Recovering I-52: The Golden Sub’s Gold at 17,000 Feet Deep

Описание: I-52 disappeared in the mid-Atlantic on June 23–24, 1944—along with 112 souls and a cargo list that reads like wartime desperation: tungsten, rubber, opium, quinine, and 146 gold bars meant to pay for German technology. This documentary follows the true story of how I-52 was hunted, struck, and later found nearly 17,000 feet down in a lightless, crushing abyss.

Using sonobuoys and the secret Mark 24 “Fido” acoustic homing torpedo, a USS Bogue Avenger tracked I-52 by sound—propellers, then the torpedo’s whine, then the detonation and the groan of steel. Decades later, the search became survival engineering: correcting wartime coordinates, beating the Deep Scattering Layer, and towing side-scan sonar to spot the unmistakable 356-foot shadow of a Type C3 cargo submarine.

When the Mir submersibles finally reached the seabed, I-52 sat upright—scarred with damage consistent with the kill. The team applied debris-field geometry and hydrodynamic sorting to hunt for the bullion… and recovered a container believed to be cargo—only to find it held opium, not gold. The I-52 treasure likely remains buried in soft sediment or pinned beneath heavy wreckage, turning recovery into an extreme deep-sea salvage problem—and a war-grave ethical line.

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DISCLAIMER: This video is for educational and historical documentation. Some images are AI-generated. All materials follow YouTube Fair Use policies.