Mystery Of The Deep Solved

With the same type of technology used to locate the Titanic, another historic ship has been found, CBS News Correspondent Jesse Schulman reports.

It's a maritime mystery solved. An Israeli submarine known as the Dakar, missing for more than 30 years, has been found by a U.S. underwater search team, almost two miles down in the Mediterranean Sea near the island of Cyprus.

The vessel left port in Britain in 1968 with a full military sendoff, heading for Israel on its maiden voyage. [It was retrofitted and renamed.] Wives and children watched as the 69 crewmen boarded the sub and set out to sea. They were never seen again. Repeated searches over the years produced little except false alarms and false hopes.

"I heard the submarine had been broken in two pieces," said Miri Levi, the sister of one of the crewman. "At this moment, I'm not very sure that it is the submarine."

This time, though, the Israeli navy has little doubt. They have underwater photos of the wreckage that they say prove that this is the vessel.

Some family members want the sub salvaged. Others say, let the dead rest. The experts believe finding the ship was hard enough. Recovering it would be almost impossible, they say.

The sub's disappearance was a great national trauma and abiding mystery. There were suggestions that it was sunk by enemy warship, and conspiracy theories abounded. Now, it seems, it collided with a passing freighter, whose crew may never even have noticed.

Retired naval Capt. Doron Amir told Israel's Channel 2 television that the submarine probably spotted a big ship coming at it too late. He suggested a crash-dive attempt to avoid the collision failed and the vessel struck the submarine's conning tower, ripping it open and flooding the vessel.

"The wreckage of the conning tower is really distorted and torn as though something struck it a glancing blow and sailed on without noticing," said Amir, who has been studying the video shots of the submarine, together with other navy investigators.

When the Dakar disappeared there was speculation that it might have been sunk by the Egyptian navy, or a Soviet vessel, but Amir said video shots of the submarine do not support those theories.

The investigation is not complete, he said, but all the evidence indicates a collision.

The Dakar was an old submarine, which had been refitted in Portsmouth, England.