Thinking Sideways: Surcouf

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, So be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand. You never know stories of things. We simply don't know

the answer too. Well. Hi, there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, joined by Steve and Den. Hey, so here we are again for another hard hitting UM. Yeah. So anyway, so okay, this is a little bit of

an unsolved mystery. There's UM. Today we're gonna talk about the Circufe Cirkufe for those of you who don't know about it, was a French submarine that disappeared supposedly in the Caribbean, although some people argue differently, but the circuf was a submarine that was built in France in the late twenties early thirties. Said, no, excuse me. It was built in the late twenties. It was launched in nine

nine and commissioned in nineteen thirty four into the French Navy. Um, it was the largest sub ever built at that time. It's about sixty feet. It's about the same length as the Los Angeles claud Los Angeles Class nuclear sub today. Um, do you have us a reference that is in a submarine? Oh yeah, I say, well, we think it's longer than a football field. Okay, yeah, it's it's helpful. That's actually very big. I mean, obviously we're building much bigger subs

these days. The biggest sub ever built was built by the Russians was actually the Soviets, the Typhoon. It was the sub that was in the hunt for Red October. Five hundred sixty ft long. Yeah, it's it's enormous and and yeah, so that's the biggest one ever, not the one that jumped. That's not the Red for Red October. Yeah that was not. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know when the Hunt forod October they come up for Ayer and it's like they jumped and where that Yeah that was Yeah,

that was a Los Angeles Class a lot smaller. So, but but at that time it was a big honking sub and it had to be big because it had to do so much. I mean, it wasn't just doing what ordinary substitute, which is go running torpedo ships. It also had a big turret on the top of it in front of the conning tower that had two eight inch guns in it, and so it was like basically kind of like a battleship and it was gonna say eight each guns. Those are destroyers at the time had

guns that were almost that size. Yeah yeah, yeah. And so so it's it's like a ship that is also a submarine or a submarine that can glide across the Yeah, it's like well back back in those days, really up until the invagtion of the snorkel in the forties, most most submarines were really designed and built to run on the surface most of the time and just submerge when controversy occurs, like saying, you know the aircraft, and the aircraft shows up and they wanted like torpedo you and

kill you, and so that's a good time to submerge. Maybe, Yeah, but they spent back in those days, they spent most of their time in the surface. So anyway, besides the besides having these big hawking guns in a turret in front, they also had a hangar aft of the conning tower that contained a floatplane. And obviously it was a skinny little hangar, so they had to pull the wings and stuff off of this thing to get it stowed away.

I can't imagine what a nuisance that would be. And imagine imagine it's like, okay, guys get up on deck and pull that thing out and put it together. And they say, I don't remember how long it took, but they were talking about in the research how long it took for it to dive and how it made it just like obscenely impractical for being able to make it get away from anything. Yeah, you want to be able to dive quickly, and it took like over two minutes

to dive. Take it tiny a little bit, Yeah, and yeah, I was. I was trying to do a little research on that because that is a long that is an extended dive period, and I was wondering if perhaps it lacked a negative tank, because typically diesel subs that we build, I don't know if it's the same for all countries are not that we build ours with negative tanks. And a negative tank is a tank that when you surface. Normally, when you submerge, you blow the negative tank out, but

when you surface be filled up with water. The idea of being as it gives you negative buoyancy. When it's time to flood those tanks, it pulls you under quicker. Yeah, and uh, and so once you submerge and you blow the negative listing. Perhaps lacked the negative tank, I don't know, or perhaps I've had a really kind of a pathetically small one. You know, they were just busy like trying

to pull things in. And yeah, well I remember reading about the sign when we're talking about how big it is, and maybe this is why it didn't have an adequate tank. Is it had a area to hold forty prisoners. So I mean that's had a brig which is huge on a submarine. Oh yeah, well, I'm sure they were sure they were stacked in there like cordwood. Still, that's a lot of space, a lot of space on a submarine. Yeah, I'm sure they probably made good use of it for

storing food and stuff like that. Where French sailors after watter all, so they had to have a wine cell. Why why did it have the airplane again, because I remember there was there was some specific reason that there was a plane involved, because that's not what you're normally happen to song. Uh. You know, actually back in those days, a lot of subs did carry floatplanes. It's not it

wasn't that unusual. But wouldn't they just use radar? Yeah, they didn't have radar back in those days, and sonar and sonar was not that well developed either, so you know, in order to find targets, you know, like say ships and stuff like that, they would launch their plane. The plane would go buzz around and find something and then come back and come back and tell I'm more radio back.

