Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401300044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HAIFA, ISRAEL LENGTH: Medium
The disappearance remains a mystery.
The military said recently that the search for the Dakar and its 69 crew members would resume in the coming months. Family members of the crew said repeated searches have failed to produce any results.
"Like the Navy, we still know nothing," said Micha Marcovici, brother of a mechanic on board, at the annual commemoration ceremony.
The Dakar stopped sending signals to Israel on January 25, 1968, when it was on the last leg of a journey from England, where it had been purchased and upgraded.
The signals were just a keep-in-touch code of two quick beeps. Eight hours of silence followed, but were dismissed as a technical glitch. After 16 hours, the alert went out.
The first air and sea search went on for 10 days, but no trace of the submarine surfaced.
The news shocked Israel. The loss of 69 sailors of a 3,000-man navy was the largest single-day loss for the Israeli military up to that time.
For weeks, relatives and others waited for word as the army tried to keep the deaths secret.
"I called them up and asked them what they thought they were doing. Everyone knew something had happened and the speculation was making it worse," said Naomi Raanan, widow of Dakar commander Col. Yaacov Raanan.
The most common theory on why it went down is that human error or a technical malfunction caused the submarine to sink deeper than it was safe to go, causing the frame to buckle.
A year after the disappearance, the Dakar's emergency buoy washed up on a beach in the occupied Gaza Strip. An analysis of the corrosion on it led the Navy to believe the Dakar was lost along the Egyptian coast, making a search impossible. At the time, Israel was at war with Egypt.
The Egyptians rejected speculation that they had sunk the vessel because they thought it was spying. Peace with Egypt in 1979 led to a series of intensive searches off Egypt's coast, which ended in 1986.
The theory that the Russian navy sunk the submarine as a favor to its Arab allies was dismissed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and better relations with Russia allowed Israeli investigators to look into Soviet files.
In October 1992, navy commander Adm. Micha Ram launched a new search.
Ram said findings by a team of Israeli, Greek, Italian, Turk and American researchers led the Israelis to believe that the sub may have sunk somewhere between the Greek island of Rhodes and mainland Greece. Minerals encrusted onto the buoy originated in Greek waters, the researchers said.
The Israeli and Greek navies used sonar equipment and satellite technology in a vain search. The military would only say that the last search ended in June 1993, and would resume in the spring.
Each year, the victims' families climb onto a bus in Haifa and drive up to a special memorial in Jerusalem's military cemetery. The memorial is shaped like a submarine, with 69 plaques for portholes.
by CNB