A Greek shipwreck hunter has located a British Royal Navy Submarine that sank during a mission 80 years ago, Athens News Agency (ANA) reported on Wednesday.
The HMS Triumph sank in 1942 with 64 people on board; since then, its location has been a mystery. Kostas Thoctarides, a successful Greek diver who has located several other vessels, made it his mission to locate the Triumph. Twenty-five years later, he found the sub 670 feet deep in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece.
“It was the hardest and most expensive mission I have ever carried out in my life,” Thoctarides told ANA. “The history of the submarine is multi-aspected and unique in naval chronicles,” he added.
In a post on social media, Thoctarides explained that to find the vessel, he utilized archives from the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, and Italy, in addition to other resources. He said that researching using primary historical sources was paramount to the search, which he began after learning about the sub’s disappearance in 1998.
The diver shared fascinating footage of the sub, which shows the conning tower, gun tower, deck gun, an external torpedo tube, and the helm and compass. “The plug of the right torpedo, located at the tower height, has opened and the MK VIII torpedo is halfway out of the submarine,” Thoctarides said in his post.
The HMS Triumph — a 275-foot T-class submarine — was discovered with an eight-degree starboard tilt and its periscopes and hatches down, pointing to it being in a deep dive in its last moments, according to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. The door to the gunnery is still open, the outlet notes.
Launched in 1938, the Triumph carried out 20 missions, including rescues of Allied soldiers and attacks against Axis ships, CBS reports. The sub reportedly carried out missions to land MI9 agents and special operations executives. It’s believed that the last attack the Triumph carried out was against an Axis cement freighter, the outlet adds.
For its last mission, the Triumph departed Alexandria with orders for two special operations and a patrol of parts of the Aegean Sea, according to Kathimerini. After that, it was expected to return to England for maintenance.
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Thoctarides believes the sub was likely sunk from a large explosion, though he isn’t sure what may have caused it. He said that torpedos of the same type were discovered in the surrounding area, leading him to speculate that on its last mission, the “Triumph fired more than one torpedo.”
“The final cause of the sinking appears to have been a high-power explosion in the anterior section of the submarine,” he said. “The wreck site is treated with respect as it is a wet grave of 64 people.”
The Triumph was officially declared missing in January 1942.