INS Dakar - Later Developments

Later Developments

A memorial designed by architect David Brutzkus was dedicated in 1971 at the National Military and Police cemetery in Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Various Israeli cities and towns have a Dakar Street, and several schools and other public institutions are also named for the lost submarine. On 11 October 2000, Dakar's bridge and forward edge of her sail were raised, and are now a memorial display in the Naval Museum in Haifa.

The possibility had been seriously discussed of trying to recover the remains of the crew members and giving them Jewish burial in Israel. This idea was finally abandoned due to the enormous cost of such an operation and in deference to the long-standing maritime tradition of letting the sea bottom be the final resting place of drowned sailors. The crew members' families had to content themselves with holding a ceremony in a ship over the submarine's remnants. The Rabbinical authorities had to solve complicated problems of Jewish law before the crew members' wives could be declared officially widows, so that they could marry again.

In 1997 former Israeli Navy Captain Michael Eldar published a book titled Dakar, claiming the Israeli search for the submarine had never been serious because officials knew what happened to it. Although it had been cleared for publication by Israel’s military censorship authority the book was banned on national security grounds and copies removed from bookshops. Police raided Eldar's home and confiscated all documents he possessed relating to Dakar.

In the thirty-year period between the loss of the submarine and the final discovery of its remnants, various suppositions and conspiracy theories circulated, and some members of the public have long believed the crew members to be alive and held in secret captivity in an Arab country or at the Soviet Union.

In 2008, a movie was released, entitled Full Circle, a documentary about the search for the wreckage.

In May 2009, a book was published by Nauticos president David W. Jourdan entitled, "Never Forgotten: The Search and Discovery of Israel's Lost Submarine Dakar" (Naval Institute Press). This book chronicles the history of the submarine, the story of the families of the 69 lost sailors, and the events leading to the discovery in 1999.