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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.〔Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2009) ("La catástrofe de Cádiz de 1947 y la explosión de otros polvorines militares" ) International Association of Emergency Managers. Retrieved 5 August 2013.〕 Official figures given at the time were 150 dead, a figure that has since been reduced to 147,〔 Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2006) ("Las víctimas de la explosión de Cádiz de 1947" ) International Association of Emergency Managers. Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 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.〔("Cadiz Explosion Kills 1000" Thursday, August 21, 1947 ) ''The Examiner''. Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 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〔 Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2006) ("Un joven superviviente de la Casa Cuna" ) International Association of Emergency Managers. Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕), 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.〔 (Echevarrieta shipyards ) Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 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.〔Mueller, Michael (2007) (''Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler's Spymaster'', pp. 64–69. Naval Institute Press ) At Google Books. Retrieved 5 August 2013.〕 The explosion also destroyed the Punic or Phoenician necropolis, whose excavation works had featured in ''National Geographic'' in 1924.〔 Parodi Álvarez, Manuel Jesús (“La fundación de Cádiz por los fenicios” in NG nº 108 ) ''National Geographic'' (Spain). Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 ==Different versions== No official technical explanation was made public. The findings of the secret military inquest were never published and all the relevant documentation was later destroyed in a strange fire at the naval archive centre.〔 Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2008) ("La Explosión de Cádiz de 1947" ) Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 There was much talk of sabotage,〔 ("El archivo de Varela refuerza la tesis de que la explosión del 47 fue un sabotaje" ) ''La Voz de Cádiz''. Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 and this theory was supported by several factors, including the increased activity of the Spanish Maquis around this time, that several witnesses had seen a small boat leaving the site in the dark, and that the Spanish secret service had received information that something was about to happen in Cádiz, together with the fact that Franco did not visit the city until several months after the explosion.〔 On 26 August, the front page of ''La Vanguardia'' carried a statement from Radio Nacional de España officially accusing the BBC of an "ongoing campaign of defamation against the ''Régimen'' and the Spanish nation". The press release ended with, “One has only to contrast this deceitful behaviour of the BBC, and its hatred of Spain and its ''Régimen'', a falsehood which we have had occasion to demonstrate as such, with the clean and moral history of Spanish radio which has never yet been shown to have erred or been mistaken in any of its news items.”〔 ("Contrasta esta falaz conducta de la B.B.C. y su odio a España y a su Régimen, a lo que frecuentemente tenemos que salir de paso con pruebas fehacientes de su falsedad, con la historia limpia y moral de la Radio española, que no ha podido ser desmentida hasta la fecha ni en una sola noticia equivocada o errónea." in “Ante la falsedad de la B.B.C. de Londres, con motivo de la catástrofe de Cádiz” ) ''La Vanguardia''. Retrieved 4 August 2013.〕 The press release stated that the "mines that caused the explosion were from the 'Reds' and Russian-made, and that they were less stable than Spanish mines precisely for that reason".〔 More recent investigations have revealed that the munitions had been brought to Cádiz in 1943 as part of Franco's strategy to mine the Spanish coast from Huelva to Málaga with 16,000 mines to prevent the Allies entering Spain following Operation Torch, the November 1942 Allied victory in North Africa. The plan was abandoned following the invasion of Italy in summer 1943.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cádiz Explosion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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