Greek divers have discovered the wreckage of an Italian submarine 80 years after it was sunk by the Allied Forces in the Aegean Sea during World War Two, Ekathimerini reports. She was discovered last month by Greek wreck hunter diver, Kostas Thoctarides and his team, south of the island of Mykonos at a depth of 337 feet. The stricken sub was located by the ROV Super Achilles.
The view of the deck gun of the Italian submarine Jantina that was sunk during World War II by the British submarine HMS Torbay, south of the island of Mykonos, in the Aegean Sea, Greece, November 3, 2021. Kostas Thoctarides/Handout via REUTERS
The Argonauta-class submarine Jantina, which had sailed from the Greek island of Leros under the command of C.C. Vincenzo Politi with 47 crew on board, was sent to the bottom on the night of 5 July 1941, after being hit by a spread of six torpedoes fired by British T-class submarine HMS Torbay (N79). Six Italians survived by swimming to the coast while Politi and 38 ratings perished.
Italian submarine JANTINA, in her wartime camo
The seven Argonauta-class submarines all saw combat in WWII, with five being sunk and a sixth was scuttled at the Italian armistice in 1943. The last surviving boat of the class, Jalea, survived the carnage and was stricken in 1948.
During WWII, some 116 Italian submarines sailed against the Allies or supported those that did, chalking up 130 ships sunk for a total of some 700,000 tons of shipping. In exchange, they lost 96 of their submersibles, many with all hands, their hulls cracked on the seafloor. Some 3,000 submariners of the Regina Marina are still on eternal patrol.