Never Forgotten

After the submarine DAKAR went down somewhere in the Mediterranean, Israel spent 31 years searching for the 69 officers and crew. Newly purchased from the Royal Navy, along with two of her T-class sisters, she was commissioned into the Israeli Navy on 10 November 1967 as Dakar ("Swordfish" in Hebrew) and en route to Haifa after completing sea trails in England. On January 25 1968, two minutes after midnight, the Dakar transmitted her last communication, before being lost without a trace.

Compelled by one of Israel's strongest military traditions to bring home all killed and missing during battle for a proper Jewish burial, over 25 expeditions were launched and to search different areas of the Mediterranean. 31 years later, still unable to find this 287-foot submarine and its crew, the Israeli Navy in 1996 invited David Jourdan and his company Nauticos to conduct the search which led to Dakar's discovery in May 1999.

This book tells the exhilarating story of the will, endurance, and technical know-how of extraordinary people who made a lifelong impact on an entire nation and sixty-nine grieving families, recounting the search, discovery and the resulting attempts to find out what really happened that night, over thirty years previous.

The story of the lost submarine captured the public's heart. Many Israeli cities and towns have a Dakar Street, and several schools and other public institutions are also named for the lost submarine."Full Circle," a television documentary of the project was first aired on the National Geographic Channel in November 2003, adding to public recognition of this event.