Ben, we've been following this here:
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=56090.0The sub was 32 years old, and 30 years is a long life for a military submarine. Much depends, of course, on how often it was at sea and how many compression/decompression cycles it went through, but it was a diesel-electric, which means it had to surface fairly regularly in the course of any patrol to be able to run the diesel engines and recharge the batteries. I hope I'm wrong, but I think they made one dive too many.
If that turns out to be the case, it should create a LOT of consternation around South America, because the Argies have a sister ship that's a year or two older, and a smaller sub that's TEN years older. And several other South American countries have German-built, diesel-electric subs that are the same age, or older by up to a decade.
Hmmm ... I just noticed that I wrote, "The sub
was 32 years old ..." I guess at a subconscious (and now conscious) level I have already come to the conclusion that it imploded. Or -- the ship had reported a problem with the batteries. I wonder if the batteries might have exploded.
My understanding is that the sub was equipped with an EPIRB-type device. That apparently hasn't been deployed, so if something happened it must have been sudden and serious enough that they weren't able to release it.