Wreck of Famous British Sub Sunk by Germans in WWII Discovered Off Malta
The wreckage of HMS Urge was found at a depth of 430 feet (130 meters) off the coast of the Mediterranean island of Malta. (Image source: University of Malta)
The wreckage of a Royal Navy submarine that mysteriously disappeared during World War II was found on the Mediterranean island of Malta with 44 people on board. The Discovery of The Impulse suggests that it sank in 1942 after hitting a mine planted by an enemy German warship. Researchers at the University of Malta discovered the shipwreck at 430 feet (130 meters) underwater, and they have been working on underwater surveys of the island's territorial waters since the late 1990s.
Timmy Gambing, the marine archaeologist who led the expedition, said that in 2017, Francis Dickinson, the grandson of the expedition's commander, had asked the university for help in finding his grandfather's missing submarine. He said the research team shifted its investigation to these areas in 2019 after conducting historical studies of the location of minefields laid by the German and Italian navies. "In a way, it's a continuation of our investigation, but on the other hand, it's a little more specific about the impulse," Gambin told Live Science. Gambing and his colleagues deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to survey the area, finding the wreckage of the submarine this summer; Then they used a remotely controlled underwater vehicle (rov)
Marine archaeologists said the explosion severely damaged the bow of the submarine,
The missing submarine, Impulse, is a small U-class submarine only 191 feet (58 meters) long. U-class submarines were originally used for training, but they were used in combat during World War II and proved to be highly effective.
According to the Royal Navy, its captain, Major Eduard Thomkinson, and his crew received medals for a series of successes, including the sinking of a German tanker in the Atlantic, the heavy damage to the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and the sinking of the Italian cruiser Bande Nere.
The submarine was also part of a submarine fleet, raiding ships delivering supplies to the Afrika Korwyn Rommel of North Africa and secretly landing British commandos and agents on enemy shores. But the submarine left Malta on 27 April 1942, when the fleet was sent to Egypt to escape the heavy bombardment of Malta by the German and Italian air forces, then an important British naval port.
Considered one of the Royal Navy's most effective submarines, the HMS Urge has been a mystery for 77 years
The submarine sailed to Alexandria, Egypt, but it did not arrive, and two days later it was officially reported missing at sea, with 32 crew members, 11 naval personnel and a war correspondent on board.
The submarine's captain, TomKinson, left behind a young daughter, Brigitte. When she got married, she became Brigitte Dickinson, frances Dickinson's mother, and she began searching.
Although the Admiralty believes they encountered enemy minefields shortly after leaving Malta, in 2015 a Belgian historian claimed to have found its wreckage off the coast of Libya, where it was said to have been sunk by Italian warplanes.
This suggests that by the time it sank, it had deviated far from the designated route and that its commander might have disobeyed his orders.
But Gambin told Malta Television that the discovery of the wrecked submarine in a passage from the island about 2 miles (3 kilometers) off the coast of Malta has confirmed the theory.
Damage caused by torpedoes
Catastrophic damage evident from the wreck of the Impulse indicates that it sank to the bottom of the sea immediately after being hit by a mine planted by a German Type E boat, a fast small vessel used by the German Navy during World War II.
Gambin said the bow portion, which is at least 22 feet (7 meters) long, separates from the rest of the ship. "The damage to the bow shows a very violent explosion ... It shows that the ship will sink quickly and that no one has a chance to survive this tragedy. ”
He said the Impulse was now upright on the ocean floor, with the bow partially buried on the ocean floor, but other than that, it was in good condition. Because people lost their lives in the shipwreck, he said, the shipwreck was seen as a graveyard of war and protected by Maltese and international law.
Gambin said a detailed survey of the seabed around Malta now covers about 460 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) — just less than half of the island's territorial waters.
Since 2014, most of the surveys have been conducted with an AUV that can dive up to 1640 feet (500 meters) and stay underwater for up to 5 hours. Underwater robots detected several possible shipwrecks. "We are mapping everything on the seabed," he said. From shipwrecks 2,700 years ago to planes that crashed into the sea during the Cold War, we've found everything. "
The results of the underwater measurements are now part of the Sintegram project, funded by the European Union, which aims to harmonize geospatial data on and underwater in Malta and to make them available to future planners.