The Argentine Senate declared the recent discovery of a sunken German submarine near Necochea the most important finding in Argentine naval history, file S-150/25. The unanimous resolution, advanced by Senator Silvina García Larraburu, granted the project national interest status and opened access to research, preservation, and funding for the volunteer Underwater Research Project Eslabón Perdido.
After 77 years, researchers located an 80-meter German submarine at a depth of 26 meters off Quequén. “It is a German submarine sunk 77 years ago that was never reported. It is the only case of a finding of this magnitude in Argentine waters,” said project coordinator Abel Basti, according to El Cronista.
Rumors about “metallic shadows” on the seabed had circulated among locals for decades. In 2022 Basti alerted the Argentine Naval Prefecture to a submerged structure, leading to sonar confirmation. In 2021 the Prefecture had acknowledged an object at 28 meters but did not classify it. Naval engineers Juan Martín Canevaro and Andrés Miguel Cuidet later determined the shape matched a submersible.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.
The Naval Prefecture and the Naval Hydrography Service added the site to official nautical charts and the Derrotero Argentino. Specialist Fabio Bisciotti from the Center for Underwater Studies of the Italian Naval League said the hull showed 90 percent correspondence with a German Type IX submarine. An expedition financed by the Reitich Foundation detected damage consistent with scuttling, supporting the idea that the crew deliberately sank the vessel after the fall of the Third Reich. Only two Nazi submarines, U-530 and U-977, are officially recorded as having surrendered in Mar del Plata in 1945.
Endorsements from the municipalities of Necochea and Lobería, regional museums, and historians preceded the Senate vote. The declaration is expected to facilitate future dives, conservation work, and public exhibitions. Researchers plan controlled expeditions to map every compartment, recover artifacts, and compare findings with wartime archives, while historians examine new questions about wartime transit routes, intelligence operations, and post-war migration in South America.