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When the 44 crew members of the Argentine submarine Ara San Juan seemed lost forever in the South Atlantic, a private company found this Friday the remains of the ship at a depth of 907 meters and about 600 kilometers from the coast of Comodoro Rivadavia, in Argentine Patagonia. . The government must now decide whether to undertake the rescue, a costly operation for which Argentina has no technology, or let the bodies rest at the bottom of the sea.
What has become clear is that families should not expect a quick bailout. “It will be difficult,” warned Argentine Defense Minister Oscar Aguad, because they don’t have the equipment to get the submarine afloat. “We didn’t even have the means to go down to the depths of the sea. Nor do we have the equipment to extract a ship of these characteristics,” he said at a press conference this Saturday in Buenos Aires. At his side, the head of the Navy, José Villán, asked the families for “prudence.” “There are two limits that exceed our knowledge. The first is legal, because it is the Justice that must determine when the parts of the submarine can be removed. The other limit is practical. He was asked the company [if it was possible to refloat the hull] and said that while there were possibilities, before we had to have the location and mass of what needs to be extracted. Now we can neither affirm nor deny that it can be raised”, he explained.
The ARA San Juan communicated for the last time with its base of operations in Mar del Plata on the morning of November 15 last year. Her captain then reported that an ingress of water had caused a short circuit in one of the battery banks, which led to the beginning of a fire. But that was it. Hours after that official communication, a military test alert system detected an explosion in the South Atlantic and both the Argentine government and the families knew that it was the Ara San Juan.
Remains of the ARA San Juan
The submarine is located in zone 1, which corresponds to the place where a year ago international organizations in charge of controlling unauthorized underwater military tests detected a “hydroacoustic fault”, that is, an explosion. Zone 1 was the most raked by dozens of ships contributed by 27 countries, but without success. What happened then? “At that time, all the world’s navies were looking for the submarine with high-definition technology. All the ships passed through that area and could never detect it. We always said that it was not easy to find a submarine and even less at the depths in which it was found,” said Aguad.
The submarine is supported on a sector of strong underwater currents and very irregular. The hull of the ARA San Juan “is totally deformed, collapsed and imploded” and “without significant openings,” said Gabriel Attis, head of the Mar del Plata naval base. In a report that he read to the relatives of the victims of the accident, Attis explained “the resistant hull [where the crew and equipment are housed] is very deformed towards the inside, the bow shell is visibly intact and the torpedo and camera compartment of officers totally collapsed”, added the commander.
The #MinisterioDeDefensa and the #ArmadaArgentina report that to date, having investigated point of interest No. 24 reported by Ocean Infinity, through observation made with an ROV at a depth of 800 meters, positive identification has been given to # AraSanJuan
Minister Aguad showed the press three very blurred photos of the ARA San Juan , a product of the “great salinity” that exists at those depths. In one you can see the destroyed bow, in another the resistant hull with its sail [the structure that protects the entrance to the hull] detached to one side and a third with the half-buried propeller. The main hull is deformed as a result of an implosion. “The implosion occurs when the submarine reaches a depth where the external pressure of the sea exceeds the resistance of the material with which it is built. First, the hull has elastic deformations, then permanent ones, and when it exceeds that depth, collapse occurs. The ARA San Juanit is imploded, all the parts outside the resistant hull, built with 33-millimeter steel, are detached, ”explained Captain Enrique Balbi, spokesman for the Navy during the first months of the search.
The Argentine Navy confirmed the success of the search mission through a brief message posted on its Twitter account after contacting the families of the dead sailors. “The Ministry of Defense and the Argentine Navy inform that on the date of the date, having investigated the (Data Point) POI 24 reported by the company Ocean Infinity, through the observation made with a ROV (remote observation vehicle) at 800 meters deep, positive identification has been given to the submarine ARA San Juan” , he reported.
The possibility of finding the submarine grew on Friday morning, when the company decided to send a vehicle to analyze a point where the sonars had detected a 60-meter-long object resting on the seabed. The image had been classified as category C, of ”strong probability”. For this reason, he returned to the area of the discovery when the weather allowed it and, after a few hours of searching, the cameras confirmed that, indeed, the sonar photos recorded a day before corresponded to the ARA San Juan. “A 15 took it away from us, and a 15 brought them back. We have so many feelings right now, we ask for respect and honor for them, one step closer to returning home #44heroespresentes #arasanjuan”, wrote the relatives of the crew members on his official Twitter account.
The company, which had set this Friday as the maximum deadline for the search, will now receive 7.5 million dollars (6.57 million euros). This sum was subject to the success of the operation, which began in early September. 40 crew members worked for two months aboard the Norwegian-flagged ship Seabed Constructor , raking 7,000 square kilometers of seabed. Eight hours before the discovery, the Navy reported that the ship had headed “towards Site 1, area 15A-4, to investigate point of interest No. 24 with ROV. Due to improved weather conditions, arrival will be at approximately 22 hours”. At the stroke of midnight confirmed the finding. It has been quite a feat, accomplished to the limit and when the Argentine Government and relatives already gave up on theARA San Juan.
In the tribute held on Thursday in Mar del Plata, Macri heard the claim of the families of the missing sailors who considered themselves mistreated and forgotten by the Government. The president had to promise them that the search would continue, but a failure of the Ocean Infinity company left the Casa Rosada without too many options. “How sorry I am that nothing I say can ease the pain!” Macri told them, still not knowing that hours later a sonar image would give accurate clues about the hull.
A global search
During the first month that followed the disappearance of the ARA San Juan , 10 countries lent ships and planes in the search operations. At one point, up to 27 boats searched the possible areas at the same time, located on the route that connects Ushuaia, the submarine’s port of departure, with its destination in Mar del Plata. But not even the most modern equipment from the United States and Russia could find the helmet.
Hours after that official communication, a military test alert system detected an explosion in the South Atlantic and both the Argentine government and the families knew that it was the ARA San Juan. The reasons that caused the collapse of the ship are still a matter of speculation. A body of experts determined that it was most likely a failure in the snorkel , which allowed water to enter during an oxygen recovery maneuver carried out in very rough seas. After a night of work to control the fire, in the middle of an unbreathable environment due to the air contaminated by combustion, the ship submerged again and continued on its way.
But a second fire would have ended in disaster. The exhausted crew could do little. The explosion detected was, according to the experts, an implosion, produced by the pressure from the outside to the inside of the hull, which was reduced to a tight mass of iron. The discovery of the ARA San Juan will now be able to help reconstruct what really happened a year ago at the bottom of the sea.
