In the Mediterranean Sea, 19 kilometers from Netanya, the remains of a British merchant ship sunk in 1943 by a German submarine were discovered. This was told yesterday by the newspaper "Israel ayom" employee of the company "Yam-Yafo", which is engaged in the implementation of marine projects, research and modeling of the seabed and so on. According to him, this is the largest ship ever found at the Israeli coast.
The discovery of the ship was the result of cooperation between the company Yam Yafo and the expedition of archaeologists at the University of Texas, led by a specialist in marine archeology Shelley Waxman. It was she who found the "boat of Jesus" in the Sea of ​​Galilee.
American archaeologists rented from an Israeli company a robot to explore the seabed.
The search was crowned with success: a ship was found at a depth of 182 meters, the dimensions of which corresponded exactly to the British oil tanker Athelmonarch, sunk by the U-97 submarine of the Nazi Kriegsmarine off the coast of Mandate Palestine. This happened on June 15, 1943.
In 1941, this submarine sank several British ships in the vicinity of Ireland. Then, after the intensification of hostilities in North Africa, it was transferred to the Mediterranean.
In June 1943 (on those days when a great tank battle took place near Kursk) a huge tanker 160 meters long and 25 meters wide left Beirut with 14,000 tons of oil. He was supposed to deliver oil to the Egyptian Port Said, but on June 15 he was attacked by the U-97 and sank. Four of the 51 crew members were killed. The rest was picked up by a Greek ship.
However, the Nazi submarine lived after this only a day. According to the article on U-97 in Wikipedia, the Australian Air Force bomber struck a Hitler submarine close to Haifa, and she died.