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Oregon Coast Project divers off the Oregon coast this weekend were unable to find a missing WWII sub after strong currents dragged their boat anchor away from the search site.

(Micah Reese Underwater Photography)

A team of divers attempting to locate what they believe is a submarine that sank during a WWII battle off the Oregon coast was stopped short this week. Rough seas prevented divers from reaching the site on Sunday and Monday, but not before they saw more clues convincing them the structure caught on sonar is the submarine they seek.

"We are closer than ever," said Kathleen Wallis, leader of the Oregon Coast Project. "We have coordinates from last year. We ran those same numbers this time and the captain of our new boat, a big catamaran, immediately came up with the structure on the fish finder sonar. It's sitting in the sand upright. We don't know what it is for sure, but we think we know."

The story began on the night of May 19, 1943, when a U.S. patrol boat put out a call to sub chaser SC-536 that it had made contact with an enemy submarine but was out of depth charges. The patrol boat was under command of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.

Acting under the guidance of two Navy blimps, the SC-536 motored out from Astoria to join the chase. On board was Robert Wood, now 95 and living in Tennessee. At sea, somewhere between Cape Meares and Cape Lookout, the crew dropped 12 depth charges at 200 and 300 feet, and received a message from a blimp above that at least one charge had made a direct hit and the sub had sunk.

"We felt mighty honored that we had done that because that was our job, try to find Japanese subs and sink them," Wood said in an earlier interview with The Oregonian. "We were a happy bunch of sailors."

But for reasons no one can explain, the Navy later denied the event had ever happened. Still, the story lived on, told by Wood and others on the sub chaser who saw the oil slick and blood in the water and by locals who reported finding material from the wreck that washed ashore. Fishermen have long reported gear getting snagged on some unknown object in the same area.

Wallis learned of the sub story in New Mexico, where she is a school teacher. A reporter told her the tale and Wallis quickly decided it was one that needed to be shared and proven, if possible.

"It's an important story," Wallis said. So she began raising funds, rallying divers and finding boats. She's since come to the Oregon coast 18 times by her count. In recent trips, Wallis and the team came up with the hard evidence that suggests they are truly onto something.

They know now, thanks to hydrographic software, that the structure measures 190 to 200 feet in length, 15 feet wide and stands 15 to 18 feet from the ocean floor. They also have an image of the structure taken by side scan sonar.

On this week's dive, divers saw two octopus and a large school of fish near the vicinity of the vessel. "When we see that many fish, we know they are on their way to somewhere, a reef, rocks ... but usually you don't see that many unless there is a structure. Fish like to be in the shallows where they can hide," Wallis said. Octopus also generally live in the rocks, the reef or a structure, Wallis said.

But divers this past week failed to reach the structure after strong currents dragged their boat anchor away from the site.

"What turns out to be the most problematic for us is our anchor," she said. "We decided not to hook the wreck, but instead to use the hook as an anchor at the location of the wreck so that the divers had a descent line. The divers could follow the line down where we anchored. The surface current was so incredibly strong, it pulled the floats away from the coordinates and drug our anchor with it."

Those same conditions also served as a reminder of how dangerous their mission can be.

"One of the two divers ended up (with the bends)," Wallis said. "They did very generous decompression stops on the way up. He's never had bends before. He ended up going into treatment. It effected his shoulder joints. We had to help him onto the boat. It's very dangerous and it's very challenging. It's in a place that is diveable, but we have ripping current in every direction. The depth is not easy, and visibility is not easy."

But they're not giving up. Two divers plan to continue diving and will also work to modify the anchor. If they do find the sub from that May 1943 battle, Wallis' work will have just begun.

"If this is a foreign vessel, there is going to be a country of origin and family members involved," she said. "If it is a war wreck, and we know it could be something else, there is going to be the possibility of men on board who have families who never knew what happened. If we have what we think we have, part of the goal would be to offer some closure to the families of the men who were lost."