Rainbow Warrior Bombing

It was the year of 1985 when a tragedy happened. Fernando Pereira was in the ship the Rainbow Warrior celebrating a birthday with his Greenpeace friends.While they were celebrating 2 french spies in scuba diving gear, were attaching 2 limpet bombs onto the bottom of the Rainbow Warrior. The 2 spies left with no one noticing.

A while later while the crew were partying, one of the bombs went off sending one of the crew members, off his chair. He went to the basement and saw that there was a big hole in the ship and yelled “Abandon ship Abandon ship”! The crew abandoned the ship except for one person Fernando Pereira. 4 minutes after the first explosion the second bomb went off. Sadly Fernando Pereira died in the explosion. He was Greenpeace’s photographer.

The French spies planted the bombs on the Rainbow Warrior because they were trying to stop them from getting to French Polynesia. The reason why the people in the Rainbow Warrior were going there was to protest against French for doing nuclear tests on small islands. So the French spies planned to plant 2 limpet bombs on the bottom, of the Rainbow Warrior to blow it up so they couldn’t couldn’t go up to French Polynesia to protest.

Not long after 2 of the spies got arrested and sentenced to ten years in jail. But the French government threatened the New Zealand government to give back their French spies to put them in their French jail. If they didn’t give them back they would stop buying their meat and dairy products.  Reluctantly  the New Zealand government put the 2 French spies on the next  flight to French Polynesia. Instead of going to jail  for 10 years they were only there for 2.  When they released and sent back to France they got treated like heroes.