A diver has revealed the moment he found a German U-boat had lain at the bottom of the English Channel after being sunk in World War Two.
The sunken U-672 was found about 20 miles off the coast of Salcombe, Devon after it was damaged by depth charges dropped by HMS Balfour in 1944.
82 years later, the U-672’s emblem was identified by divers who matched its snorkel system and radar-decoy equipment to the missing submarine known for having a pig painted on a tower.
Dominic Robinson, a diver with Plymouth’s Gasperados team who discovered the wreck, said: ‘I started seeing the individual features.
‘I saw the snorkel, I saw the conning tower, all those kind of things – I knew that we were going to get the video needed to identify it, so I was really pleased about that.’
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The captain of the leaking submarine waited until the last moment before deciding to float to the surface and give his crew a last chance of surviving.
He then intentionally sunk the vessel carrying the 52-strong German crew.
The crew, who all survived, were left to bob around in lifeboats before they were captured and then returned to Germany after the war.
(Picture: Gasperados Dive Team)
The diver said he had spoken to the family of the U-boat’s captain who said he lived a ‘long and happy life’.
He added: ‘They just said how proud he would have been and how pleased he would have been to know that it had been found at last.’
The co-ordinates it was sunk on were input incorrectly, so nobody could find it until this month.
Dr Axel Niestle, a historian who specialises in U-boats, said ‘due to a clerical error’ the position of the U-boat ended up being recorded ‘some 46 miles’ away.