Report: ARA San Juan ‘imploded in 40 milliseconds’

The ARA San Juan submarine that went missing last November imploded in a matter of 40 milliseconds, a leaked US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report has suggested.

In a report published in French newspaper Le Monde, the ONI linked the disappearance with a sound detected on November 15 at 400 metres below sea level, an explosion they suggest was the equivalent of six tonnes of TNT exploding.

The ONI believes the crew-members on board were killed instantly, before they had time to even process cognitively what was happening.

The submarine vanished on November 15 off Argentina’s Atlantic coast. It had 44 officers aboard at the time.

The Argentine Navy told Perfil on Thursday that it “has nothing to say” about the US report. “We received this information via social media but it is not ours. For that reason, we will continue to operate as normal,” the Navy said.

In November, the Navy indicated that before the submarine went missing, its captain reported an electrical problem in a battery compartment and the vessel was ordered to return to its base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, about 400 kilometres southeast of Buenos Aires. The Navy has begun winding back its search efforts and a number of international collaborators have withdrawn, to the dismay of relatives.