I guess it seems like just such a backwards way to like be doing all this stuff right in that in between period where they're like, okay, we have to be able to do these things. But we don't have the technology, so I know, we'll just strap some guns on it, trap a plane on it, and we'll just see where it goes. It just seems so like a like kind of just a bad idea that design. Yeah, I can't, you know, And I would imagine that in reality, the plane, for example, would probably not be pulled out

of the hangar very often. You can you imagine what a what a huge news is it would be. And you're very vulnerable if enemy aircraft do show up while you're saying dismantling the plane, well, you're just gonna have to like leave the plane die. Yeah, I mean they were going to make I think this was the first of seven of these that they were planning to make. It they were, Yeah, the plan was to to build a series of them, but this was the first one.

And they built this thing because the Washington Naval Treaty placed limits on naval construction that submarines were admitted from that. So they built this big honking thing, which is basically they called it. They called it a submerged cruiser or something. They called it an underwater cruiser, but basically, yeah, it

was a loophole. They were exploiting a loophole, said well, if we can build this this thing that's kind of like a frigate or a battleship or something like that, but it's technically a submarine and totally totally what it is. Right if the battleship, it can hardly submerge. It's just like on a technicality, it has to. Okay, and the flaw if when I was doing the reading on this is the flaw is okay. Well it's gigantic, which is awesome. We've got the giant subs, the biggest one ever made,

and it's got these massive guns. But because they were on a sub which doesn't sit the high hut of water, these guns were supposed to be able to shoot I believe it's fifteen miles. That's an eight inch gun could shoot. Max ranged on the on these guns was twenty four miles, but unfortunately they were not able to see twenty four miles, right, so they could only shoot I think it was eight

or ten or something. Yeah, depend yeah, they had they had like a station where they could sight from the top of the conning tower and and that gave them a range of I believe eight miles and then if they used the periscopes, they could get a little higher up and say, can see further away. That gave them a range of about ten miles the periscope. And then but if there, if they wanted to go to max range, they could launch the floatplane and then the floor plane

could actually could actually you know, guide him in. Yeah, it just it was. It was again, it's an awkward way to solve the problem. Well we don't have this, so we'll do that. And well we don't have that, so let's just try this. It just seemed cobbled together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like and this is this is possibly apparently it was. It looks to me, I mean, if you look at the thing, if you look at pictures of

it, it it looks really top heavy for submarine. And they were talking that was talking about it behaving very badly in rough seas, rolling really badly, and that could be one clue to the mystery. The whole thing is as to what happened to it. Is like, then we'll get into the theories about what happened to it. But I'm thinking it's quite possible that if they just tried to submerge in rough seas, I was, like, you noticed earlier,

I had my old submarine manual out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I warted to confirm something that that I remembered from reading it long long ago. But apparently submersion of a submarine, center of gravity and the center of buoyancy cross one another. So essentially, when you're on the surface, your center of gravity is above the center of buoyancy, and then as you submerge, the center of buoyancy moves up. If you can imagine a line moving vertically through the submarine, and

eventually it winds up. Center buoyancy wants up above the center of gravity. But at that point where the two points meet, the submarine becomes very unstable. So because it's just like a roly poly, right, yeah, yeah, it's not like a surface ship where you know, if you if you list to one side, it sets up a writing arm and tends to push you back. It's not like that.

