Like other industrial centers in the country, Pardubice did not escape Allied bombs at the end of the Second World War. Although the targets of the raids were important industrial enterprises and transport arteries that served the German army, civilians were also often victims of the bombs. The first raid by British aircraft on Pardubice on the night of July 21-22, 1944, destroyed a mostly residential area on the eastern edge of the city due to a navigation error. 44 civilians were killed.
Pardubice had three important strategic goals – Fanta’s mineral oil refinery (today’s Paramo), the airport and the railway. They were hit during the second air raid on August 24, which aimed directly at the refinery, the railway station and the surrounding industrial area. Also during the third air raid on December 28, bombs fell on the refinery and damaged it so much that it did not produce until the end of the war. However, the bombs also killed or injured hundreds of people and left parts of the city in ruins.
American and British bombers dropped more than 11,000 bombs on the city in 1944. According to wartime statistics, at least 13 percent of the bombs failed to explode on impact. The Germans have largely removed unexploded ordnance, but it may still be in bombed locations. For example, in 1995, an unexploded bomb was found on the premises of the Paramo refinery. In June 2019, Pardubice City Hall therefore created a map of places where unexploded ordnance could be found. If an unexploded bomb is found, up to 10,000 people have to be evacuated. “According to the estimate of pyrotechnicians, there may be up to 130 unexploded aerial bombs in the entire territory of Pardubice from the period of air raids on Pardubice during the Second World War, a significant part of which is precisely in the vicinity of the train station and Parama, which were the targets of the air raids,” said a Pardubice spokesperson a few years ago Martin Charvát (YES).
Source: www.tyden.cz
