Norway tackles toxic war graveRobotic excavations have found some of the canisters of mercury It was not quite the deadly legacy the Germans had in mind when they deployed a U-boat on a daring mission to Japan in the last desperate months of World War II.
When it set sail in December 1944, U-864 was packed with 65 tonnes of weapons-grade mercury destined to help the Japanese win back supremacy over the US in the Pacific - and divert American attention away from Europe in the process.
Neither the cargo nor the 73 men on board made it. The U-boat was torpedoed to the bottom of the North Sea floor by a British submarine. More than 60 years on, its toxic cargo is slowly leaking into the waters off the coast of Norway, an ecological time bomb threatening marine - and potentially human - life.