The mystery of the submarine buried under a city park

What is a submarine doing under a park? Even if it seems like an absurd question, it’s not. It is that the inhabitants of a country have spent almost a century since the end of the war convinced that there is remains of a submarine buried under the main local park. And the mystery seems to have found an explanation.

Coronation Park is beside the River Dart and at the foot of the hill which the Officers’ School occupies British Royal Navy (Britannia Royal Naval College), in Dartmouth, a town in Devon.

The park was located there for more than 150 years. It is a two-hectare plot of land and part of it used to be a bog.

WWI submarine

History tells about it once World War I endedHe The UK had a surplus of ships and submarines (theirs and dozens of ships confiscated from the Germans after their defeat).

Katie Timms writes Devon news live and echoes the media, that for this very reason many of these boats were taken and abandoned at anchorages.

The towns of Coombe Mud and Sandquay, Dartmouth became one of them ship graveyardsunderstood at least two submarines.

In the late 1920s, this swamp-like property was purchased by the local authorities and filled in to create a park.

Later, around 1937, the space was opened for the coronation of King George VI. And so the urban legend was born.

Urban legend in a UK city

Nearly a century later, locals are still talking and writing about a submarine they claim lies beneath the park.

There have even been versions that this is a submarine English or German.

Naturally, the legend did not take on the scope of the story of Loch Ness monsterknown and exploited to death in the world, but to the people of that area of ​​South West England it is “their”.

For example, the legend of the submarine under the park has become a curious story that has been passed down from generation to generation, attractive to children and enticing to visitors.

The mystery surrounding truth or belief has become a magnet for Tom Kemp, an officer at the Royal Navy Officers’ School in Dartmouth.

“This is one of those cases where you follow a poor breadcrumb trail. I was desperately hoping to find a bill of sale or something with a name on it, but had to go a bit off the beaten track to find my answers,” She said Devon live.

Submarine investigation

Kemp can see Coronation Park through his office window. He rummaged for documents, photographs and recordings to find out the truth about the ship and what it is.

According to his investigation, it would be a British submarine. And it manages two assumptions: HMS A8 or HMS E52.

They claim the smaller A8 was virtually scrapped in 1923, while the E52 is larger and more difficult to break up.

The newspaper The Telegraph he asked the British Army if they would dig up the park to clarify the doubts, and the answer was curt: “Dig a park to recover a submarine” because “the neighborhood could be upset”.

Unfortunately Kemp points out that from documents and records, and without digging to visually identify pieces of the vessel, NO further conclusions can be drawn.

But the officer doesn’t give up: “The ‘submarine under the park’ has a name and a story that worth counting“, he remarks with an intact desire to know the truth of the mystery of the submarine under the park.