Overview
- In August 2026 a deep‑sea team from Portland located a wreck about 230 feet deep roughly 20 miles off Salcombe that divers later recognised as a German submarine.
- Plymouth dive team Gasperados provisionally identified the vessel as U-672 by matching the conning‑tower shape, a snorkel, a steel propeller and remains of an Aphrodite radar‑decoy.
- German U‑boat specialist Dr Axel Niestle and researchers say a wartime clerical error recorded the sinking position about 46 nautical miles away, which kept the wreck from being found for eight decades.
- Contemporary records and survivor accounts show HMS Balfour struck the boat in July 1944, the 52 crew scuttled her to escape, and the men were rescued the next day and taken to POW camps.
- The commander Ulf Lawaetz's family contacted the divers and produced a small numbered tag that corroborates the ID, and the discovery has already led to updates of the historical record and could help locate other misrecorded wrecks.