SANTI Project 'Finding the Eagle' - next expedition in May

In mid-May the ‘SANTI Odnaleźć Orła’ team will set off once again to the North Sea in search of the wreck of the ORP Orzeł ship, which went missing in 1940. At a special lecture held on Thursday (23 April) in the Naval Museum in Gdynia and organised for history enthusiasts, divers, seafarers and others, members of the team talked about the results of their search work to date and plans for the May expedition.

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There are currently nine theories of the Eagle’s disappearance. There is a story behind each of them. The team members are relying on the one saying that it was a mistaken attack carried out on June 3, 1940 by a British Hudson bomber. The May expedition will last a week. During that time members will survey 100 square kilometres around the alleged attack position. The team consists of 12 people – professional wreck divers, hydrographers, historians. Each of them is an expert in his or her field and together they form a great, harmonious team of enthusiasts.

Tomasz Stachura, head of the ‘SANTI Odnaleźć Orła’ project, diver: “For a diver there is no wreck more important than the Orzeł. In my generation there was a lot of talk about it. I believe that we will find it to restore its memory, especially among young people. Today we have a deficit of authority figures. Young people are passionate about the stories of heroes who have passed away – Jan Karski or Rotmistrz Pilecki. We hope that Jan Grudziński, captain of ORP Orzeł, will join this group.”

Special sonars help in the search
The technology currently used in this type of search is extremely accurate, giving a very precise picture of the shape and location of the wreck on the bottom. The team will search for the Eagle using, among others, a multibeam probe, which gives a sufficiently detailed picture of the wreck to be almost certain that it is the one they are looking for. Side scan sonar, towed behind the ship, will also be used to precisely identify the wreck, and a specialist ROV vehicle will make the precise identification. Viewers of the film “Titanic” can see how it looks in practice, because it is this vehicle and the image it gives that appears in the first frames of the film. If the Eagle is identified by sonars, the final identification will be made by divers during the second – diving part of the expedition in June this year, who will take underwater photos and films documenting the precious find.

Dr Jarosław (Kostek) Nowak – hydrographer: “Our luck may depend on even one detail that we see on the sonar and that guides us to our ship. The North Sea is three times bigger than the Baltic. At its bottom lie hundreds of wrecks from the First and Second World War. We have to find the most important one among them.”

Tomasz Stachura : “If we find the Eagle in May, then the June return, the opportunity to dive, to ‘touch’ this story will be my dream come true.”

Others have also searched for the Eagle
So far there have been five different, independent expeditions. One of them was organised by the Navy. But to this day, 75 years after the mysterious disappearance, no one has yet managed to find the wreck.

Dr Hubert Jando – historian: “On the subject of the Eagle we have probably read everything that has been published. We dug through archives in Poland, England and Germany, among others. We talked a lot with local English fishermen and divers, who often gave us very valuable insights.”

Tomasz Stachura: “We have learned from divers in Edinburgh that the area of the Eagle’s probable sinking was never surveyed by hydrographers. This may be why the Eagle has not been found so far.”

ORP Orzeł
The ship set sail on 23 May 1940 from the port of Rosyth in Scotland. She was to patrol the North Sea for two weeks. However, it did not return from the unfortunate sixth patrol. The ship lost 63 sailors, including 3 Britons.

Dr Hubert Jando:” The Eagle is unique in the world in that the whole of society threw itself in part into its construction, which at the time cost 10 million zloty. It is like organising several Great Christmas Aid Orchestras in one year. It took three years to build and the result was the most modern submarine in the world at the time.”

Source: Press Information