ARA San Juan-like submarine went missing in Indonesia with 53 crew members

“Once the authorization has been given in accordance with the procedure, the submarine lost contact and could not be located “, said the Defense Ministry.

Helicopter in search of missing vessel detected oil spill in waters where the submarine would have been submerged, he added.

The Navy said it had not specified the location of the submarine, but had restricted the search based on the spill. Oil “could indicate damage to the body” of the submarineNavy spokesman Julius Widjojono told MetroTV.

They were sent two warships and some 400 soldiers looking from the submarine, while a third ship was deployed from the capital, Jakarta.

The navy too sent an international distress signal and “several countries have responded and are ready to help, including Singapore, Australia and India”, said the Defense Ministry.

There was 53 crew members aboard the vessel, which was said to have been in water approximately 700 meters deep.

Indonesia, which has made efforts in recent years to improve its military equipment, five German and South Korean-made submarines in its fleet.

The 1300 ton KRI Nanggala 402 was built in 1978, according to a government website.

It’s an attack submarine diesel-electric type 209 who has served in more than a dozen navies around the world, including Greece, India, Argentina and Turkey, over the past half century. This could indicate that the vessel is old and unsafe, but it depends entirely on the quality of maintenance it has received.

“It’s a classic submarine,” French Navy Vice-Admiral Antoine Beaussant told AFP.

It had a safe descent level of 250 meters and “if it went down to 700 meters it would probably have broken.”, He said.

Underwater disasters

Although the Southeast Asian archipelago has not suffered a major submarine disaster so far, other countries have suffered accidents in the past.

Between them, the sinking in 2000 of the Kursk, pride of the Russian Northern Fleet. On August 12, 2000, the nuclear submarine was maneuvering in the Barents Sea when she sank with the loss of 118 crew members. The investigation determined that a torpedo had detonated, blowing up all the others.

Most of the crew were killed on the spot, but some survived for several days – some wrote heartbreaking diaries in their own blood to loved ones– before choking.

Seventy Chinese sailors died suffocated, in an accident on a Ming-class submarine performing exercises in 2003.

In 2008, 20 people died from toxic gas when a fire extinguishing system was accidentally activated on a Russian submarine tested in the Sea of ​​Japan.

ARA San Juan

In this fatal sequence, the disappearance of the ARA San Juan occurs on November 15, 2017, while sailing from Ushuaia to Mar del Plata. Despite months of intensive search, it was not found until a year later, when a specialized company hired by the government detected the destroyed hull at a depth of 907 meters and about 600 kilometers off Comodoro Rivadavia. . The San Juan and the Nangalla are close relatives: both were built by the same German shipyard in the 1970s, but the Argentine ship was of a more modern model, the TR-700, and the Indonesian model previous, the Type 209. Both submarines were a big seller in the 1970s and 1980s, adopted by many navies. Both are diesel-electric powered, and this mechanism was lacking at the ARA San Juan: in the middle of a terrible storm, water entered through the “snorkel”, a ventilation tube that allows use. of the diesel engine. The water came into contact with the batteries and a fire broke out which fatally damaged the vessel. It is not known if the Nangalla suffered a similar accident.

In 2019, a French submarine was found that had disappeared in the Mediterranean more than 50 years earlier. The diesel powered submarine Minerve was lost off the southern coast of France with 52 sailors on board on January 27, 1968.

Experts believe the disaster was caused by a problem with the Minerva’s rudder, a collision with another ship, a missile or torpedo explosion, or a breakdown in its oxygen supply systems.