WWII Shipwreck with 61 tons of silver

[questionmark]

Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. (OMEX), a deep-sea salvage company, said it retrieved more than 61 tons of silver bullion this month from a World War II shipwreck nearly three miles (4.8 kilometers) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Odyssey recovered 1,574 silver ingots weighing a total of about 1.8 million ounces from the SS Gairsoppa, the Tampa, Florida-based company said in a statement today. The 412-foot (126-meter) British cargo ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat in February 1941, Odyssey said on its website.

The metal was worth about $630,000 when the Gairsoppa was sunk and about $36 million at today’s prices. Odyssey has recovered a total of 2,792 ingots from the wreck, about 99 percent of the insured silver reported to be aboard when the vessel sank.

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[Kowalski]

Wow! That's really cool. Something interesting I found:

How many ships did the U-boats sink?

During the war the U-boats sank about 2,779 ships for a total of 14.1 million tons GRT. This figure is roughly 70% of all allied shipping losses in all theatres of the war and to all hostile action. The most successful year was 1942 when over 6 million tons of shipping were sunk in the Atlantic.

Link: http://uboat.net/special/faq.htm?question=4

[keithisco]

***Looks for his snorkel and mask***

Edited July 22, 2013 by keithisco