l4sfdrx

STAYING AHEAD - SIGINT SHIPS AND SPY PLANES 265
while a substantial number of Israeli personnel were trained by
the British at HMS Dolphin. The Truncheon and the Turpin then
transferred to the main Israeli naval base at Haifa. However,
when the Totem, now renamed the Dakar, Hebrew for
'Swordfish', prepared to set sail on 9 January 1968, those
watching on the quayside were alarmed. The Super-Ts were
designed to take a crew of sixty, but in order to get all the
trainees home, she embarked a total of sixty-nine people. Her
new modifications included a special 'wet and dry' air lock
alongside the conning tower for the despatch of special forces
- which added to her weight. 23 Dockers observing her final
preparations on the quayside were also astonished to see many
crates of contraband - mostly whisky - also being loaded,
followed by dismantled motorcycles. Grossly overloaded, she set
sail around midnight. 24
A week later the Dakar arrived safely at Gibraltar, then set
out across the Mediterranean. Her last reported position was
somewhere east of Crete on 24 January. Nothing more was
heard of her. Her wreck was finally discovered in 1999, southwest
of Cyprus, at a depth of over nine thousand feet. She was
found by the Nauticus Corporation, the same salvage team that
located the Titanic. Something had caused the submarine to dive
below her maximum pressure depth, and she had suffered a
catastrophic implosion of her hull. The Israelis salvaged the
conning tower, which is now on display at Israel's Naval Museum
in Haifa. However, few of those passing this striking memorial
are aware of the secret sigint past of the Dakar and its sister
ships, or of their eventful missions inside the Arctic Circle.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the baton of special submarine operations
passed to the new '0' class submarines, two of which were
fitted out for sigint activities. For their commanders, the biggest
anxiety was being forced to the surface by Soviet depth-charging
or technical failure, and then captured. Alfie Roake, one of
Britain's most intrepid spy-sub commanders, recalls that the
question they continually asked themselves through the 1970s