And so that's even a possibility that possibly, and I'm getting get ahead of myself, because but what the hell, Well, it's it's all in the size and the build of this thing, So it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, so I could see, I could see the possibility where it's just bad luck. You know, they're they're submerging in rough seas and they hit that point of instability and then hit they get hit by a big wave. And and I don't know if you guys looked at any pictures or

diagrams of the SUBMODT. Yeah, yeah, the eight inch guns are fed this vertical magazine and the ammunition is stored at the lowest deck of the submarine. And so that's yeah, it's like and so I'm sure that formed part of the ballast of it putting all that, because you know that that eight h ammo has got away a ton. Yeah, those are big. Yeah, So that's kind of my kind of something I was curious about. It's like, you know,

they obviously weren't able to replenish. They were were actually out doing stuff, shooting and shooting at things and stuff like that, using up their ammo. And I don't think they had a supply line back to France, which was occupied by the Germans by this time. So what happened down there? Did they did they think to put counterbalancing weights down there or did they have trim tank second, so it might not have had the weight that they

were expecting. Yeah, counters that sense. Yeah, but anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself though. Okay, So anyway, so we talked about the issues that she had. She rolled, she rolled badly in rough seas and took a long time to dive. So back to the history of the ship a little bit. So she served in the French Navy, but the Germans invaded France in May nineteen forty the Seracuf. Hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, all of our French listeners

right in her call. Yeah, she was in Breast being refitted. And I don't know where Breast is, but I assume it's on the coast of France. She uh, So at that point she she's left and went to England and stayed there being refitted in Plymouth, England. And then in July the Brits launched an operation called Operation Catapult. And I'm not going to go to all the specifics of Catapult. I had to do with a lot of French ships being either either coming up to our side or being scuttled.

But in the part the phase that affected the Circouf is that all French ships that were in port in Britain and also in Canada were boarded by our marines and basically the crews were taken off them and most of them were repatriated to France. And then the idea was that these ships and submarines whatever, we're gonna be turned over the Free French Navy under you know, you know, the free French guys, remember Charles de gall and all stuff.

And I'm guessing the idea of however misguided here was that if there's any French who are on the ship who have been turned by the Germans for whatever reason, that you get them off so that the ship doesn't become a threat to you while your quote unquote using it in your service. Yeah, i'd be a correct assumption. Yeah, and so yeah, the French, So the French, after the Germans took over, the VC government formed and they were basically kind of what's what's the word, I'm thinking of

the puppet government of the Germans. And so, you know, the question was for these sailors, who where where did their loyalties lie? And so they just decided to take them all the ships and you know, send them back to France and then uh, and then they turned them over to the Free French nagers. I love that that's like one of my favorite stories in history. Right, we couldn't trust some of you, so we're going to condemn all of you and just take all your stuff. Yeah yeah,

good luck to be found. And actually, uh and actually this is kind of sad, but most almost the entire crew the Seracouf was was sent back to France on on a hospital ship, which was unfortunately torpedoed and sunk by the Germans. Yeah yeah, and so that that costs that cost a little bit of bitterness, yeah, I know.

And the other thing that costs a little bitterness is that actually the Seracouf saw during the during Operation Catapult, actually saw a little bit of gunplay on the sub and three Brits and one French sailor were killed during the boarding of this which again caused a little bit of bitterness. Um. In August ninety they the Brits completed the refit of the ship and then turned her over

to the Free French Navy for convoy patrol. You know, as you know, there was a lot of convoy going going on between America and Britain and also America and Russia, and so yeahly so convoys convoy escorts were kind of necessary. There was only one officer who had I've been sent back to France to be torpedoed and killed by the Germans, and that was Commander George Louis Blaison. I think I

don't know that. Yeah, So he became the new commanding officer, and then and then a bunch of French sailors for the Free French Navy were put on board and she was assigned to convoy patrol. And uh. But at the same time there was still a bit of an atmospode of distrust between the Brits and the French. Okay, so hang on, before we go any farther, I've already seen a giant issue here, which is she had been running for a year or so with a crew that had

