On This Date In History

On January 25, 1968, the Israeli submarine ISN Dakar, carrying 69 sailors, disappears and is never seen again. The exact fate of this vessel remains a mystery to this day.
The Dakar was built at the height of World War II by H.M. Dockyard in Great Britain and commissioned as the HMS Totem by the British navy in 1943. Following the war, the submarine was modified, adding 12 feet to its length and removing some of its gun decks. Israel bought the sub, along with two other similar ones, from Great Britain in 1965. On November 10, 1967, the Israeli navy officially launched it as the Dakar. Following tests near Scotland, the Dakar was scheduled to journey to Haifa in Israel for an official ceremony in early February.
As the Dakar moved toward Haifa, it was supposed to radio its position to the command center in Israel every day. As it passed Gibraltar and moved into the Mediterranean Sea, Lieutenant Commander Ya’acov Ra’anan, in charge of the Dakar, requested permission to arrive in Haifa early on January 28. On January 24, though, the Dakar passed the island of Crete and radioed its position for the last time.
There was an additional signal from the Dakar just after midnight on January 25 and then, nothing. After the sub missed its scheduled signaling, unsuccessful attempts were made to contact the Dakar throughout the day. The following day, an international search-and-rescue operation began. Forces from the United States, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon all tried to find the Dakar for five days before giving up. Israel continued the search on its own until February 4.
On 9 February 1969, more than a year after Dakar went missing, a fisherman found her stern emergency buoy marker washed up on the coast of Khan Yunis, a town southwest of Gaza. British T-class submarines had two such buoy markers, bow and stern, secured behind wooden doors in cages under the deck and attached to the submarine with metal cables 200 meters (660 ft) long.
The experts who examined the 65 cm (26 in) of cable still attached to the buoy made several inaccurate determinations. These conclusions – that the buoy had remained attached to the submarine for most of the preceding year until the cable broke completely, that Dakar rested in depth between 150 and 326 meters (492 and 1,070 ft), and that it was 50–70 nmi (93–130 km) off her planned route – misled searchers for decades. It was not until April 1999, after some 25 failed expeditions, that a search effort was concentrated along the original route.
On 24 May 1999 a joint U.S.–Israeli search team using information received from U.S. intelligence sources and led by Thomas Kent Dettweiler, a subcontractor from American Nauticos Corporation, detected a large body on the seabed between Crete and Cyprus, at a depth of some 3,000 meters (9,800 ft). On 28 May the first video pictures were taken by the remote-operated vehicle Remora II, making it clear that Dakar had been found. She rests on her keel, bow to the northwest. Her conning tower was snapped off and fallen over the side. The stern of the submarine, with the propellers and dive planes, broke off aft of the engine room and rests beside the main hull.
During October 2000 a survey of the Dakar wreckage and the wreckage site was undertaken by Nauticos corporation and the Israeli Navy. Some artifacts were recovered, including the submarine's bridge, the boat's gyrocompass, and many small items.
The exact cause of the loss remains unknown, but it appears that no emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dived rapidly through her maximum depth, suffered a catastrophic hull rupture, and continued her plunge to the bottom. The emergency buoy was released by the violence of the hull collapse, and drifted for a year before washing ashore.
Israel proclaimed March 4 a national day of mourning and it was declared that all 69 sailors on board the Dakar were considered dead under Jewish religious law. A monument to the crew was later built on Mount Herzel in Jerusalem.

Composite image of the wreckage of the INS DAKAR

 

Plaque placed on the bow of the still submerged vessel, with the words, “To the Men of DAKAR … Never Forgotten.”

 

On January 25, 1971, in Los Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson is convicted, along with followers Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, of the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others.
In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco, where he attracted a following among rebellious young women with troubled emotional lives. Manson established a cult based on his concept of “Helter Skelter”, an apocalyptic philosophy predicting that out of an imminent racial war in America would emerge five ruling angels: Manson, who would take on the role of Jesus Christ, and the four members of the Beatles. Manson convinced his followers that it would be necessary to murder celebrities in order to attract attention to the cult, and in 1969 they targeted Sharon Tate, a marginally successful actress who was married to Roman Polanski, a film director.
On the night of August 9, 1969, with detailed instructions from Manson, four of his followers drove up to Cielo Drive above Beverly Hills and burst into Polanski and Tate’s home. (Polanski was not home and friends were staying with the pregnant Tate.) During the next few hours, they engaged in a murderous rampage that left five dead, including a very pregnant Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an 18 year-old man who was visiting the caretaker of the estate. The next night, Manson followers murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles; this time, Manson went along to make sure the killings were carried out correctly. The cases went unsolved for over a year before the Los Angeles Police Department discovered the Manson connection. Various members of his cult confessed, and Manson and five others were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
In January 1972, Manson and three others were found guilty, and on March 29 all four were sentenced to death. The trial of another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, and Manson and his followers’ death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment. Manson died in prison in 2017.