Sub’s crew dead, Indonesia says
Robot’s cameras show vessel in pieces on ocean floor
BANYUWANGI, Indonesia — Indonesia’s military on Sunday officially said all 53 crew members from a submarine that sank and broke apart last week are dead and that search teams had located the vessel’s wreckage on the ocean floor.
The grim announcement comes a day after Indonesia said the submarine was considered sunk, not merely missing, but did not explicitly say whether the crew was dead. Officials previously said the KRI Nanggala 402’s oxygen supply would have run out early Saturday, three days after the vessel vanished off the resort island of Bali.
“We received underwater pictures that are confirmed as parts of the submarine, including its rear vertical rudder, anchors, outer pressure body, embossed dive rudder and other ship parts,” military chief Hadi Tjahjanto told reporters in Bali on Sunday.
“With this authentic evidence, we can declare that KRI Nanggala 402 has sunk, and all the crew members are dead,” Tjahjanto said.
An underwater robot equipped with cameras documented the lost submarine lying in at least three pieces — the hull, the stern and the “main parts” — on the ocean floor at a depth of 2,750 feet, said Adm. Yudo Margono, the navy’s chief of staff.
That’s much deeper than the submarine’s collapse depth of 655 feet, at which point water pressure would be greater than the hull could withstand, according to earlier navy statements.
The cause of the submarine’s sinking remains uncertain. The navy previously said an electrical failure could have left the submarine unable to execute emergency procedures to resurface. Margono ruled out an explosion, which he said would have been detected by sonar.
Margono said emergency survival suits that are normally kept in boxes were found floating underwater, apparently indicating the crew may have tried to put them on during the emergency.
The navy plans to eventually lift the wreckage and recover the dead, though the depth of the water poses a significant challenge, he said.
The submarine was conducting a training exercise Wednesday when it disappeared in the waters north of the Indonesian island of Bali. It fired two torpedoes in the Bali Strait as part of a war simulation, lost contact and never resurfaced, authorities said.
The wreckage is 1,500 yards to the south of the site where the submarine last dove off Bali’s northern coast, Margono said.
The search and rescue mission drew rescue ships from Malaysia and Singapore and help from Australia, the United States, India and other countries. Rescuers found an oil spill on Wednesday near where the vessel had dived, which might have been a signal from the crew.
The submarine was one of five operated by Indonesia’s military. It was built in the 1970s and refitted to 2012, according to media reports.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo delivered his condolences in a televised address Sunday.
“All Indonesians convey deep sorrow for this tragedy, especially to all of the families of the submarine’s crew. They are the best sons of the nation, patriots guarding the sovereignty of the country,” Widodo said.