Russo-Bulgarian expedition has been finished

06.10.2010 The Russo-Bulgarian underwater search expedition "Great ships of the Great Victory 2010" is finished. The main objective of this expedition was to find the last mystery of Soviet submarine fleet in WW2 – submarine S-34 lost off Bulgaria in Nov 1941. The search was initiated by Russian underwater expedition and Bulgarian search team BSTD (Black Sea Technical Diving).

"It's been the second season of our works in Bulgarian territorial waters", said Konstantin Bogdanov, the project manager and diver of the Russian divers' association in his interview to REGNUM. "Last year we managed to identify L-24 lost near Cape Shabla and honored the memory of the sub's crew which had been considered missing. We have the same task regarding the last non-found Soviet submarine S-34 to make it possible to indicate the glorious common grave of the sub's crew on the bottom of the Black Sea instead of repeating terse words "missed in action", he said.

The president of the Russian divers' association and master of sports Anna Arzhanova summarized the recently finished search operation: "Scanning of sea bottom was conducted in co-operation with experts of Russian famed Tikhomirov Instrument Engineering Research Institute (Zhukovsky, Moscow region). We used the newest Neman-type sonar. The works were held under auspices of Evgeny Tutynin, the head of hydroacoustics laboratory in the Tikhomirov Institute. As a result, we've scanned about 400 sq km of the sea bottom, detected 75 "suspect" objects, although have not found desired 77-meter long submarine or her wrecks so far. By the way, among the findings were two huge minefields; it is uncertain whether they are cleared, so Bulgarian party will have to puddle about".

Mikhail Zaimov, diver of BSTD and coordinator of Bulgarian party underlined that "that's a first time when divers of our two countries joined together in such a large-scale underwater search with so many technical facilities applied. Even though we couldn't find S-34 this time, all results of underwater works performed are greatly valuable both for Bulgarian undersea archeologists and Russian technologists. We've discovered numerous unexpected objects; most of them worth further detailed examination".

Leader of the expedition Konstantin Bogdanov specified that "we had to finish underwater search because of weather conditions getting worse near the Gulf of Burgas. It also became obvious that such large-scale works can not be financed only by Russian underwater expedition and Bulgarian search team BSTD; we need a serious sponsor to continue our work".

Being supported by veterans' committee of the Russian Parliament, leadership of the search expedition "Great Ships of the Great Victory 2010" addressed to Bulgarian government with request to continue underwater search of Soviet submarine S-34 in the next season.