A Portuguese submarine taking part in exercises off the coast of Cornwall became caught in the nets of a French trawler, the Royal Navy has revealed.
The Tridente was caught around 6am on Wednesday morning, around 35 miles south west of Plymouth. It is understood that she was submerged after becoming tangled in the nets of the French vessel, Daytona.
A spokesman for the Royal Navy said there were no casualties:
“Divers are now on the boat trying to see what damage has happened to the submarine. The submarine was assigned to Flag Officer Sea Training out of Plymouth and was released for the night.”
The Tridente class, also designated as U209PN, is a diesel-electric submarine class based on the Type 214 submarine developed by Germany for the Portuguese Navy.
This class of submarines was acquired by Portugal to replace the last submarines of the Albacora class, then being operated by the navy. Originally, HDW proposed the Type 209 submarine (U-209) during the competition, but decided to later enter a new proposal based on the Type 214.
The class and its ships are the first to not be named after marine animals, thus breaking a tradition retracing back to 1913, when the first submarine entered service with the Portuguese Navy.
Try to batter and fry that,then add salt and vinegar with chips and mushy peas ? ?
Think it needs claiming as scrap
I bet that got the government thinking, we can save money by scrapping all our frigates & get fishing boats instead!
Who needs sonar ???
That is one clean submarine ?
I was thinking that too.
Was it then sold at the local fish market?
Bloody trawlers
Do they not use anechoic tiles on their subs?
Forget the RN for coastal patrol, the fishing trawlers seem to able to do the job! Although how good is the sub if it cannot pick up a noisy old fishing trawler?
How do you get round aft of the fin?
Bloody brill ????
The new type 31’s have been ordered to be fitted with the new anti sub fishing net lol.
Catch and release?
Whats the Portuguese navy doing spying off our coastal shores and got caught on exercise or not.
No just joking Portuguese navy should be grilled over this.
Looking for sardines
I bet they had to stick to EU quotas and thrown it back.
Alexander Graham
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Unlike England they find the net!
Ha! Catch of the year!!
Awwww it’s just a tiddler! Chuck it back ?
Saw this coming in to Guz the other day as they halted my ferry to let it through
The astute class subs have something learn here…
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(y)
Throw it back! It’s undersized!
The sub would find it near impossible to detect the nets out
The same sub that took a wrong route through the Sound a few weeks ago. I’ve never seen a sub reverse…. EVER!! Weird.