Missing submarine crushed into pieces
A vanished Indonesian submarine has been found cracked apart on the sea bed off Bali, the country’s military said. All 53 crew were dead.
‘‘There were parts of KRI Nanggala 402 – it was broken into three pieces,’’ Yudo Margono, the navy chief of staff, said. The submarine was found at 790m in the search area about 40km north of Bali – far below its safe operating depth of 500m.
Confirmation that the submarine was on the sea bed and had broken up came after search ships received fresh magnetic signals from yesterday. The authorities then launched a small remotely operated underwater vehicle from Singapore’s MV Swift Rescue, a 5000-tonne submarine support and rescue vessel.
The remote relayed images of
the stricken submarine from the sea bed to rescuers at the surface, showing the ruptured hull.
Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, said that the nation was shocked by its first submarine disaster, and the government ‘‘expresses our deep condolences, especially to the family of the
crew members’’.
Experts had held little hope that the crew of the German-built 1395-tonne submarine would be found alive after it went missing on Wednesday.
Margono said debris recovered within a 16km radius from where the submarine first
submerged at 3am on Wednesday, local time, – including pieces from the torpedo tube and prayer mats – suggested that the tube cracked during the dive.
This would have caused the submarine to flood and sink. Experts believe the deep water pressure then split the structure, creating cracks through which the recovered items escaped. The air supply had been due to expire by about 3am Saturday.
Discovery of the wreckage ended a five-day search that involved nearby nations as well as the United States, India and Australia.
More than two dozen search vessels, including the Australian navy’s sonar-equipped HMAS Ballarat, had continued to scour an area 40km north of Bali where an oil spill from the submarine was believed to indicate the point where the Nanggala dived and first struck trouble. Later a ‘‘strong magnetic resonance’’ was detected underwater.
A US P8 Poseidon submarine hunter and maritime patrol aircraft also joined the search along with the submarine rescue vessel, while two more search-andrescue vessels were en route from Malaysia and India.