For the past five decades, we've been losing and looking for submarines to varying degrees of success.
But losing a submarine is more common than it seems — and finding one is a lot harder.
Navies around the world have been losing submarines in the ocean with regularity since they started using them. Though submarines and their captains take extensive measures to not get lost, despite their best efforts, there's a lot that can go wrong with a submarine and a lot more we don't know about the Ocean. Important piping can be bent, periscopes can get crushed by passing boats, torpedoes can get loaded wrong, and, in a very specific case, a lucky totem may get removed.
In 1968 alone, four submarines from four different countries were lost within months of each other. The search for these submarines lasted days but, in some cases, the wreckage wasn't found until decades later.
The loss of submarines is not something of a bygone era either nor is it taken lightly. As recently as 2021 a submarine was lost in Indonesia during a training exercise, prompting an international search and rescue attempt involving seven different countries.
Despite the best efforts of public and private entities looking for missing submarines, the oxygen limit onboard the submarine and the vastness of the Ocean can prove to be insurmountable barriers. Here are the times we've looked for missing submarines and come up short.