In January 1968, the French submarine Minerve was underway in the Mediterranean on her way back to her home base in Toulon. Communications from the submarine advised that she would be at her berth in about an hour.  Then mysteriously, the diesel-electric submarine vanished. Despite an extensive search by the French navy, no trace was found of the submarine and her crew of 6 officers and 46 sailors.

Over 50 years after the Minerve’s disappearance, the French government contracted with the American ocean-mapping company Ocean Infinity to continue the search. Yesterday, Ocean Infinity announced that their Norwegian flag research vessel Seabed Constructor had located the wreckage of the Minerve in about 7,800 feet of water, roughly 28 miles south of the French port city of Toulon.  

In November, the same research vessel operated by Ocean Infinity located the wreckage of the missing Argentine submarine San Juan.

The New York Times reports that the Minerve was found in three sections, spread across 330 yards, said Stanislas Gentien, a spokesman for the Mediterranean’s Maritime Prefecture, in Toulon. The first four letters of the vessel’s name — MINE, written in red — were visible on the main piece of wreckage, leaving little doubt about the submarine’s identity, he said.

The cause of the loss of Minerve so close to her home port remains unknown. 

!968 was a distinctly bad year for submarines. Minerve sank two days after the Israeli submarine INS Dakar disappeared in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Two other submarines were lost to unknown causes in the same year; the Soviet submarine K-129 and the American USS Scorpion.