learned and knew about the ship. And then they're all jettisoned off of this ship and an entirely new crew is put on and she's put back out to sea. Yeah, and that's with a bunch of guys you don't know how exactly to do everything, especially since she's like so problem right and right, I mean she is prone to toppling, she's all these little Yeah, so ring is a complex

machines too, you know. And and and I'm assuming you know that at least a strong percentage of these people have served on submarines before and had had some clue what they were doing. You gotta hope, you gotta hope again if this is this is a one of a kind sub she was the only one of her design that was ever built, which means that every ship has its own idiosyncrasies. I got to know how to deal with them. So if you've got guys who oh yeah, you gotta

do this, you gotta do that. But suddenly they're all gone, you don't know what to do. You don't know if you're doing something right or wrong, which can make you know, for a catastrophic situation, even in like the most perfect submarine. Uh yeah. And and this one had another problem too, which was that it was in Britain, and obviously if they needed spare parts, well, you know, I'm sorry French, they're back in France, which is occupied by the Germans, right,

so you know, you gotta like, you gotta. They're not gonna obviously set up a whole manufacturing infrastructure to make parts for this thing, for one, So we're saying it's even more cobbled together at this point, right, repairs that are being done all yeah, well, I'm sure that there's a lot of pieces and parts that could be could be made made from scratched by a qualified machinists and

stuff like that, but it would be time consuming. Also, this is the war, like yeah, yeah, I say, in a sense, it's kind it's kind of like a mystery why they even processing in a service. Um it seemed like an accident waiting to happen. So but anyway, there was still at a little bit of tension there. They had a new commanding officer and a new crew. There were accusations made that people on the sub we're spying

for vit friends. The Brits apparently also claimed that this so coop was attacking British ships because when you think about it, when you were in a convoy in the North Atlantic, then you know, and the convoys are kind of spread out, and so it would actually not be that tough if you're like one of the one of the escorts to just go ahead and sink one of these merchant ships. Yeah, you could do that, wouldn't be that duck. You could just sink a merchant ship, you know,

and it's like, hey, what happened? I don't know. The Germans must have got him, yeah, but I got everybody. Everybody on board would have to be on board with that. Yeah. So the Brits actually actually, as part of this, they stationed a British officer and two sailors on board, supposedly to be liaisons, but more likely just to keep an eye on them and make sure that nothing like this happened.

So anyways, the Cirkufa went to Halifax, Nova, Scotia and basically escorted Transatlantic convoys until one which was damaged by a German plane, and then went to the US Naval shipyard of Portsmith, New Hampshire for a refit, and then went to the New London, Connecticut, and then went back to Halifax, neb All. What happened is Pearl Harbor. Yeah, yeah,

Pearl Harbor. So they decided to send the circuf to the Pacific Theater, and so she was given orders to sail to Sydney, Australia, the Via Bermuda and Tahiti and the Panama Canal and all that stuff. So she was gonna have a neat little tour and I could just imagine that, you know, I I've read conflicting stuff. According to some accounts that I've read about this, at the time that she set out to make this voyage, she only had one functioning engine. Yeah, I know, And I

can't believe that. I cannot believe they would have put her to sea for that voyage like that with one function So I am taking that with a grain of salt. Although I guess it wouldn't be so surprising given that, you know, nobody really could get their hands on the

correct parts. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's like, yeah, but it seems to me rather dangerous to send the ship to sea with only one functioning Yeah, although I guess you say, you know, you kind of had your bet at that point, right, you say, well, you've only got one functioning engine, but it would take us like five years to actually get the parts we need in every fabricade or whatever, you know, or yeah, yeah, but you know, there's what fairly disposable dudes on this ship

also like pretty disposable, So I oh, yeah, you know, either they make it and they're helpful or they don't, but we tried. Yeah, I and I I really think the proper course of action for this ship would have been to like runner not too not too far distances or very long until that second engine craps out and then just scrap it and use that steal to build you know, other stuff on the battleships or something like that, or just scrap it. Yeah, that would have been that too. Yeah,

