Naval experts here held out little hope today for the Israeli submarine Dakar and her crew of 69 officers and men, posted missing in the Eastern Mediterranean since last Thursday. Newspapers speculated meanwhile on the coincidental loss of the French submarine Minerva which went missing yesterday off Toulon in the Western Mediterranean. The Times saw nothing beyond a “cruel coincidence” in the loss of the two undersea craft. The Daily Mail noted that NATO naval chiefs were “puzzled” by the disappearance of two submarines in the Mediterranean within three days of each other. But naval officials emphasized that they had “no solid evidence” to link the disappearances with the Soviet fleet that has been operating in the Mediterranean in increasing strength since last June.
(Early today, Israel was swept by a rumor that the Dakar was entering Haifa harbor under its own power. There were reports that signals had been intercepted which might have been emitted from the marker buoys released by submarines in distress, but the Jerusalem Radio said no signals had been received which could have come from the missing underseas craft. At Nicosia, Cyprus, headquarters of the British searching units, it was said that no signals had been intercepted.)
A massive international sea-air search continued to comb the area between Israel and Cyprus for traces of the submarine which has been missing since last Thursday. Two British Argosy planes and a photo reconnaissance Canberra-type plane are participating in the search from the RAF base on Cyprus. They were joined by two Coastal Command Shackleton planes from Malta. Four vessels of the U.S. Sixth fleet along with British, Turkish and Greek warships and 11 Israeli vessels crisscrossed the seas in the area but so far have turned up no sign of the missing submarine.
It was learned from Cairo today that Egyptian authorities had warned U.S. and British naval aircraft conducting a search for the Dakar to keep out of Arab territorial waters.
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