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The Argentine submarine ARA San Juan disappeared in 2017 and was only found more than a year later
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The search for the submarine that disappeared in the Atlantic earlier this week with five people on board entered its fifth day on Thursday (June 22nd) and met with great public interest worldwide.
The submarine, dubbed by experts as a submersible, was reported missing on Sunday (18) after setting out to visit the Titanic ruins.
Rescue workers are in a race against time as oxygen supplies are expected to only last until Thursday morning.
Recall below two other cases in which the search for missing submarines in the ocean caused quite a stir and made headlines around the world.
San Juan, 2017
On November 15, 2017, the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan sank off the coast of the country with 44 crew members. It was only found after more than a year of searching at a depth of 900 meters.
The ship lost contact with the mainland while en route from Ushuaia in the far south of the country, where it had been conducting military exercises, to the resort of Mar del Plata, 300 kilometers from the capital Buenos Aires.
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The ARA San Juan was en route with 44 crew members when it lost communications and disappeared from radar.
The captain sent eight communications to his superiors, reporting a failure in the submarine’s batteries hours before it disappeared from radar.
According to the reports, water had entered the submarine’s ventilation system. This happened when the submarine was near the surface using an underwater “snorkel” for air intake and there was a strong swell in the sea.
The captain’s last message said that this problem had caused “a short circuit and the outbreak of fire” in the sector where the batteries were located.
From then on, an intensive search operation for the submarine began, in which several countries took part.
The Brazilian Navy and Brazilian Air Force (FAB) even sent three boats and two planes to help with the search, but poor local weather made the operation difficult due to waves that reached up to 6 meters high.
Two weeks after the disappearance, the Argentine Navy announced that there was no hope of finding any of the crew members alive and the search was temporarily halted.
In September 2018, the Argentine government ordered the US company Ocean Infinity to continue the searches.
On November 16, the remains of the submarine were found at a depth of 800 meters and 600 meters from the town of Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentine Patagonia, in a place near where the last contact of the submarine was recorded became.
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Relatives of the disappeared criticized the search for the submarine
The submarine search mission was accompanied by complaints from members of the crew who questioned the government both about the disappearance itself and in connection with the searches.
Three and a half years after the accident, the war council punished the leadership of the Argentine Navy with prison sentences ranging from 20 to 45 days.
The highest penalty met the then commander of the submarine force, Captain Claudio Villamide, who was dismissed. But experts and family members considered the penalties too mild.
An investigation into espionage against family members of the submarine crew was launched against thenPresident Mauricio Macri, but was dropped in July 2022 as no criminal offenses were found.
Kursk, 2000
Another wellknown case is that of the Kursk (K141), a nuclear submarine that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000 with a crew of 118.
The accident is considered one of the greatest underwater tragedies in history. The Kursk was then considered the pride of the Russian Navy, a 24missile war machine that was believed to be indestructible until its sinking.
But two explosions caused by rocket fire during a military exercise on August 12 disproved this myth.
According to experts, a leak of hydrogen peroxide in one of the projectiles caused a fire, which subsequently set off the two explosions.
The Kursk was at a depth of 108 meters in the early morning hours of August 13.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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The Kursk was one of the first submarines built after the fall of the Soviet Union.
It was initially believed that everyone on board had died in the blast, but letters left by some sailors revealed that 23 people survived the blast after locking themselves in a compartment of the submarine.
However, rescue teams did not find the ship in time and their bodies were located by Norwegian divers on August 21.
The submarine was not fully raised until October 2001, more than a year after the tragedy.
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Families of sailors during the ceremony in Moscow
The case drew much criticism from the Russian government, which took days to convey the seriousness of the accident to the public.
In addition, later investigations revealed that Russia had turned down early offers from other countries to help rescue the submarine’s crew, citing the ship’s potential for leaking military secrets.
The official investigation also found that the accident revealed “blatant indiscipline, substandard, outdated and poorly maintained equipment” and “negligence, incompetence and poor management” on the part of those in charge of the submarine.
No one is currently in prison for the deaths of the 118 seafarers.