that just doesn't make any sense. It would be as if I were going to take a you know, a road trip in my car, but I only got first and second Geary. I mean that, that's essentially it. I'm gonna drive a thousand miles, but it's gonna take me weeks because my mac speed is you know, twenty miles an hour. It's just it's foolish. Yeah. Do nobody in good conscience would do that? Yeah, it is, you know. And and frankly, this thing was designed with an inadequate

inadequate number of engines anyway. Um, and that probably gets back to things like, you know, if you're gonna have a big, big tour in the floatplane and a big that holds forty prisoners, well you gotta you gotta make up that space somehow. Well, but the fleet submarines at the US building World War two had four diesel engines in them. And you know, the you guys are seeing

the blue Back, you know, the blue back. Blue back has got three diesel engines in, you know, and it's not even how big is I mean blue is two ft long? Yeah, and so you know, it seems to me that three is the minimum, you know, really needed. Yeah. I've got a chance to take a tour of a Russian Foxtrott submarine and that's that's a pretty small dinky sub compared to compared to this thing, and that had three diesels on it. I mean it's like, you know,

three is a minimum. So yeah, so you know, design constraints are you know, submarines are there's a huge design constraint which is a total volume equals total displacement, which is not the same as for surface ships, where displacement is smaller than the actual volume of the ship. And so there's only so much space on that thing. So I assume to like do things like a brig in you had to cut out a diesel engineer too, or you know, the what is it the null tank or

then then the negative tank, Yeah, the negative tanks. Maybe there is an all tank would If you look at the tanking diagram of the submarine, you would be amazing how many tanks there are on a typical submarine. Uh so where were we? Oh yeah? So so anyway, so they decide to send to the Pacific Theater. So she she left and went to Bermuda where she resupplied and then headed south and there to go to the go through the Panama Canal. I guess southwest tech Yeah, like

like that would make sense, and headed southwest. The plan was to go through the Panama Canal, stop off at Tahiti for a little resupply, then on to Sydney. Uh So she never made it to the Panama Canal. She disappeared somewhere between Bermuda and the Panama Canal. Yeah, and so the question is what happened to her? Here's the installed mystery part of things. Yeah. Yeah, why would they send a ship like that? Which is a valid question. Yeah.

So you know, again there were questions about her loyalty, and according to the U. S. Navy, she was done in by an accident. Accident. Okay, so and again this is this is my own fault. But I read this theory. I could never quite understand exactly how this would have gone down. I don't understand what you didn't understand about it. Well, it just seems that if this is such a massive ship, I mean, well okay, before we're getting ahead of our So what is what is the theory or give us

the details on this particular one. Well what the What the U. S. Navy said is that there's an American freighter named that Thompson likes was was steaming in that area, the same area that the thing that our sub was in and reported hitting and running down a partially submerged object, and her lookouts supposedly heard people in the water, but they went on was out without stopping because they were assuming it was a U boat on German U boat,

although apparently they said they had heard people yelling out in English, so there were only those problems. Yeah, there were only three people on the boat who spook English, so I mean, I was some of the French did, but you know, you think they would be like yelling in French, but you know, it's it's hard to say. It was supposedly a very very dark night, uh, and they just heard really kind of more heard and felt

rather than saw. There was I found a thing on the on the interwebs, some guy who had claimed that his grandfather was on the Thompson likes and said that he was. He was. He remembered the incident very clearly, and he said it was the biggest submarine you've ever seen.

Although I'm questioning that because it's like it's like I said, I thought it was a dark, moonless night and nobody could see, so I guess my my question about that is, like, okay, so you assume it's a German U boat and like whatever, like humanitarian problems without a sign, like fine, but you have lights on your ship. You have you just have you have lights on your ship, on the deck of your ship, and maybe you just like shine one down there,

just like hey, what was that? Okay it was, let's keep going, or oh no, that was something much bigger and we should probably stop and try and help these people, or oh we just hit a whale, like you know, whatever, the possibility you take one light, one lookout person takes one light, turns the switch on, but it takes one light to get spotted by the enemy and be shot. This is true. This is true. If you if you

believe that, you just run over a U boat. Then you just run over pretty much all of the enemy that's in the area, probably crowning. You just watched them drown for a second. Yeah, I mean it might be. It could be that if you you know, obviously from a humanitarian standpoint, because you could have just run over

somebody's goat or something like that. It's hard to say, but ship a small cruise ship, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, but of course you know, of course, if if you really think that it's the U boat, well the U boat, and the U boat doesn't think the boat might sink you, So maybe you want to beat feet out of there too. I mean, maybe that's why they did it, I guess.

