The Indonesian military announced on Sunday that the missing submarine had been found split into at least three sections at the bottom of the Bali Sea. 53 crew members were killed in the crash. Things are growing increasingly desperate for an Indonesian submarine lost in the water north of Bali.
The Indonesian Navy’s 44-year-old submarine KRI Nangala-402 was carrying out about 42 kilometers (51 miles) of torpedo drills off the coast of Bali on Wednesday morning, April 21, but failed to report back, according to the Indonesian government. “The legendary submarine lost contact shortly after requesting permission to launch the torpedo,” the government said. A search was launched just before 7 a.m., three hours after the communication was lost. The Associated Press, Australia, South Korea, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, India and Turkey have all offered to assist in the submarine search, and rescue ships from Singapore and Malaysia are expected to arrive in the region on weekends report.
The KRI Nangala-402 is a 61.3 m long (201 ft) attack submarine and has 53 crew members on board. With the most pressure, the vessel runs out of oxygen quickly. The submarine has a 72-hour oxygen supply which means it ran out on Saturday morning. There are some signs of the submarine’s fate. Rescuers are focusing on an area of the ocean that has an oil slick. Admiral Yudo Margono, staff of the Indonesian Navy, said oil leaked from a crack in the submarine’s fuel tank or that the crew could deliberately release fuel to reduce the ship’s weight so that it could rise to the surface, according to the AP.
The Indonesian navy reportedly detected an object with a “strong magnetic resonance” at a depth of 50 to 100 meters (164 to 328 feet), the military said at a news conference Friday, CNN reported. Although they suspect it is a missing submarine, it has not yet been confirmed. An Indonesian warship with high-tech gold is ready for further investigation. There are some concerns that the submarine may have sunk too deep to reach or recover. According to the Malaysian government, the submarine can operate at depths of up to 257 meters (843 feet).
It is feared that the submarine may have sunk to a depth of 600 meters (2,000 feet) in a relatively deep sea of relatively shallow sand. Even if the ship is still intact, it will probably be at a depth that is beyond the capability of most recovery missions. “Most rescue systems are rated at about 600 meters (1,969 feet),” Frank One, secretary of the Australian Submarine Institute, told AP. “They may be deeper than that because their design will create a secure margin, but may not have the ability to operate the associated pumps and other systems so they can survive at that depth but not necessarily operate.”
