Submarine Disasters Through History

Since the first submarines were tested in the 1700's and 1800's there have been revolutions in design until we see the sleek and silent boats that patrol the world's oceans today. (Note - a submarine is always referred to as a boat, never a ship.) But while ever there have been these innovations, there have been accidents, mistakes and in many cases major disasters. So here are few notable submarine tragedies that have made headlines over the years, some are today household names, others are remembered only by a few historians. All are important to learn from and every one of them has sailors who will no longer go back to their families, on eternal patrol. 

HL Hunley - Designed by Horace Hunley, this cigar-shaped submarine was the first underwater contraption to successfully sink a surface ship during the American Civil War. USS Housatonic was laying at anchor off South Carolina on the night of 17 February 1864 when a the Hunley rammed her torpedo into the side of the ship and immediately reversed. As the sub retreated the explosives detonated and the Housatonic went down. Hunley and her eight crew were never seen again until her wreck was discovered by E. Lee Spence in the 1970's (not by Clive Cussler, as is often claimed). The wreck of Hunley was raised in 2000 and is now in a nearby museum, her eight crew were given a proper burial. What is less well known is that this was the third time Hunley had gone down, twice during previous trials saw her fail to surface leading to the deaths of 13 people. 

Affray - The Amphion-class submarine HMS Affray was launched in 1944 but commissioned too late to serve in the Second World War. She was refitted with a snorkel mast in 1949 and proceeded to sea as normal with no issues. On 16 April 1951 she set out to take part in a standard exercise and submerged carrying a total of 75 crew including a number of people brought to conduct special operations and training. On the next day Affray missed her usual status report and so a search began for the submarine. Not a trace of her was found until two months later when the Affray was found on the seabed off the island of Alderney. A recovery of the snort mast suggested that this contributed to her loss. Today there are twin memorials to the disaster in both Gosport (above) and Alderney. 

Thresher (right) - One of the first American nuclear submarines and with the latest designs in weaponry and propulsion, the USS Thresher was taking part in trials with the submarine rescue ship USS Skylark in off the coast of Massachusetts on 10 April 1963 when suddenly all contact was lost with the submarine and her 129 crew. Despite a huge search operation, the wreck was eventually located on the seabed in thousands of small pieces. An investigation came to the conclusion that the Thresher must have exceeded her critical depth limit and imploded.

Dakar (below) - Launched as the Royal Navy's HMS Totem, she was sold to the Israeli navy in 1965 and renamed INS Dakar. On 25 January 1968 she was at sea with a crew of 68 when she vanished on her way to her new home port, having never actually made it to her new owners. The wreck was discovered in 1999 but the cause of her loss remains a mystery. She was the first submarine in a number of major losses that made 1968 a terrible twelve months for submariners.

Minerve - The French diesel-electric submarine Minerve was launched in 1961 and had a successful career at sea over the coming years. She had sailed from Toulon on her final voyage and on 27 January 1968 submerged just 25 miles away from her base when she suddenly lost contact with everybody. The submarine and her crew of 52 would not be found until 2019 when the wreck was finally located by a search team over fifty years later. 

K-129 - The Golf II class Russian submarine K-129 vanished in the Pacific on 8 March 1968 and a search by their support vessels found no trace of the submarine or her crew of 98. Eventually the search was called off, but in the meantime American listening stations had not only picked up what they believed to be the submarine sinking, but they knew roughly where it was. In the August of that year a survey ship located the wreck and confirmed it's identity. A top secret operation was now launched and the offshore drill ship Hughes Glomar Explorer was built especially to recover the submarine. The mission was a partial success and the ship recovered a large portion of the sunken K-129, the story eventually being public knowledge in 1975. 

Scorpion - The American nuclear submarine USS Scorpion was observing Soviet naval activity in mid-Atlantic on 22 May 1968 when all contact was lost. With 99 crew on board, there have been many theories as to what happened to the boat, one book claiming a Russian torpedo attack sank her, others say that a catastrophic failure of the hull led to implosion. The wreck is very much like that of the Thresher, many pieces of the boat scattered over a wide area. Both Thresher and Scorpion were visited by ocean explorer Robert Ballard in the weeks before his successful search for the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. 

Kursk - One of the world's largest submarines, the Russian Oscar II class Kursk was launched in 1994 in the shadow of the fall of the Soviet Union, at over 500 feet in length and with a beam of 60 feet, she had two nuclear reactors and was a formidable enemy for those who would ever choose to pick a fight with the Russian navy. But this submarine met disaster on 12 August 2000 when, in the middle of a huge exercise in the Barents Sea, a torpedo explosion ripped the submarine's bow open and she plunged to the seabed. It took two days to reveal the disaster to the world, by then all 118 crew were dead. The wreck of the Kursk was raised a year later and scrapped, the Russian military being blamed for using out-of-date and dangerous torpedoes.

Titan - In one of the most headline-hitting sub-surface incidents in recent years, the commercial submersible Titan was built by OceanGate, a company that carried out exploration of the deep ocean using home-made submersibles and unfortunately cutting corners with costs and safety. The company offered paid trips to the wreck of the Titanic where a "mission specialist" would pay $250,000 to join the expedition. On 18 June 2023 the Titan was launched with five people on board, one of them the CEO of OceanGate, for a dive to the wreck with the French pilot and three "Mission Specialists." The sub failed to return to the surface and a huge rescue operation was launched. Four days later wreckage on the seabed confirmed that Titan had imploded and there were no survivors. 

Today there are many memorials to the lost submarines of the world. During the two world wars around 1000 submarines went down, within the last few years alone a number of them have sunk belonging to Argentina, Russia and Indonesia, their crews forever entombed in their steel coffins. A memorial in London on the side of the River Thames commemorates the lost Royal Navy submariners (below), another in Kiel lists every member of crew lost on every U-boat. While submarine disasters these days are rare, they are still a possibility, as is shown with the recent loss of the Titan. All we can do is send our thoughts to those who have lost loved ones and hope that lessons will be learned.