Or you check to make sure that it's actually thinking, and if it's not, while they're like in panic mode, you shoot your one round into them and then they actually are thinking. Well you can do that, you know, I mean, I guess that just in my mind. Again, I understand I'm not a soldier in the more or anything like that, but you shine a light, I would think you would, now you'd want to know is actly what you know, what you ran over? I would think so,

But they didn't. And it's kind of surprising because and I know it's wartime, but you know, a law of the sea and all that, you're supposed to stop and help people. And especially then the report that they hear people calling out in English. Yeah, you know, you think that if they actually heard somebody calling out in English, but they really didn't want to stop, then they would

just keep quiet about it. So here's here's the thing is when what I didn't understand, and this gets back to my initial question, is what it didn't get is if the circuf is so large and such a manage ship, I would think that hitting it would cause excessive amounts of damage to a top side boat. I would think that that would just mangle the holy crap out of the hole to the point that that ship would go down as well, because it's it's just such a big chunk of metal in the water. I guess it could

be a glancing blow. But glancing blow wouldn't sink the sun, No, but a glancing blow could tilt it off of its act. You could knock it over and it's open. Everybody's like up there doing stuff or whatever. It was over. Well,

they said it was partially submerged. They say they partially submerged object that probably even when it's top side, it's partially submerged, right, Well, I mean it's always any boats partially submerged always, But it's like you know, I mean, yeah, they could have been diving, for example, they could have been surfacing and then then so this thing just sort

of scrapes along the top of it. But the thing is, if it did that sort of glancing blue scraping thing, it's not going to probably damage the sub enough to sink it. To me, and this this is where this gets back to where I had issues with it. If you think about the two moving perpendicular to each other and they hit it basically a ninety degree angle, it's and it causes enough damage to sink the sub. That to me means it causes enough damage to the ship

to potentially sink it as well. If it's a glancing blow, you know, so they're almost parallel to each other, well then they bounce off of each other, and that doesn't seem like that would be enough force to sink the sub. That's what I didn't get about this whole We ran them over, that's yeah, that's true. Yeah, well they did

hear scraping along their keel. So that what's again to me, it kind of reinforces that the idea perhaps they were submerging, and so if they were like kind of submerging already and they got run over and then you know, that would that would cause a lot of scraping sounds and stuff like that, and there was damage apparently to the likes about I didn't see that when it wasn't I mean, it was obviously it wasn't enough damage to stop them. No, no, no, did that according to the kind of that I was

talking about. The guy with the grandfather who was in the ship, he said that they were actually taken on water after Okay, well, then validity to the theory for me, because I didn't I did never see that before. I also guess you can take on some water as a ship. Yeah, you still got you've got pumps and stuff like that.

You've got pumps or you know, you section off that shut section and you shut your fire door and everything's fine for you know, the twenty minutes that it takes you or yeah, I mean, yeah, even if it's two days, it's all compartment. Yeah you're gonna list badly, but yeah, yeah, so it wasn't Yeah, they were taking on water, but it wasn't catastrophic. So I that that solves that for me, and I can I can run with that a little more now that I never was very weird. Yeah, yeah,

so yeah, I don't know. But you know, the question is I mean to you know, a submarine has two holes. It's got the pressure hole on the inside, then it's got the outer hole that you actually see. The pressure hall is built very stoutly to withstand tremendous amounts of water pressure. Probably the pressure hall didn't get breached. Probably

