Seventy-three years after mysteriously vanishing in the Mediterranean, the legendary British P311 World War Two submarine has been found.
In a discovery that will help to lay decades of speculation to rest, an Italian scuba diver found the vessel 90 metres below the surface of the sea, not far from the Sardinian coast.
In doing so, 58-year old Massimo Domenico Bondone, an experienced diver from the city of Genoa, has unearthed the Holy Grail in his salvaging community, next to the island of Tavolara.
71 crew members
HMS P311 went missing in January 1943 along with 71 crew members. The discovery has confirmed that every one of them perished after Mr Bondone found them still inside the submarine on the Gallurese seabed, which acted as a huge steel coffin depriving them of oxygen.
“Now you think of the fate of those who fell to their death down there – a fate shared by many people of different nationalities, submariners in particular,” Mr Bondone told the Italian newspaper La Nuova Sardegna.
The submarine is thought to have sunk from colliding after fishermen reported a loud roar at the time of the disappearance, over the din of a stormy night. But, until now, nobody had been able to find it.