Diver killed on U-boat expedition

[JonSturgeon]

BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Diver killed on U-boat expedition

Diver killed on U-boat expedition

A diver has died in an accident off the north-west coast of Ireland.

He was on an exploratory dive to assess the chances of recovering a sunken U-boat 16 miles off Malin Head on the County Donegal coast.

The vessel, which did not see any war action, sank while being towed from Scotland to Londonderry to be scrapped.

Derry City Council plans to raise the Nazi submarine, U-778, currently lying in about 70 metres of water, and house it in a museum.

It is estimated there are about 150 such boats lying off Malin Head, all vivid reminders of the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II.

The council said that "because of the depth of the waters involved, the procedure was expected to be highly technical".

It is understood the man's diving colleagues will try to recover his body on Wednesday.

Derry City councillor Shaun Gallagher paid tribute to the dead man.

"He was a gentle giant and a lovely man - we're just devastated," he said.

"At this stage it's too early to say what happened."

It is the second fatal diving incident off the north-west coast in about two months.

At the end of July, Paul Jackson, a police officer from Humberside, had been looking at wrecks off Tory Island but failed to resurface.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

The headline says the dive was "killed."

The article itself says he "died."

That is clearly a signifigant difference in semantics. Hopefully we will learn which is more accurate.

Jeff

 

[z3r0c00l]

Unlikely that he was killed.

 

[JonSturgeon]

Looks like they updated the article:

Team to recover U-boat diver body

An operation to recover the body of a diver who died while trying to assess the chances of recovering a sunken German U-boat is to take place later.

Michael Hanrahan, a father of four from Dublin, died during a dive at the sunken submarine, 16 miles off Malin Head on the Donegal coast, on Tuesday.

The dive team was filming the U-boat when the diver got into difficulties.

Other members of the team tried to help him - but they were unsuccessful. It is not clear what led to the accident.

Later on Wednesday, a team will attempt to recover the body.

Paul Moore, from BBC Radio Ulster's Your Place and Mine, spent Tuesday with the divers at Malin Head, for a feature he was doing for the programme.

"It was just such a huge shock, because they were just so excited about it and they seemed to know just what they were doing," Mr Moore said.

"It's just such a tragedy for the family."

He said later he was looking at photographs he had taken of the divers.

"I was looking at these photographs and realising that one of these divers was still there, had had this accident and was now dead," he said.

"Four hours earlier I had been talking to these guys - just four typical guys just loving what they were doing."

Derry City councillor Shaun Gallagher paid tribute to Mr Hanrahan.

"He was a gentle giant and a lovely man - we're just devastated," he said.

It is the second fatal diving incident off the north-west coast in the last two months.

At the end of July, Paul Jackson, a police officer from Humberside, had been looking at wrecks off Tory Island but failed to resurface.

The U-boat, which did not see any war action, sank while being towed from Scotland to Londonderry to be scrapped.

Derry City Council plans to raise U-778 and house it in a museum. The boat is lying in about 70 metres of water.

It is estimated there are about 150 such boats lying off Malin Head, all vivid reminders of the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II.

The council said that "because of the depth of the waters involved, the procedure was expected to be highly technical".

 

[river_sand_bar]

So is there any indication as to how it happened... I think i read something about a medical issue..

 

[DandyDon]

So is there any indication as to how it happened... I think i read something about a medical issue..

That would be a popular suspicion, but if you read such, it'd be nice to post it or the link - no just think you did.

I'm curious why the other divers who tried to help him could not at least discard his weights? Perhaps his kit was negative without weights, nothing to discard? I'm leery of that approach.

 

[steamtrollnuke]

I saw this on a Submarine Newsletter, it said that the body had been recovered and had apparently suffered a seizure. They had not yet performed an autopsy. I'm guessing otoxing

 

[diver 85]

That would be a popular suspicion, but if you read such, it'd be nice to post it or the link - no just think you did.

I'm curious why the other divers who tried to help him could not at least discard his weights? Perhaps his kit was negative without weights, nothing to discard? I'm leery of that approach.

regarding your last paragraph..........Ah, another reason to wear a weight belt.....lol....

 

[SFLDiver3445]

Hopefully some more information will become available, because although this incident is very tragic and nobody really wants to re-hash details, it is important to understand what happen, so we will hopefully learn from it and avoid it happening to anyone again in the future.

FYI: As for the previous comments about the use of a weight belt, I do not use a weight belt when diving my Dive Rite Rebreather.

 

[tonka97]

....
Derry City Council plans to raise the Nazi submarine, U-778, currently lying in about 70 metres of water, and house it in a museum.

A SB moderator once eliminated my post referring to a "NAZI" sub.

The moderator provided the insight that not all Germans were NAZIs, and that the NAZI party was the same as Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S.

"You wouldn't call a U.S. sub a Democratic submarine".