maybe one or two ballast tanks got breached. So even if they weren't sunk, they were kind of screwed because, like say, for example, if your forward ballast tanks can no longer hold air because they've been breached, then if you try to surface, well you're gonna be sort of asked up in the air. You can still you can still escape and everything like that. You can still escape the sub and you can still make the surface, but you really can't operate that kind of in that kind

of condition. So one theory that's out there is that they were actually done it by kind of a one two punch set. They were hit by the likes and they were damaged enough they were kind of dead in the water. And that was on the night of February eighteen, by the way, So they're dead in the water. And believe that was yes, the next day some some according to the records of the six Heavy Bomber Group there they were operating out of Panama, they claimed to have

sank a large submarine north of Columbus. That's that's actually Crystal Cologne, Panama. They planned to a sanky large submarine to a seventeen and one B eighteen aircraft dropped bombs on this vessel, and so it was quite possibly the Tuku. You know, really a bad luck vessel when you think about it, you know, because if this happened, they get run over there, dead in the water, they're trying to figure out what to do, and then here comes to

planes and just bomb the crap out of them. So there, so then I guess by that theory their communications are down to yeah, probably must have been. Yeah, they must have been, because you don't, I mean, it's not it doesn't happen so often that you bomb your own thing, right for your radio and tennis and towers around on the top, so something that's nothing. Yeah, yeah, it could be that the likes took off their radio stuff. You know, they weren't they were and they were unable to communicate.

The thing that I finally explicable about this is that they found the submarine, they sank it. But generally speaking, in the Navy, they had like these cards that they give you that have like silhouettes of various craft or as ships and submarines and look, yeah, exactly exactly. They have all these you know, these these and they have these things that you can look at that will tell you, hey, okay, this is a U boat. Hey this is one of ours. And the Sirkup was one of the kind of one

of the combat it should have been. It should have been some sort of a reference to. Certainly if they looked at there, if they looked at their reference cards and said, well, you bote, you vote your boat, there's nothing like it. Maybe the Cirkuf being one of a cord. Maybe they just never got around to putting it on the identification cards. You know, I can totally see it

not being put in there. If it's one of a kind, why am I going to spend all this time adding it to all of these manuals for these guys, and these guys going, well, the Germans have been doing all this other crazy stuff. This must be one of their new subs that we've been hearing about. I just see, you know, a bunch of eighteen year old guys in an airplane going I don't know what it is. Oh well, i'll bet you, I'll bet you I know what it is,

and just going crazy, dropping a ton of moms. Yeah, I don't know, I don't see it as it doesn't look like a friendly one. So let's go ahead and kill it. I've never seen anything like that, have you. Nope? Okay, you know, and then you hail it, right or what? I don't know what that was. Hale it, You hail it, and there's no response, and you've got all right, great, right, it doesn't look like ours. It's not responding to our radio.

Let's go ahead, and yeah, yeah, there are other theories too. Well, wait, I guess the next question of that is that is the place where the ship reported hitting something close to where the bombers reported bombing something. Yeah, it is so close enough that it could conceivably be the same thing. Yeah, yeah,

they're close. I did find one guy, one guy on the web who claimed that the circus could not have been in that place because if it was only running on one engine, that couldn't have it couldn't have actually gotten that far from Bermuda. But I actually that actually did a calculation. I figured out they probably could have. That's fair, yeah, probably, yeah, yeah, yeah for another day. Yeah yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, where they were sunk

supposedly about twenty eight kilometers from Bermuda. They have six days to get there. Okay, but so well we've never found it, right, we've never found the wreckage. Well, according to UH is to be believed, they know, they know pretty precisely where it's at. They know the latitude and launched you to where the record is at. It's and it's an almost ten thousand feet of water and so that probably explained is when nobody has ever actually gone down to find problem. Yeah, it kind of is. It

would be actually interesting too. I wish somebody would go to quite well, we need to write to Robert Ballard and as they didn't. Jack James Stowe say back in the seventies he was saying he was going to go look for it and try and find it. There was some rummer about that, but I don't believe he ever did. Well, no,

