, which would be the last reclamation in over
300 years.
In 1958, it was announced on Swedish radio that the Vasa had been located in Stockholm
harbor.
And on April 24, 1961, the ship emerged from the depths in front of a bustling international
crowd.
"So, we have the world's most unsuccessful 17th century warship on display as an example
of what not to do in the future."
According to German maritime expert Thomas Dehling, there are about 1,000 shipwrecks
in German Baltic waters alone, which cover less than 10 percent of the sea's area.
One of the heaviest clusters of wrecks can be found in Gdansk Bay off the Polish coast.
From 1941 to 1945, over 20 German U-boats were sunk in this area, many of them destroyed
by British mines.
But U-boats weren't always sunk by enemy fire.
Sometimes, the cause was human error.
On February 24, 1943, U-649 was engaged in a training session off the coast of the Polish
town of Łeba when it crashed into U-232, another German U-boat.
While the U-232 survived the clash, the U-649 was so severely damaged that 35 of its crew
perished.
However, the U-232's luck was short-lived; on July 9, 1943, she was destroyed in the
North Atlantic Ocean with all 46 hands lost.
Then in 2020, a team of divers found the wreck 230 feet beneath the surface.
Lead diver Tomasz Trojanowicz noted to The First News,
"The large number of submarine wrecks at the bottom of the Baltic is no surprise.
It is where the largest ports were and the surrounding area is where [...] training fleets
were located."
Numerous planes have crashed into the Baltic sea, many of them military crafts.
In July 2012, for example, a Junkers JU88 was pulled from the sea floor off Rugen Island
by the German Military Historical Museum.
Spokesman Captain Sebastian Bangert told the Associated Press,
"Right now there is someone who just knows that their grandfather or great grandfather
went missing in the war, to give that person closure is our goal.
And for us as a history museum, the aircraft is the only way to convey the information."
Described by the Royal Air Force Museum as "the most versatile German combat aircraft
in World War Two," the JU88 was used for a variety of missions, including bombing, reconnaissance,
and anti-ship actions.
The 16,000 JU88s that were built during the war have been reduced to just a handful today,
so the discovery on the Baltic seafloor was an exciting occasion.
Just to the west of Rugen island, off the coast of Gedser in Denmark, there rests the
wreck of a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress.
The American bomber was returning from a mission over Ankum, Germany when it was struck by
flak cannon fire on August 4, 1944.
The pilot managed to escape the plane, but the other eight men in the crew perished.