(Dec. 11, 2020) Eureka! â a team of shipwreck hunters have discovered a submarine in coastal waters and believe it to be the World War I era R-8 submarine.
âI think discovering any shipwreck is very exciting,â spokesperson Jennifer Sellitti told Ocean City Today. âThis is what our team does, [and] discovering a submarine so rare is particularly exciting and we can tell by the sonar images that it is in very good shape.â
According to the press release, New Jersey-based company Atlantic Wreck Salvage (AWS), owner and operator of D/V Tenacious, discovered the submarine in the Atlantic using side-scan sonar, which works exactly as its name says. Rather than sending signal straight down, side-scan sonar incorporates a transducer that emits a fan-shaped signal that allows it to search the sea floor on each side of a vessel.
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The R-8 was used in 1936 as a target in aerial bomb testing off the coast of Delmarva. Submitted Photo
OCEAN CITY A World War I-era submarine sent to the bottom of the sea in a bombing training mission in the 1930s was recently located on the ocean floor of the coast of Ocean City.
Atlantic Wreck Salvage (AWS) and the crew of researchers on the D/V Tenacious on Thursday announced the discovery of the submarine known simply as R-8 off the coast of Ocean City. The vessel has yet to be dived and visually identified, but based on side-scan sonar, the location of the site and the historical record, the research team firmly believes it to be the R-8, a submarine sunk by experimental aerial bomb testing in 1936. The discovery is historically significant because the R-8 is one a few American submarines from that era resting in east coast waters that had yet to have been located.