Indonesian sub sank with 53 aboard

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An Indonesian navy patrol ship sails to join the search for a missing submarine. Associated Press/ Photo by Achmad Ibrahim

Search teams located the submarine's wreckage on the ocean floor which confirms the vessel sank, killing all 53 crew members on board. The submarine disappeared off the coast of East Java on Wednesday during a training exercise.

What happened? An underwater robot equipped with cameras found the pieces of the lost submarine on the ocean floor 838 meters below the surface—much deeper than the 200 meters it could safely descend. Investigators don’t yet know why the sub sank so deep. The Indonesian navy said an electrical failure could have left the vessel unable to resurface.

Dig deeper: Read Onize Ohikere’s report in The Sift about the crash of a Lion Air jet in the Java Sea in 2018.

Editor’s note: WORLD has updated this report since its initial posting.

Lynde Langdon

Lynde is WORLD’s executive editor for news. She is a graduate of World Journalism Institute, the Missouri School of Journalism, and the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Lynde resides with her family in Wichita, Kan.

@lmlangdon