ROSKILDE, DENMARK—The Guardian reports that a team led by museum owner Gert Normann Andersen and marine archaeologist Innes McCartney have found the wreckage of the HMS Tarpon, a Royal Navy T-class submarine sunk in 1940 by a heavily armed German merchant vessel, the Schiff 40. German naval records indicate that the Tarpon fired twice, and that both torpedoes missed the merchant vessel, which had been suspected of carrying arms to occupied Norway. The records also indicate that the German ship used sonar to find the Tarpon and dropped several depth charges on it. Divers found the Tarpon standing almost upright on the seabed off the coast of Denmark. “The damage was so severe behind the conning tower it would have flooded in seconds,” McCartney said. The glass in the submarine’s periscope had been shattered, and some of its hatches were open. Two of the submarine’s torpedo tubes were empty. McCartney explained that 57 British submarines were lost during the war. “The question for the Ministry of Defense is how to protect them from threats including fishing trawlers and illegal metal reclaimers,” he said. “After all, they are the tombs of British sailors.” For more, go to "Archaeology of World War II."
