UGH: Argentina’s missing submarine: ‘No one will be rescued.’

The submarine had 44 people on board. Luis Taglapietra, whose son Damián was a 27-year-old trainee on the submarine, told the TN news channel: “This is perverse and impossible to understand. They’re playing word games,” referring to the navy announcing it was calling off rescue efforts while agreeing to continue searching for the submarine as long as it is not in too deep waters. “What they are really saying is that they’re not going to be looking for it any more.”

The San Juan went missing on 15 November when it lost radio contact with the naval base in Mar del Plata, but it was not until two days later that the navy announced publicly that the submarine had gone missing.

“More than double the number of days than it would have been possible to rescue the crew have passed,” Balbi told reporters.

The huge sea and air rescue effort for the German-built submarine will now be reduced to trying to locate the vessel itself.

Relatives of the crew had already abandoned hope that they would be found alive. “They lied to us from the start,” Taglapietra said to the Guardian. “We don’t know what happened and it’s impossible to tell the truth from fabrication.”

Probably nothing worse than typical bureaucratic ass-covering, which in this case is more than bad enough.