HMS Totem (P352): Lost as INS Dakar

Completed as the War Ended

HMS Totem was a Group 3 T-class submarine that entered service in the final months of the Second World War, too late to see the wartime action her class had been built for, and instead going on to a long and eventful peacetime career.

A Substantial Postwar Rebuild

Between 1951 and May 1953, Totem underwent extensive conversion at Chatham Dockyard, gaining a 14-foot hull extension, additional electric motors, a streamlined profile and updated radar and sonar, work that pushed her top speed beyond 18 knots.

She took part in the 1953 Coronation Fleet Review, and in early 1955 conducted Operation Defiant, a Barents Sea patrol gathering intelligence on Soviet naval forces during which she was heavily depth-charged, a tense reminder that Cold War intelligence work could be every bit as dangerous as wartime combat patrols.

Sold to Israel

In 1965, Totem was sold to Israel alongside her sister submarines Truncheon and Turpin, and after modification with an airlock for naval commando operations, she was commissioned into the Israeli Sea Corps as INS Dakar on 10 November 1967 under Lieutenant Commander Ya'acov Ra'anan.

Lost With All Hands

Dakar departed Portsmouth on 9 January 1968 bound for Haifa, carrying 69 men, considerably more than her normal complement. Her last position report, placing her east of Crete, came at 06:10 on 24 January 1968; further transmissions that followed lacked position data, and her final message was sent shortly after midnight on 25 January.

Despite an extensive multinational search, no trace was found for more than thirty years, an agonising and unresolved loss for the families involved. It was not until 28 May 1999 that the wreck was finally located, at a depth of around 3,000 metres between Crete and Cyprus, by the Nauticos Corporation.

Investigators concluded she had suddenly and rapidly dived beyond her maximum depth limit, suffering a catastrophic hull rupture, though the underlying cause was never definitively established.

Her conning tower was recovered in 2000 and now stands as a memorial at Haifa's Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum, a permanent tribute to the 69 men lost aboard her.