The wreckage of the British submarine HMS Triumph, which mysteriously disappeared during a mission in Greece in 1942 during World War II, was found in the Aegean Sea, according to the Greek News Agency (ANA).
The Greek diver Costas Thuctaridis team succeeded in discovering the wreck it had been searching for since 1998, at a depth of 203 meters in the Aegean Sea, tens of kilometers from the coast, reports Al-Rai daily.
This submarine, which has a length of 84 meters and is classified as Category “T”, is linked to the resistance against the Nazi occupation at that time in Greece, as well as to British intelligence, the agency quoted Kostas Thuctaridis as saying Its 64 crew members perished during its sinking.
Thuctaridis, who specializes in shipwrecks, said that among the different accounts of the causes of the sinking are collision with a mine off the Cycladic island of Milos, or its seizure by German forces in cooperation with Italian agents, or an explosion in its bow.
He added that he resorted to the British, German, Italian and Greek archives before he succeeded in locating the wreckage. He told the Greek News Agency that “it was the most difficult and expensive task of his life.”
“Triumph” carried out about 20 war missions between 1939 and 1942, and began its work in the Aegean Sea in March 1941 off the Dodecanese archipelago, which was then under Italian control, and was able to destroy a number of naval vessels, including the Italian submarine “Salpa”.
The British Navy announced on January 23, 1942 that “Triumph”, which was carrying out its twenty-first mission, was “the rule of missing.”
The last testimony of the submarine was that of an Italian pilot who saw it on January 9, 1942 off Cape Sounion in the Saronic Gulf near Athens.