ARA San Juan, a TR-1700-class Diesel-Electric Submarine built by the German Nordseewerke Emden GmbH firm for the Argentine Navy in the 80s, went missing on Wednesday 15 after losing communications with their base.
The fate of the submarine and it's 44-man crew remains unknown, as the Argentine Navy finds itself unable to locate the missing sub on it's own. Several countries offered help and logistic support, among them Chile (which is probably going to help with surface ships + a P3 Orion), Great Britain offered support from the Falklands (rumours says they have a C-130 ready if the Argentine Government accepts their help), the US (offered Satellite support and a NASA-owned P3 Orion equipped with Magnetometer and Gravimeter, among other sensors, based off Antartica) and Brazil will also contribute to the search and rescue efforts.
The situation is unclear, it stopped sending messages for two days and it cannot be reached. The main rumour is that (according to a forum member who served in the Navy and still has contacts inside it) there was a fire in the Torpedo compartment (the ship was on a patrol mission, armed) which was controlled, it surfaced but couldn't contact base because the weather is terribly bad and went underwater again and later on, missing.
It's confusing, there is no emergency comms in the ship?, no emergency beacon?. There are no evidence of an explosion, no oil spill or rubble at all, so the ship has to be
somewhere.
The ARA San Juan is one of the three available submarines in the Argentine Navy. She is, along with ARA Santa Cruz, from the TR-1700 class. The third sub is ARA Salta, a Type 209 submarine, also of German origin.
Let's just hope for the best, for the crew and the submarine.