Published on July 31st, 2012 | by Steven Hodson
0WWII German Submarine Discovered Off The Coast Of Nantucket
During WWII nothing was feared more than the German U-Boat wolf packs that prowled the Atlantic looking for Allied ships to attack, and it a pretty well documented that some of those submarines came very close to U.S. shores during the war.
Now a private group funded by New Jersey lawyer Joe Mazraani, has discover just how close they came with the discovery of a German U-550 at the bottom of the Atlantic just 70 mile south of Nantucket. In an article on the Telegraph news site the team confirmed the discovery of the submarine by the group in a search that has been going on for the last two decades.
From the article:
he U-550 is one of several World War II-era German U-boats that have been discovered off the US coast, but it’s the only one that sank in that area, Mazraani said. He said it’s been tough to find largely because military positioning of the battle was imprecise, and searchers had only a general idea where the submarine was when it sank. Kozak noted that the site is far offshore and has only limited windows of good weather.
The team towed a side-scan sonar vessel in a mow-the-lawn pattern over the search area and found the U-550 after covering 100 square miles of ocean, between the trip this year and last year, Mr Kozak said.
Just the nose of U-boat was visible on sonar on the first pass, but the team was delirious after the second pass. when the sonar image made it obvious they’d found it, Mazraani said. Quick dives to the wreck to beat bad weather confirmed the find with pictures.
via io9