Hopes dashed, relatives of Argentine submarine crew turn to grief and anger [View all]

[sandensea]

For more than a week, as the days passed with little news, relatives of 44 sailors aboard an Argentine Navy submarine that went missing on Nov. 15 hoped for a miracle.

On Thursday morning came the crushing news: An explosion had been recorded deep in the Atlantic Ocean near where the submarine was traveling, only a few hours after the vessel’s last communication. Some relatives fainted. Some screamed at the naval officers. Others sobbed loudly.

“The commander of the Mar del Plata base confirmed that they are all dead,” Luis Tagliapietra, father of one of the missing crew, Lt. Alejandro Tagliapietra, said. “The explosion was at a depth of over 200 meters (656 ft). There is no human being that can survive that.”

There was also anger. Families said the navy had mismanaged the situation by waiting to start a full-scale search and by dangling reports of possible satellite phone calls from the ship, which turned out to be false.

As if to add insult to injury, the explosion came to light only after analysts from the United States government and an international nuclear weapons monitor detected it and told the Argentines.

Vessels from 11 nations, including the United States, have been combing the seas as part of the search; the Argentine Navy’s four P3-B maritime patrol aircraft have been grounded and unavailable for deployment.

While the Navy has not formally given up hope of finding the crew, relatives began referring to their loved ones in the past tense. If the sailors perished, it would be the deadliest submarine catastrophe since the sinking of the Kursk — a Russian vessel brought down by a misfired weapon in 2000 — and the Argentine military’s largest loss of life since the Falklands War of 1982.

The disappearance and likely loss of the vessel, the ARA San Juan, could turn out to be the greatest national tragedy to unfold under President Mauricio Macri, who came into office nearly two years ago vowing to invest in Argentina’s underfunded armed forces.

Argentina's $5.5 billion defense budget was 4% of federal spending in 2017, and 0.9% of GDP.

At: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/americas/argentina-submarine-explosion.html