FRANCE: Submarine Down

Among the British navy’s best little ships in World War II was the submarine Sportsman. Once, after waiting days for an enemy ship to come out of an Aegean harbor, she went right up to the boom, sent a spread of torpedoes through the harbor gates and sank her. By war’s end the Sportsman had accounted for 31,000 tons of enemy shipping. This year the British turned her over to the French navy as a training ship. The French made a lady out of the Sportsman, rechristened her La Sibylle.

Last week La Sibylle, commanded by 32-year-old Lieut. Gustave Curot, was assigned the duty of fighting a mock landing on the Riviera. La Sibylle submerged, and surface ships of the French Mediterranean Squadron followed her course on Asdic detectors for an hour. Then they lost her.

An hour and a half later La Sibylle had not surfaced, and the alarm was given. The entire squadron, its planes and helicopters criss-crossed the area. For five hours the search went on. Then pilots noted a large oil slick about six miles off Cape Camarat, near Toulon. Soundings were made; what seemed to be the wrecked submarine was located at a depth of 2,000 feet. All night searchlights swept the dark water, but there was really no hope of finding survivors: submarine escape gear is useless below a depth of 250 feet. Next morning the French navy announced officially that La Sibylle and the 48 men aboard her had been lost.