"PQ17" Topic

Following this report: TMP link

Which had the Swedish navy dicovering a Soviet submarine sunk in 1916 and still in remarkable condition… and after watching a programme on Yesterday about convoy PQ17 (written and narrated rather well by Jeremy Clarkson) got me to thinking about what condition the sunk vessels (and more importantly the cargo) could be in?

link

"PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied World War II convoy in the Arctic Ocean. In July 1942, the Arctic convoys suffered a significant defeat when Convoy PQ 17 lost 24 of its 35 merchant ships during a series of heavy enemy daylight attacks which lasted a week"

Sunk with the merchant ships there were "3,350 motor vehicles, 430 tanks, 210 bombers and 99,316 tons of general cargo including radar sets and ammunition". While the general supplies would long have been gone, the tanks, trucks and bombers could be in quite good condition in the extremely cold waters, especially as arctic waters generally have a lower salinity. I'm surprised that no-one appears to have carried out any underwater searches for these.

Positions of ships at their time of sinking are generally only vaguely known, and its not a fun part of the ocean to work in

You'd need to recruit brass monkeys trained for diving

Once you are at those sort of depths I don't think the temperature is a lot different to, say, the Titanic, Bismark or Yorktown wrecks?

Without thermal vents or volcanoes the abyssal depths run about 4C.

Temp wouldn't be a major difference.

On the other hand aside from picture taking of the war materiel, recovering a tank or plane is a bit more of an undertaking than some china or a ships bell.

If there had been gold on the other hand…

Not the temperature that is the problem, its working at that latitude…

I'm pretty sure no SOVIET submarines were sunk in 1916 :-)

You are correct, it was of course a Russia submarine!