Submarine With Cyrillic Characters On Bow
The wreck of a submarine with Cyrillic characters on its bow has been
discovered by wreck divers Dennis Åsberg and Peter Lindberg off the
eastern coast of Sweden.
It is about 20 metres long, and shows no external damage. All the
hatches are closed, indicating that the crew of the submarine had not
been able to flee the submarine when it ran around.
According to Norwegian and Swedish media reports, the wreck is the
remains of a Russian submarine of Som class (nicknamed 'Catfish') of
the Imperial Russian Navy.
Built in 1904, it was first deployed in tbe Black Sea. During the First
World War, it was transferred to the naval fleet in the Baltic Sea in
1915. The following year, it perished in a collision with Swedish
freighter SS Södermalmland that had sunk off the Swedish coast –
precisely at the spot where the wreck rests today.
As it has been nearly 99 years, the wreck has become rather overgrown.
This is nothing unusual, as the other wrecks in the vicinity have also
been overgrown.
Due to this fact, prior to the positive identification of the submarine
as a Russian submarine, there had been speculation that the wreck was
the foreign submarine that was sighted in the archipelago outside
Stockholm in the summer of 2014. At that time, the Swedish Armed Forces
conducted an unsuccessful search for it that was called off after a
week.
This is not the first time Ocean X Team wreck divers Lindberg and
Åsberg made the news: In 2011, they had been part of the team that
discovered the infamous Baltic Sea Anomaly, an unusual formation in the
Baltic Sea that some have suggested might have extraterrestrial
origins.
Video (Expressen TV, Sweden):
http://www.expressen.se/tv/nyheter/inrikes/hittade-ubaten-ar-gammal
Herbert
29th July 2015
