In 1942, four German submarines were sunk right off the North Carolina coast. The wreck of U-576, the last of these U-boats to be located, was only found two years ago. This summer NOAA, with the help of a private foundation, staged an expedition to map the wreck. The Washington Post offers up a detailed and moving report on the survey. A sample:
“It’s sort of unreal,” said NOAA maritime archaeologist Joe Hoyt, the chief investigator on the project, who was among the first to glimpse the boat on Aug. 24.
“I knew the story, [but] the moment that we get in there and it comes out of the gloom at you … it was humbling,” he said.
At that great depth, the boat remains substantially intact. “It’s all there, just as it went down in 1942,” he said.
“One of the things we’re looking for is what happened to the crew,” he said. “Did they try to get out the escape hatches? Did the ship flood catastrophically? Were they on the seabed for some period of time, disabled with air still in the sub?”
“All the hatches we were able to see… were dogged down, closed,” he said. “So, you see those hatches closed and the moment you kind of see that … you’re immediately aware that it’s a tomb.”
“There’s 45 guys inside of that thing,” he said. “And no matter the exact circumstances of their demise, it had to just be horrifying.”
