# Divers discover wreckage of Soviet WWII submarine in Baltic Sea



## v2 (Jun 9, 2009)

A team of Swedish and Finnish divers have located the wreckage of a Soviet WWII S-type diesel submarine near the Aland islands in the Baltic Sea, a Swedish news agency said on Tuesday.

The S-2 submarine sank on January 2, 1940 in a minefield during the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland (November 1939-March 1940). The entire 50-member crew was lost.

"After searching through a section of water the wreck has been found in the Aland Sea near the [maritime] border between Sweden and Finland by a Swedish-Finnish dive team," the TT agency cited a team statement.

The team started the search for the sub more than a decade ago in April 1999.

Swedish authorities as well as the Russian embassy in Sweden have been informed about the discovery, the team said.

S-type medium submarines, unofficially dubbed Stalinets, were one of the most widely produced and deployed submarine class in the Soviet Navy during World War II.

Boats of this class were extremely successful and achieved more victories than any Soviet submarine. In all, they sank 82,770 gross registered tons of merchant shipping and seven warships, which accounts for about one-third of all tonnage sunk by Soviet submarines.


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## diddyriddick (Jun 9, 2009)

Hmmmm....Another dive destination? Might have to use a dry suit for that one. Thanks for the heads-up.


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## comiso90 (Jun 9, 2009)

cool.. thanks.. any other links? I'd like to know the depth.

i wonder if there are still mines lurking...


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## ToughOmbre (Jun 9, 2009)

Very cool! 

TO


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## comiso90 (Jun 9, 2009)

it's a nice looking sub!

Soviet S class submarine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.


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## Gnomey (Jun 9, 2009)

She looks in good shape due to the cold water. Would be a nice dive (albeit cold). Looking at the tanks the divers are carrying I think it is deeper than 130ft, however I don't think it is that much deeper. However they are carrying two main tanks and a pony tank so they could be mixed gas diving (most likely Trimix/Heliox) so a deep technical dive would be the case not a simple recreational dive.


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## Amsel (Jun 9, 2009)

She's a nice looking vessel. I guess the cold water helps quite a bit.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 9, 2009)

Is the crew still aboard her?


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## vikingBerserker (Jun 9, 2009)

Yea, I was thinking of the mines as well. Diving on wrecks is great, never have done a sub before.


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## Vassili Zaitzev (Jun 9, 2009)

Interesting.


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## mlsco (Jun 10, 2009)

A lot of us clearly ended up thinking about mines. 

Question: floating or sunk to the ocean floor? I'd assume that most WW2 mines floated by virtue of air inside and would have by now pretty uniformly corroded, so sank.


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## timshatz (Jun 10, 2009)

Impressive.


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## wheelsup_cavu (Jun 10, 2009)

Thanks V2.
That is an interesting bit of history.

I would think the mines were removed after the war.
I read about the large scale effort the US navy undertook after WW II to remove the mines from the Japanese waters so I would thind something similar was done here.
Not necessarily by the US but the local navies.


Wheelsup


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## Ferdinand Foch (Jun 15, 2009)

timshatz said:


> Impressive.



Most impressive. (Sorry, poor Star Wars connection to anyone who didn't know,  )


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## Juha (Jun 16, 2009)

Yes
Finns clearned the minefiels, Swedish Navy surely did the same in its waters. In my youth every summer some mines were still found drifting around. But they are big and easily seen, meaning those still in their moors those which popped on surface were menace. I doubt that near the subs there ever were any clearning obstacles, which were smaller but if exploded wrecked paravans etc, and surely would have killed nearby diver.

Juha


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## Aaron Brooks Wolters (Jun 23, 2009)

Wish I'd found this thread sooner, oh well, great info V2, very interesting.


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## wheelsup_cavu (Jun 24, 2009)

Aaron Brooks Wolters said:


> Wish I'd found this thread sooner, oh well, great info V2, very interesting.



I find there are so many good threads on this site that it's impossible to read them all, but I'm trying.


Wheelsup


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