Remains of U576 are submerged in depths off Ocracoke
On her fifth tour of duty, U576 met her doom, inexplicably surfacing in the middle of a convoy after firing four torpedoes, sinking one ship and damaging two others. There were no survivors and the crew, as Michael E. Ruane writing for the Washington Post discovered, were young, many of them less than 20 years of age.
“The sonar “target” first appears as a green and yellow streak on Randy Holt’s computer screen. Up ahead, nothing can yet be seen through the dark water 700 feet below the ocean surface.
Holt’s submersible, Nomad, glides over the sandy bottom, fighting the current and searching. With each sonar sweep, the image grows more distinct on the screen. “Very good,” Holt says. “We’re real close to this thing.”
Then he spots something outside, and switches off the lights: “See the shadow?” A large black silhouette emerges from the gloom. “Yeah,” Holt says. “This is our U-boat.”
[box type=”bio”] A mystery solved as U576 is found in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean off Ocracoke. Read the rest of the story on the Washington Post.[/box]