Three miles under the Atlantic Ocean, a Japanese submarine has been sitting upright on the seafloor since 1944, and it's still carrying roughly two tons of gold. According to Nauticos, LLC, the ocean exploration firm that helped locate the wreck, the gold was meant to be payment to Nazi Germany for military technology and never reached shore. Nobody has managed to lift it, almost 80 years on.
Why was a submarine carrying a fortune in gold
By 1944, most normal shipping between Japan and Germany was cut off by Allied blockades, and the two countries turned to specially built submarines to exchange supplies. The I-52 was loaded in Singapore with tin, medical supplies, and rubber, and two tons of gold to buy German optical technology, Nauticos says. The submarine was about 356 feet long and weighed roughly 2,500 tons, according to the ocean-history nonprofit National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). It was bound for a base in Nazi-occupied Lorient, France.
Unbeknownst to the crew, American codebreakers had already cracked the Japanese naval codes. According to Nauticos, US intelligence intercepted and decoded messages which showed exactly what the I-52 was carrying, and a carrier task force was dispatched from Norfolk, Virginia, with instructions to find and sink it.
