After the submarine DAKAR went down somewhere in the Mediterranean, Israel spent 31 years searching for the sixty-nine officers and crew. Newly purchased from the Royal Navy, along with two of her T-class sisters, she was commissioned into the Israeli Navy on 10 November 1967 as Dakar ("Swordfish" in Hebrew) and en route to Haifa after completing sea trails in England. On January 25 1968, two minutes after midnight, the Dakar transmitted her last communication Compelled by one of Israel's strongest military traditions to ...
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After the submarine DAKAR went down somewhere in the Mediterranean, Israel spent 31 years searching for the sixty-nine officers and crew. Newly purchased from the Royal Navy, along with two of her T-class sisters, she was commissioned into the Israeli Navy on 10 November 1967 as Dakar ("Swordfish" in Hebrew) and en route to Haifa after completing sea trails in England. On January 25 1968, two minutes after midnight, the Dakar transmitted her last communication Compelled by one of Israel's strongest military traditions to bring home all killed and missing during battle for a proper Jewish burial, over 25 expeditions were launched and to search different areas of the Mediterranean. Imagine the national frustration of not being unable to find a massive 287-foot submarine that was lost for over 31 years, and not knowing the fate of the men of the DAKAR? This was the problem faced by the Israeli Navy in 1996 when it invited David Jourdan and his company Nauticos to conduct the search which led to discovery in May 1999. "NEVER FORGOTTEN: The Search and Discovery of Israel's Lost Submarine DAKAR" tells the exhilarating story of the will, endurance, and technical know-how of extraordinary people who made a lifelong impact on an entire nation and sixty-nine grieving families.NEVER FORGOTTEN is a first-person account that grew directly from Jourdan's successful career in deep-sea searches. The narrative follows the technological quest to locate the missing ship, 10,000 feet deep, and then try to discover the cause of the disaster. Included is the story of the DAKAR itself, beginning with its origins as the WWII British HMS TOTEM, through its sale to Israel, and the last, fateful voyage from which it never returned. Through it all we follow the families of the lost crew, from their pride in the DAKAR, to their horror of its loss, and their closure with the discovery of their loved ones'grave site. A dramatic final chapter imagines what the crew of the doomed submarine might have been doing in the final seconds before a massive implosion snuffed out their lives.While the exact cause of the loss is still unknown, it is likely that a catastrophic hull rupture occurred during a dive since it appears that no emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dove rapidly through her maximum depth. On 11 October 2000, Dakar's bridge and forward edge of her sail were raised, and are now a memorial display in the Naval Museum in Haifa. Recover the remains of the crew members and giving them Jewish burial in Israel was finally abandoned, due to the enormous cost of such an operation and in deference to the long-standing maritime tradition of letting the sea bottom be the final resting place of drowned sailors. The crew members' families had to content themselves with holding a ceremony in a ship over the submarine's remnants.In the thirty-year period between the loss of the submarine and the final discovery of its remnants, various suppositions and Cold War conspiracy theories circulated. Many Israeli cities and towns have a Dakar Street, and several schools and other public institutions are also named for the lost submarine. "Full Circle," a television documentary of the project was first aired on the National Geographic Channel in November of 2003, adding to public recognition of this event.
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Very good in very good dust jacket. Signed by author. xiv, 214, [4] p. Illustrations. Appendix: The Crew of the INS Dakar. Index. From Wikipedia: "David Walter Jourdan (Born December 5, 1954) is an author, as well as the co-founder and president of Nauticos, a deep ocean exploration company. He studied physics and engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins University, and served as a U.S. Navy submarine officer during the Cold War. Jourdan and his Nauticos team have made a number of notable deep ocean discoveries, including the missing Israeli submarine INS Dakar in the Mediterranean and the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga, sunk in the battle of Midway. Most recently he has led two deep ocean expeditions in search of Amelia Earhart s lost Lockheed Electra airplane. He has published two books, Never Forgotten: the Search and Discovery of Israel's Lost Submarine Dakar and The Deep Sea Quest for Amelia Earhart." From Wikipedia: "INS Dakar (77-צ ) was the former modified British T-class submarine HMS Totem (P352) of the Royal Navy. In 1965, she was purchased by Israel as part of a group of three T-class submarines. She was commissioned into the Israeli Sea Corps in November 1967 and underwent sea and diving trials in Scotland. Dakar departed for Israel on 9 January 1968, but disappeared en route with all hands. Despite extensive searches over the course of three decades, Dakar's wreckage was not found until 1999, when it was located between the islands of Cyprus and Crete. A portion of the vessel was salvaged and is on display at the Naval Museum in Haifa. The exact cause of Dakar's sinking is not known....On 9 February 1969, over a year after Dakar went missing, a Palestinian fisherman found her stern emergency buoy marker washed up on the coast of Khan Yunis, a Palestinian town southwest of Gaza. British T class submarines had two such buoy markers, bow and stern, secured behind wooden doors in cages under the deck and attached to the submarine with metal cables 200 meters (650 ft) long. Experts examining the 65 cm (two feet) of cable still attached the buoy determined that the buoy had remained attached to the submarine for most of the preceding year until the cable broke completely, that Dakar rested in depth between 150 to 326 meters, and that she was 50 70 nmi (93 130 km) off her planned route. All of these determinations were wrong, and misled searchers for decades. It was not until April 1999 and some 25 failed expeditions later that a search effort was concentrated along the path of the original route. On 1 January 1970, the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar reported that the Dakar had been sunk by an Egyptian warship with depth charges. The Egyptian story was told in a 2 July 2005 interview by Asharq Al-Awsat with General Mohamed Azab (Major at that time): On 23 January 1968, the Egyptian frigate, Assyout, left Alexandria base in a training mission for the naval academy. After completing the training assignment and during the return journey to the base; students noticed the periscope of an alien submarine roaming in the Egyptian water (about two miles (3 km) of Alexandria). The Egyptian commander was informed and the decision was taken to attack the unknown submarine. However, the submarine made a very quick and hasty dive and the Egyptian ship lost its trace. General Azab reported the story to his commanders and mentioned that there is a probability that the submarine had crashed into the seabed. However, the story was not believed by the higher Egyptian commanders and there was no sufficient evidence to start a search process. General Azab mentioned that the submarine may have crashed into the seabed due to the shallow depth of water in that region, about 36 meters, while it needed at least 40 meters to dive, however, it appears that the submarine commander decided to take the risk. The Israeli government stated there was no evidence to substantiate the Egyptian unofficial charges. During the 1980s the Israelis, using a salvage...