British destroyer wreck after 80 years sunk in the English Channel

The British destroyer HMS Keith, which sank more than 80 years ago during the Dunkirk evacuation, also known as Operation Dynamo, has been in disrepair in recent decades.

The wreck of the destroyer HMS Keith in a 3D image based on sonar. Photo: AFP

The 320-foot-long ship was among 1,000 military, merchant, fishing and civilian vessels that rescued 338,226 Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. As the ship returned to the French coast after evacuating 992 soldiers to Dover, it was hit by a German bomb and sank in the English Channel. Now, nearly nine decades later, the World War II warship has been seen again after scientists used sonar to create a 3D model of the wreck on the seabed, the Mail reported on October 16.

The project, which involves Historic England and Drassm, a French underwater archaeology agency, is aimed at finding undiscovered wrecks associated with Operation Dynamo, which destroyed 305 ships and killed more than 30,000 soldiers.

Scientists are seeking to locate and study a total of 27 shipwrecks in the project. Of those, the locations of 12 were unknown before the survey, and four others were destroyed or buried in sand to the point of being unrecoverable. Experts believe they may have discovered three more unaccounted-for ships related to the Dunkirk evacuation, according to Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England.

The team’s main tool is a multibeam echosounder mounted beneath the hull of the research vessel André Malraux. The machine sends out sound waves and records the echoes that bounce off the seafloor, allowing geophysicists to create 3D images of objects like shipwrecks. The level of detail is so great that scientists can match the ship’s features and dimensions to historical photographs. For example, a lifeboat crane helped confirm that one wreck was the Normannia, which sank during an air raid on May 30, 1940.

Many of the wrecks are still in fairly good condition, but compared to previous surveys, the new HMS Keith has deteriorated over the past decade. The use of technology has not only helped create detailed images of ships like HMS Keith, but also helped correctly identify two other wrecks, the French minesweeper Denis Papin and the Moussaillon.

An Khang (According to Mail )

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