Indonesia: After four days of searching, they find the …

After an intense and desperate search, the Indonesian navy managed to find the submarine which had disappeared four days ago off Bali. while conducting military exercises with torpedoes at a depth of 700 meters. The 53 members of the crew, confirmed the strength this Sunday, they are dead.

According to Navy Chief of Staff Yudo Margono, the submarine was found severed into three parts on the seabed off Bali.

Indonesian Armed Forces Commander Hadi Tjahjanto, for his part, reported that it was in the early hours of Sunday that search teams received signals from the location of the find, for over 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep.

This Saturday, Indonesia had considered the submarine sunk, after finding debris from inside the submersible in the sea. The recovered items included part of the torpedo system and a bottle of grease to lubricate the periscopes. A carpet used for praying has also been found, common in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world.

To save the KRI Nanggala 402, a 40-year-old German submersible, an underwater vehicle supplied by Singapore was used, allowing visual confirmation. Planes, ships and hundreds of military personnel also participated in the search.

During the discovery on Sunday, an anchor and safety suits used by crew members were also detected, which Hadi Tjahjanto confirmed “dead” after the sinking.

The crew’s hopes for survival were deemed minimal, as the submarine’s oxygen reserves were estimated to have been depleted..

President Joko Widodo described the missing sailors as the “best patriots”. “All Indonesians express their deep sadness for this accident, in particular to the relatives of the crew of the submarine,” he said, without yet giving an official explanation for the accident.

Thinks that the submarine may have suffered a massive electrical failure that prevented the crew from returning to the surface. So far, the Chief of the Naval Staff rule out a possible explosion, estimating more likely that the submarine was decomposed by the pressure of the water at depths greater than 800 meters, above its limit of resistance.

“The hulls of submarines are under pressure … but when they break, water invades the interior,” said Wisnu Wardhana, a marine surveyor at the Indonesian Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember.

Disappearance

According to Indonesian Army data, the submarine – one of five belonging to the Indonesian Armed Forces – began the dive at 3:46 a.m. local time on Wednesday (8:46 p.m. GMT Tuesday) and began around 3 p.m. minutes later. torpedo tube number 8. The last communication with the crew of KRI Nanggala-402 was at 4:25 am local time (9:25 pm GMT Tuesday), just before authorizing the launch of the torpedo.

An oil spill detected in the area where it sank raised fears of a possible rupture of the field, or even a fracture of the submarine. According to information provided by the Navy, the submarine delivered to Indonesia in 1981 was in good serviceable condition. However, this type of submersible is designed to withstand a pressure of only 300 or 400 meters deep.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the world has been put on hold by the disappearance of a submarine. One of the most memorable tragedies occurred in 2000, when the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank while maneuvering in the Barents Sea with 118 crew on board. One of the torpedoes exploded and caused the destruction of the entire ammunition depot: 23 sailors survived the blast but died because they were not rescued in time.

In Argentina, the case of the KRI Nanggala-402 recalls that of the ARA San Juan, which was wrecked on November 15, 2017 in the South Atlantic, near the city of Comodoro Rivadavia. The families of the 44 San Juan divers this week expressed their solidarity and greetings to the relatives of Indonesian sailors.