The underwater argentine ARA San Juan had a reserve of air of seven days when she contacted for the last time with the naval base of mar del Plata, November 15, 2017. Two weeks later, the hopes of rescue 44 crew members had vanished, and the south american country entered into a period of total uncertainty that would last a year and a day, the time elapsed until the last day 16 the american company marine salvage Ocean Infinity found the helmet of 2,300 tons to 900 meters deep and about 600 miles from the coast of argentina. The firm will receive $ 7.5 million by the finding, but the government of Mauricio Macri has rejected move to the second stage and re-launch of the ship about the high number of the operation that is circulating in the argentine media, about 4,000 million dollars (around 3.500 million euros).
Experts consulted by this newspaper to avoid setting an approximate cost to the recovery of the ARA San Juan, but if you reach 3,500 million would surpass even one of the rescues more rocambolescos in the history of navigation, the Project Azorian, which has cost the united States the equivalent of approximately 2,300 million euros today. These are some of the search and rescue operations for submarines and aircraft more complex and costly in recent decades.
A secret operation of the Cold War
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The nuclear submarine soviet K-129, about 2,000 tons, it was to pique the march 8, 1968 with 98 people on board in the central Pacific. The soviet Navy failed to locate the ship after a search of two months, but the torpedoes and nuclear teams of cryptography of the vessel made that the united States launched a secret operation ginormous —the Project Azorian— to rescue him and join several points in the Cold War. The boat designed to carry out the survival, in the manufacture on the east coast in u.s. participated in the multi-millionaire and film director Howard Hughes, was too large for the Panama canal and had to circumnavigate the cape Horn to reach the Pacific. In August 1974, the ship american managed to recover the bow of the submarine (with six corpses), that was about 5,000 meters depth and 2,400 kilometers to the northwest of Hawaii. This was the only loot of an operation whose cost amounted to about $ 500 million of the period —the equivalent of approximately 2,300 million euros today, according to the book Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129, Norman Polmar and Michael White.
18,000 tons at the bottom of the Barents sea
on The 12th of August 2000, the Kursk, a nuclear submarine Russian guided missiles, sank in the Barents sea (Arctic Ocean), after two explosions in the bow, Was located the same day of the accident. The 118 crew members died. The survival of the ship of 18,000 tons, Betvole by a Dutch consortium, was conducted more than a year after the tragedy, lasted about 15 hours and cost around 70 million euros. The hull was 108 feet deep, and 140 kilometers from the Russian coast. The hull was not recessed into the bottom of the sea, which facilitated the survival. After recovering the remains of all the deceased, it was determined that 23 of them had survived the accident initial before you suffocate.
Air France lost more than 4,000 meters deep in the Atlantic
An Air France jet with 228 people on board fell into the waters of the Atlantic on 1 June 2009. The Airbus A330, covering the route between Rio de Janeiro and Paris, lost communication three and a half hours after take off. The accident, the worst in the history of the French company and an aircraft of this model, was due to an accumulation of unexpected problems and driving errors. More than a thousand soldiers and dozens of ships and planes brazilian and French participated in the search of the plane —they were people from 33 different nationalities— in the vicinity of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. In the first 15 days were found floating in the water 50 bodies and hundreds of pieces of the aircraft, including the stabilizer of a tail.
expand photo brazilian Soldiers retrieved the stabilizer tail of the Air France 447, the June 8, 2009. AP
The average depth of the search area (over 4,000 feet) made it impossible for the recovery of the black boxes during the 40 days that emitted acoustic signals. Only one plane had been located prior to such depth. It was a Boeing 747 of South African Airways, which was precipitated in 1987 in the Indian ocean with 159 people while covering the route between Taipei (Taiwan) and Johannesburg (south Africa). The black box and eight of the bodies were able to recover a couple of years later to more than 4,900 meters of depth.
The ceaseless task of search of the Air France 447 came to fruition in April 2011, when an underwater robot, with a side-scan sonar, has found a large part of the fuselage. In addition to the expenditure is not detailed of the Armies of the French and brazilian, Air France and Airbus invested more than 20 million euros in the work of search. Finally, we recovered the black boxes and 154 corpses that could be identified.
Airbus will install from 2019 on their planes a few new black boxes unsinkable that will facilitate their localization and the subsequent search of the aircraft struck.
MH370, the search side of the story and no result
Cops French inspected in 2015 at The Meeting a piece of the MH370. . AP
2014 was an annus horribilis for aviation in general and for Malaysia Airlines in particular, which amounted to two tragedies —a missing aircraft and the other taken down by a missile in Ukraine— with more than 500 dead. On march 8, a plane of the company in malaysia that had taken off from Kuala Lumpur and was supposed to land in Beijing lost contact to the 38-minute flight, becoming the MH370 one of the greatest enigmas of the history of aviation.
After more than four years of research and investigation, the only evidence of the catastrophe are the remains of the device that appeared months after the incident in the african coasts of réunion (France), Tanzania, Mozambique, Mauritius and south Africa. More than ten Armies participated in the search task, in which it is estimated that it invested more than $ 180 million (160 million euros) and ending in 2017 without a return any object or corpse. The cost was the highest in history for a search operation that did not include rescue. The private company Ocean Infinity, you have found the ARA San Juan, resumed the search at the beginning of this year, after agreeing with the Government of Kuala Lumpur that would charge us $ 70 million (€62 million) only in case of locating the aircraft. The american company left the area in June without any result.