A day before INS Tanin reached the shores of Israel, the IDF held a wreath-laying ceremony on its deck for the fallen soldiers of INS Dakar. The service was held at the same location where our Navy lost contact with the submarine 46 years ago.
INS Dakar was the former modified British T-class submarine Totem of the Royal Navy. In 1965, she was purchased by Israel as part of a group of three T-class submarines. She wascommissioned into the Israeli Sea Corps in November 1967 and underwent sea and diving trials in Scotland. Dakar departed for Israel on 9 January 1968, but disappeared en route with all hands. Despite extensive searches over the course of three decades, Dakar‘s wreckage was not found until 1999, when it was located between the islands of Cyprus andCrete. A portion of the vessel was salvaged and is on display at the Naval Museum in Haifa. The exact cause of Dakar‘s sinking is not known. It was one of four mysterious submarine disappearances in 1968; the other being the French submarine Minerve (S647), the Soviet submarine K-129 and the USS submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589).
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