I 52 Submarine Wreck

[scemachelle]

Hello,

I am a newbie on hear.

I am seeking information on a shipwreck of a Submarine Named I-52

We know this was located in the mid 1990's.

We heard a rumour that the orginal Russian Crew had returned and salvaged
the gold, does any body have genuine information on this ?

We also heard talk than a private Asian Consortium surveyed the wreck
in late 2018 and discovered this to be untrue the wreck remained untouched ?
Does any body have information on this ?

Tony S.

 

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[Samanthy]

As far as I’ve read a few things have been recovered but no gold. It was a Japanese cargo submarine and it lays at depth of 17,000 feet. Any recovery would cost a fortune.

 

[Mackaydon]

The finder was Paul Tidwell.
Today, he is head of Innocap, Inc.
His ROV placed a Japanese flag on the hull of the vessel but never explored the interior.
Don......
PS: Welcome to Treasurenet !

 

[vpnavy]

I searched

and found a bunch of threads talking about I-52. Here are just a few...

Loss of the Japanese submarine I-52
(Feb 20, 2005, 03:56 PM)

I-52... Japans Golden Submarine ...
(Jun 12, 2015, 04:47 AM)

Known shipwrecks with secret cargo: have any of the secret cargoes been found
(Oct 31, 2018, 04:41 PM)​

 

[Salvor6]

That $25 million in gold is now worth almost $100 million in today's dollars.

 

[enrada]

Subs may have been able to carry tons of material. My question is what was the cubic volume of what was supposedly on the I52?

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

It displaced 3,644 metric tons submerged. Cargo capacity was listed as 300 metric tons.

That is equivalent to 79,251 pounds (of water). One cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons. So, if water, the volume they could carry was 10,584 cubic feet.

In a sub the weight would be important, so the weight of 79,251 gallons of water is 657,783 lbs. So, if they carried nothing but gold (no food, torpedoes, etc) that's a goodly amount.

But we know she shipped 120 tonnes of tin, 60 tonnes of rubber (hardly exciting), and recorded only 2.2 tonnes of gold. I'd still take it!

 

[whydahdiver]

I'm good friends with Paul Tidwell and years ago before his second mission to I-52 he spoke at a shipwreck conference I put together in R.I. and he stayed with me and my wife. He did 2 tours in Vietnam in the Army and he asked me if I knew anyone with a Japanese navy flag. Fortunately I had a buddy with a huge military collection and as fate would have it he invited us to his home in Plymouth, Mass to check out the flag. Tidwell had me and my wife sign the flag as well as the donor and now it sits 17,000 feet down in the middle of the Atlantic. Tom Dettweiler and Dave Jourdan located the sub utilizing then state of the art re-navigation software and of course side scan, they also located the Israeli sub Dakar in the Med.


WD

 

[nitroxer]

I was not involved with the original 1994 expedition, but one of my close colleagues was involved with the 1998 expedition.
Back then we both worked for R&S ltd and we supplied the secondary or back-up GPS system, it was rented from us and James went with the GPS system
for R&S ltd on the expedition as the technician. James stated that between the 1994 and the 1998 expeditions there had been no salvage work on the site.
As I understand the reason or part reason for the 1998 expedition was because of rumours of recovery of the gold by the Russians returning and stealing it.
I have heard the same rumours again recently, it is one thing to hide an expedition to photograph or survey the wreck site, it would be something totally different
to hide a recovery operation from that depth in that location simply due to the vessel and equipment required, a recovery operation from that deoth and in that location
is going to show up within the offshore industry. There are very very few companies world wide that could effect it. And even as far as a survey such as the mentioned
and rumoured 2018 expedition there are maybe one Company in Russia two in Europe and three in the USA that could pull it off possibly another two or three in the far east / Asia.
The best security of the I-52 Gold remaining safe and not recovered is its location, depth, and the plant and personal required to recover it.

 

[MiddenMonster]

That $25 million in gold is now worth almost $100 million in today's dollars.

And don't forget the 3 tons of opium that was on board. I'm thinking that Nick Nolte, Jacqueline Bisset and Louis Gossett, Jr. could pull off recovering at least the opium part of the cargo...

 

[tahomatom]

I googled 1 52 and appears the Japanese government made an agreement to the finds to be returned to Japan after a three year display in n Las Vegas but who never can keep the gold.
Finders keepers :-)

 

[satdiver]

Hi,

Just to correct you there, we were on the I-52's location in 2017, not 2018..... this was with an Asian backed consortium.

I was part of the survey and deck recovery crew, we used a Hi-definition side scan sonar and photo-mosaic on the I-52 and as far as we could establish no sign of an salvage or any disturbance was detected.

We had all the documentation and photo's from the 1994 and 1998 expeditions and there was nothing out of the ordinary.