Today at 11.00 the divers of the Operating Group Underwater (GOS) of the Command Submarine and Incursori (COMSUBIN) of the Navy have concluded the underwater operations destroying the danger explosive device found on the beach of Fano last 13 March.
The Navy divers had already intervened jointly with the Artificieri of the Army, at the disposal of the Prefecture of Pesaro and Urbino, to move and secure the remnant of war - a 6-pound English MK500 aircraft bomb - equipped with a particular device trigger with a delay of arming of 144 hours which made it a serious danger for the nearby hospital in Fano. After a long, meticulous and exhausting nocturnal activity, the bomb was removed from the discovery site and transported to the open sea by the Navy personnel at a safe distance from land installations and maritime communication routes, ensuring the regular resumption of social activities of the small town.
"Intervening on an explosive device of such large dimensions and triggered with a timed device is very special, the adrenaline is felt and the attention we give to every minimum action is always maximum", declared the Captain of Corvette Therry Trevisan, head of the COMSUBIN team in charge of the blasting, "however we did not have time to dispose of the emotions of that night because, once the bomb was repositioned in the safety area, we returned to Grado to continue an important reclamation of explosive devices found inside an Austrian wreck of the First World War. At the end of the 144 hours, the estimated maximum time of arming of the device found in Fano, we returned this morning to the Marche to finish the job and destroy the plane bomb that, in the past few days, had made many people lose sleep. The underwater operations conducted this morning were conducted with extreme marine weather conditions, which the divers of the Underwater Operating Group are able to deal with thanks to specific training ".
The activity just ended confirms the high level of professionalism that our Armed Forces are able to make available to the community in perfect synergy between forces and with a view to effective inter-ministerial and inter-agency collaboration.
This intervention represents one of the many activities that the Marine Underwater Departments lead to safeguarding public safety even in inland waters, as reiterated by the Decree of the Ministry of Defense of 28 February 2017, carrying out high-risk diving operations aimed at restoring safety conditions of bathing and surfing.
Last year the Navy divers have recovered and destroyed a total of 22.000 explosive remnants of war residuals, while from 1 January 2018 have already neutralized 1.360 from the Italian seas, rivers and lakes, not counting the bullets of caliber inferior to the 12,7 mm they are removed and destroyed.
With a history of 169 years behind, the Palombari represent national excellence in the field of underwater activities, being able to conduct diving work up to 1.500 meters of depth and in any operational scenarios, within the scope of its school tasks (relief to the crews of the underwater divers and the neutralization of explosive ordnance found in maritime environments) and in favor of the community.
For these peculiarities, divers from other Armed Forces and Armed Forces of the State may be formed exclusively by the Comsubin School Group, which, through dedicated training courses, enables them to conduct bottom dives according to their respective skills.
INSIGHTS ON THE UNDERWATER OPERATING GROUP (GOS)
The Underwater Operating Group, employed by the Navy Submarine Command and Raiders, has acquired over time the ability to operate under the surface of the sea up to 1.500 meters with underwater vehicles and up to 300 meters with humans. The missions assigned by the country to the GOS are the following:
- conduct any kind of underwater operation aimed at the research, recovery and work intervention up to the maximum depth allowed by the many diving equipment available (any type of self-contained breathing apparatus, integrated deep diving systems, rigid articulated diving suits, mini-submersible, wire-guided robots and autonomous high technology );
- to rescue the crews of submarines in difficulty through the special equipment loaded on the Navi deployed by Comsubin or through the Submarine Parachute Assistance Group (SP) transported in the area of the accident by helicopters or military aircraft;
- carry out the reclamation of explosive devices of any nature, conventional or improvised (EOD / IEDD - Explosive Ordnance Disposal / Improvised Explosive Device Disposal) that are found in maritime contexts. By maritime context we mean the sea, the lakes and the rivers, on board the Naval Units, in the port infrastructures and in works founded in water.
With a history of 169 years behind it, the GOS is the excellence in the field of National Defense in the context of underwater operations and extends its capabilities to numerous activities in favor of the community, especially in the health, scientific and social fields. Thousands of interventions aimed at the reclamation of Italian coasts from explosive remnants of war and those carried out to conduct hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatments for civilian patients.
Because of these peculiarities the divers of the other Armed Forces and Armed Corps of the State can be trained exclusively by the COMSUBIN Schools Group which, through dedicated training courses, enables them to conduct shallow dives according to their respective competences.
The Underwater Operating Group represents a strong point, as well as an element of pride for the Navy, in fact, thanks to its capabilities and close collaboration with the various Dicasteries and State Agencies, the GOS is used in Antarctica to coordinate all the dives that they are carried out within the scope of the Italian shipments organized by ENEA, in the activities of research and protection of underwater archaeological heritage or in support of the Ministry of Economic Development regarding the inspection activities of the plants and underwater structures of the hydrocarbon extraction activities off -shore.
The Divers are often called to operate in complex underwater operations of Civil Protection, a peculiarity that makes this component of the Navy a true dual use tool at the service of the community.
The most recent operations conducted by the Comsubin divers were:
- the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia passenger ship (2012);
- the collapse of the pilot tower of Genoa following the demolition caused by the Mercantile Jolly Nero (2013), an operation for which the War Flag of Comsubin was decorated with a Silver Medal to the Valori di Marina;
- the underwater interventions of Lampedusa (October 2013) and Central Mediterranean (April 2015) resulting from the most dramatic shipwrecks in recent years. In particular, this last operation saw Comsubin involved in the search and recovery of corpses at 370 meters of depth and the coordination of all activities aimed at recovering the entire wreck from the fund (2015-2016). For this operation the Gold Medal of Civil Merit was awarded to the Navy and Naval Forces Flag of War;
- the removal and neutralization of over 22.000 dangerous explosive devices, war residuals, found in Italian seas, lakes and rivers during the 2017;
- the identification and recovery of the black box of the Eurofighter Typhoon of the Italian Air Force, impacted last September in the waters in front of Terracina.