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An Argentine submarine which vanished a year ago with 44 crew members onboard has been found at the bottom of the ocean.

A huge search was mounted for the ARA San Juan when it disappeared on November 15 last year.

There was just a seven day supply of air on board when it last reported its position.

The country's navy announced the vessel had been found by a private company hired to locate it, 800 metres below the surface.

The crew had been ordered to return to a naval base at Mar del Plata on the country's east coast after reporting water had entered the submarine through its snorkel.

Ocean Infinity, a maritime company that can search and map the seabed, was hired by Argentina following the failure of a massive international operation to find the vessel after it went missing in the South Atlantic.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock/EPA)

The San Juan was some 430 km (270 miles) off Argentina's Patagonian coast when it sent its last signal.

The disaster spurred soul-searching over the state of the military in Argentina, which - after a series of financial crises - has one of Latin America's smallest defense budgets relative to the size of its economy.

On November 30 last year, Argentina called off the search.

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said: “More than double the number of days have passed where it would have been possible to rescue the crew."

(Image: Getty) (Image: REX/Shutterstock)

After contact with the San Juan was lost, the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts, detected a noise the Navy said could have been the submarine's implosion.

The search for the 65-meter (213-foot) diesel-electric submarine included ships and planes manned by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries, including Brazil, Chile and Great Britain.