The US Navy has confirmed the identity of a World War II submarine wreck discovered off the coast of Matsuwa Island in the Kuril Islands, bringing closure to a mystery that has endured for more than eight decades.

The wreck has been identified as USS Herring (SS-233), a Gato-class submarine lost on 1 June 1944 during combat operations against Japanese forces in the northern Pacific. All 83 crew members aboard were lost.

The implosion of the submersible Titan during a 2023 descent to the RMS Titanic site was caused by structural failure in its carbon fibre pressure hull, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation. The report concludes that the tragedy, which killed all five on board, was both preventable and rooted in a series of critical design, operational and management failures.

On 17 December 1917, USS F-1 collided with its sister ship, USS F-3, off the coast of San Diego during a training exercise in dense fog. The impact caused the F-1 to sink within ten seconds, resulting in the loss of 19 crew members. A mere five sailors survived the incident. The submarine now rests approximately 1,300ft (~396m) beneath the Pacific Ocean.

The wreck was found 40 metres deep, approximately 7.8 nautical miles south of Rottnest Island, by divers investigating a sonar anomaly on 1 January 2025.

A historic vessel

Built in 1925 for the Royal Netherlands Navy, K XI was one of the first submarines designed for long-range patrols in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). During World War II, the vessel was relocated to Fremantle, Australia, where it played a role in Allied submarine operations in the Pacific theatre.

The wreck of the HMS Trooper has finally been found by the private deep-sea research company Planet Blue at a depth of 253 metres (830 ft) in the Icarian Sea, near the Cyclades Islands. The team was led by Greek diver and researcher Kostas Thoktaridis.

The discovery was no small feat. After a persistent search that spanned several years, the submarine, which had been lost to the depths since November 1917, was identified through diligent research, underwater surveys and the collation of historical data. 

The waters off the coast of Norway have unveiled a long-hidden secret. The wreckage of the British submarine HMS Thistle, which sank during World War II, has been discovered after 83 years. The discovery was made by Norway's Institute of Marine Research and the MAREANO program during a routine seabed mapping cruise. The submarine's identification was confirmed only recently, following a subsequent cruise.

The HMS Thistle embarked on its final voyage on 10 April 1940. Tragically, it was torpedoed by a German submarine, leading to the loss of all 53 crew members on board.

Kostas Thoctarides told state news agency ANA his team had located the wreck of HMS Triumph at a depth of 670 feet at an undisclosed location in the Aegean Sea.

The HMS Triumph was a British T-Class submarine involved in military operations in the Aegean Sea and elsewhere in the European theatre of the Second World War. It carried out twenty missions, including attacks against Axis ships, landing British commandos and rescuing Allied soldiers, until it disappeared during a mission in 1942. Eighty-four submariners were killed when the HMS Triumph sank.

(Photo credit, top image: US Naval Institute Photo Archive)

The US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) confirmed the identity of a wreck site off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan, as USS Albacore (SS 218). The NHHC made the announcement on Thursday, after several months of examining Japanese surveys conducted on the site in 2022.

Sweden's military has now analyzed the video footage provided by Swedish wreckhunter group Ocean X Team and concluded that it is the wreck of a Russian submarine that sank after a collision with a Swedish vessel in 1916 during the First World War. Ocean X was the team who also found the "Baltic anomali"