The submarine had mysteriously disappeared during a mission in Greece during World War II.
The wreck of the British submarine HMS Triumph, which disappeared mysteriously during a mission in Greece in 1942 during World War II, has been discovered in the Aegean Sea, Greek news agency Ana reported on Wednesday.
It was spotted “at a depth of 203 meters in the Aegean Sea” and “tens of kilometers from the coast” by the team of Greek diver Kostas Thoktaridis who, since 1998, had started research.
About twenty war missions
84 meters long, this T-class submarine is linked to “the resistance against the Nazi occupation at the time in Greece”, as well as to the “British secret services”, explains Kostas Thoktaridis quoted by Ana .
“The 64 members of its crew all perished during the sinking”, according to the same source.
The Triumph had carried out around twenty war missions between 1939 and 1942. It had started its missions in the Aegean Sea in March 1941 off the coast of the Dodecannese archipelago, then under Italian occupation, where “it had destroyed many buildings of the ‘enemy including the Italian submarine Salpa,’ reports Ana.
But on January 23, 1942 during its 21st mission in the Aegean Sea, the British Navy had indicated that the Triumph submarine was “considered missing”. The last testimony on this building was that of an Italian pilot who had seen it on January 9, 1942 off Cape Sounion, in the Saronic Gulf, near Athens.
Several versions on the causes of the sinking
Among the various versions on the causes of the sinking are a collision with a mine off the Cycladic island of Milos, its capture by German forces in cooperation with Italian agents, or an explosion in the bow of the building, according to Kostas Thoktaridis . Specialized in shipwrecks, this diver had to resort to British, German, Italian and Greek archives before succeeding in locating the wreck.
“It was the most difficult and expensive mission of my life,” he told Ana.
Many teams from Malta and Russia had traveled to Greece in the past to search for the wreckage.
Source: BFM TV
