It is Sunday morning when the catastrophe takes its course. June 22, 1969, slightly cloudy. Shortly after 8 a.m., the fire brigade in Hanover received an emergency call:A goods wagon was on fire in Linden station. The emergency services did not yet know that the train was used to transport ammunition for the Bundeswehr. Car number 35 contains 216 grenades for self-propelled howitzers. The inferno begins a little later, just as the rescue services have arrived:the charge, with a total weight of 15 tons, explodes. Twelve people, eight firefighters and four federal railway workers die. 40 people are injured, fire engines are riddled with splinters. The damage is around 40 million Deutschmarks.
Technician surprised by high temperatures
The area looks like a "crater landscape", writes the "Frankfurter Rundschau". The search for the cause does not produce a clear result. The wagons are destroyed, the investigation complicated. The fire was probably caused by an unresolved brake. At the Bundesbahn, the technicians had not expected that such high temperatures could arise from a pulled brake. In a simulated experiment in Minden (North Rhine-Westphalia), reported "Die Zeit" in 1970, temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius were measured. "We didn't know that until today," the newspaper quoted a spokesman for the materials testing office as saying. The grenades already exploded at a temperature of just over 200 degrees.
"Missing the public"
The cause of the accident was probably a brake that was not released. (Screenshot)The crisis management of the railways and the Bundeswehr is causing massive criticism. "Images like this misled the West German public for days after the catastrophe. Explosives experts and newspapers everywhere reported how harmless the explosives were that had shredded people and material on Sunday morning," writes "Der Spiegel" on June 30, 1969 Before the explosion, several marshals had reported that one of the train's cars was sparking. When it stopped in Linden, the car was already on fire. After the tragedy, new rules apply to the transport of ammunition by rail:mudguards on the wagon floor and warning signs are introduced.
A funeral service was held by the fire service for relatives and invited guests on Saturday. The event is not public. A minute's silence was observed at 8.09 a.m., the time when the fire engine's fire engine arrived at Linden station.