Minerve (ship, 1964)

Minerve

The Minerve in Bergen, 1962

Ship data flag  France Ship type Submarine class Daphné class home port Toulon Shipyard Chantiers Dubigeon , Nantes Keel laying May 1958 Launch May 31, 1961 Whereabouts Lost on January 27, 1968, wreck found on July 21, 2019

Ship dimensions and crew length 57.75 m ( Lüa ) width 5.25 m Draft Max. 6.74 m displacement 860  t   crew 50

Machine system machine 2 × 450 kW (603 PS) SEMT Pielstick Jeumont Schneider Type 12 diesel engines , 2 × 746 kW (1000 PS) electric motors propeller 2

Mission data submarine Radius of action 10,000 nm Immersion depth, max. 300 m Top speed submerged 15 kn (28 km / h) Top speed surfaced 12 kn (22 km / h)

Armament 12 torpedo tubes 55.0 cm (8 bow , 4 stern tubes )

The Minerve (S 647) was a French submarine of the Daphne class , the end of January 1968 in the northwestern Mediterranean is lost. The Minerve was named after the Roman goddess Minerva . She was the second French submarine of this name after the type ship of the Minerve class from the 1930s. The wreck was missing for 51 years. On July 22, 2019, French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced that the Minerve had been found in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of around 2,400 meters.

period of service

The submarine was formally taken over by the French Navy on June 19, 1962 and put into service on June 10, 1964. The test drive in November 1962 led to Londonderry Port , Bergen and Gothenburg . The Minerve then drove via Cherbourg to its home port of Toulon , where it arrived on December 22, 1962. The boat served in the 1st submarine squadron and was used in the Mediterranean for the entire period of service. In 1967 it was overhauled in Toulon.

Downfall

Dive boat SP-350 Denise

Bathyscaphe Archimède

On January 27, 1968 7:55, the was Minerve in snorkel trip about 25 nautical miles (46 km) off Toulon de access to the home port and shared at this time an accompanying reconnaissance aircraft type Breguet Atlantic with that on the one in well Hour will arrive at the destination. On this voyage there were 52 men on board. It was one of four submarines that were lost on the high seas in 1968 due to unexplained circumstances. The other three boats were the Israeli INS Dakar , the US USS Scorpion (SSN-589) and the Soviet K-129 .

According to the report to the reconnaissance plane, there was no trace of the submarine and its crew until 2019. At the time of the alleged sinking, the weather conditions were very bad. The commander of the Minerve , Lieutenant de vaisseau ( Kapitänleutnant ) André Fauve, was considered very experienced and had served four years on boats of the Daphné class.

search

The search operation, which began on January 28, 1968, included the aircraft carrier Clemenceau and the submersible boat SP-350 Denise , colloquially known as the "diving saucer" by Jacques Cousteau . According to a report in the Hamburger Abendblatt , Cousteau criticized that the search had been initiated too late. The search work was stopped on February 2, 1968, as it was assumed that no one had survived the accident. The search for the wreck or parts of the wreck continued until 1969 ( Operation Reminer ( REcherche MINERve ), among others with the help of the bathyscaph Archimède and the US special ship Mizar ).

A few days before the loss of the Minerve , the disappearance of the submarine INS Dakar (Hebrew: swordfish ) was reported to the Israeli Navy in the area of Crete . The former British submarine was on its way to Israel. Even in the case of the Dakar , the downfall could never be resolved. However, parts of the wreckage were discovered in 1999 and some of them were lifted. Due to the temporal and local context, the Hamburger Abendblatt speculated about the effects of a possible seaquake in the Sicily area .

On February 9, 1968, a ceremony of honor for the missing crew took place on board the French submarine Eurydice in the presence of President Charles de Gaulle . The Euridyce was lost two years later, at the beginning of March 1970, like the Minerve, also under unexplained circumstances in the Toulon area. The wreck of the Eurydice was found on April 22, 1970.

On the occasion of the great public attention that the disappearance of the Argentine submarine San Juan received in 2017 and the extensive search for the San Juan , which was ultimately successful in 2018 , members of the Minerve team called on the French Defense Minister Florence Parly in November 2018, who Search for the ship to resume. On February 5, 2019, the Ministry of Defense announced that it would resume the search.

On July 4, 2019, over 51 years after the sinking, the French Navy began a search operation in collaboration with the marine research institute Ifremer . The Ifremer's unmanned underwater vehicle Aster X was initially used, which searched an area of ​​several hundred km² from the research vessel Antea with a search performance of around 10 km² per day. On July 16, 2019, the search ship Seabed Constructor of the British-American company Ocean Infinity , which had already found the wreck of the Argentine San Juan , arrived in Toulon to continue the operation .

On July 22, 2019, the French Defense Minister announced that the wreck of the Minerve had been found 45 kilometers off the coast of Toulon at a depth of 2370 meters. The Ocean Infinity company discovered the Minerve.

literature

• Georges Kévorkian: Accidents des sous-marins français: 1945–1983 . Marines éd., Rennes 2006, ISBN 2-915379-37-8 .
• No sign of the two missing submarines. Feverish search in the Mediterranean Sea - 121 on board . In: Nordwest-Zeitung. Oldenburg News . January 29, 1968, p. 1-2 .
• No hope for 121 sailors . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . January 29, 1968 ( abendblatt.de ).
• The "diving saucer" is looking for the "Minerve" . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . January 30, 1968 ( abendblatt.de ).
• Hopes equal to zero . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . January 31, 1968 ( abendblatt.de ).
• Michaela Wiegel: At a depth of 2370 meters. After more than 50 years, the lost submarine "La Minerve" is found , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 23, 2019, p. 7.

See also

• List of submarine accidents since 1945

Web links

Commons : Minerve (S647)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Historique du sous-marin Minerve . In: netmarine.net. (French). 
• Film recordings of Minerve in 1965 or 1966 off Corsica on youtube.com
• Newsreel footage from British Pathé from the search for the Minerve , including the "diving saucer" Cousteau on youtube.com
• Lost submarine discovered after more than 50 years

Individual evidence

1. ^ Historique du sous-marin Eurydice . In: netmarine.net. Retrieved July 13, 2019 (French). 
2. ↑ Nathalie Guibert: Le sous-marin argentin “San-Juan” a été retrouvé, pas le “Minerve”. In: lemonde.fr . November 21, 2018, accessed July 13, 2019 (French). 
3. ↑ Nathalie Guibert: La marine va rechercher l'épave du sous-marin "Minerve". In: lemonde.fr . February 5, 2019, accessed on July 13, 2019 (French). 
4. ↑ Les recherches de l'épave du sous-marin "La Minerve" disparu en 1968 ont repris. In: lexpress.fr . July 4, 2019, accessed on July 9, 2019 (French). 
5. ^ ^{A b} Voici la technology utilisée pour researcher le sous-marin la Minerve. In: varmatin.com . July 19, 2019, accessed on July 21, 2019 (French). 
6. ^ Un navire américain participe aux recherches du sous-marin "La Minerve". In: 20minutes.fr . July 16, 2019, accessed on July 21, 2019 (French). 
7. ↑ AFP: France: French submarine found more than 50 years after disappearance . In: The time . July 22, 2019, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed July 22, 2019]).
8. ^ Ocean Infinity Finds Long-Lost French Submarine. Retrieved February 13, 2020 .