he never did. But I came across the counsel that said that Cousteau was saying he was going to go look for this kouth and he made all this public kuha about it, and then the stories kind of followed that he got hushed up and basically told no, don't look for that. It would be in your better interest just not to look for that. Sung. Well, so we need to call up James Cameron. Yeah, yeah, Robert Ballard is Robert Ballard is the guy who took him down to the Titanic. We need That's the guy we need

to call it. But we should just call it James Cameron. What should call it? Because actually he might think that we're so awesome he wants to put us in a movie. Yeah, uh yeah. So anyway, um there. You know, there are a lot of conspiracies theories surrounding this. One is that, uh it claims that the Brits didn't trust the Circuf.

They thought that the Cirkuf was cooperating with the Vis French and actually sinking allied shipping and so this one of these series is that they deliberately sank it using using whatever, you know, aircraft and whatever. They just went out and found it and sank it. Another one is that when it was import in Bermuda, British divers swam out and attached limp it minds to it, which were

time to go off several days after. What's a limpit mind? Yeah, limp it mine is a is a is a mine that's attached to a ship sold by magnets, and it's called a limp it because it's got a similar to a limp it, which is a sea snail that clings to rocks another heart. So basically what what this theory is saying then is that they just stuck a bunch of magnets with explosives on it and a couple of daytimer. Yeah, that's one possibility. It's like being James Bond, Yes, James Bond,

James n Yeah. Now, of course there's another theory that she was swallowed by the remainder triangle, which, of course as as possible, it's a lot more plausible to believe that, you know, leaving aside limpid minds, that she just suffered some sort of catastrophic failure because the submarine has a

lot of a lot of hole openings. You know, that's where you have water that you know, the water coming in and out of you're venting and pulling in And yeah, that's entirely possible that if connection fails, And it's believable with this boat. This boat was more than ten years old. Man, it had been by this time, it had been well over a year before she had any spare parts of it was possible to sea fitting just failed and started letting lots of large amounts of water in another one,

another another claim. The story is that she was caught in Long Island Sound refueling a German U boat. This one, this one. I was going to say that if you're if you're going to refuel a German U boat on the slide, it seems to be like doing a Long Island Sound is kind of a bad idea. Yeah, what

is the story or the anecdotal evidence behind this? In other words, I know this this theory comes from some stories of something being sunk in the Long Island Sound, But I never could figure out how somebody tied it to being Yeah, I don't know either. I mean there might there might very well be a U boat wreck in the sound. I mean U boats were all over the place. I guess. My big question about that is,

like she's running on one engine. She's got like no extra room in her entire body, right, Well, why is she refueling other things? Well, there is there is a good that is a good point. It's like you did, I mean she did. This boat actually did carry quite a lot of fuel for a submarine, which she obviously needed for herself. Yeah, probably, you know. And so there's another another story is that she was loaded up with French gold. Yeah okay, it flashed that out for you

because I didn't see that one. Yeah yeah, yeah. So another another story, and again I don't place any any value on this at all, is that a lot of gold from the French treasury was actually put in their cargo compartment. You know that big space that was built to house forty prisoners. Yeah, well that's a nice big space. You stack a lot of gold bars in there. Oh those are great ballas. Yeah. I know that it's nice and low down there, and that I would definitely keep

you from tipping over. So yeah, you know, but It's like like many of these stories about lost ships, somehow gold ones up getting interjected quite often. I was gonna say, this is just like the houring mcdan and Yamashita's gold talked about before. What how did Oh? Okay, well this one got it. Seems like it's what was the phrase we used, shoehorned in? Yeah? Probably probably. Well, I guess you know what about slavery? Yeah, well that's a good point.

I mean, yeah, I mean there's no reason they might have been running slaves from Africa to the New World. It's a little late for that. But wow. So there was a Jacques Cousteau, the Jacques Cousteau thing, so has claimed that Jacques sto actually did find it and go aboard and grab the gold, and that's why you shut up about it later. But again, that's that's not exactly believable. Um. And then there was a diver named Lee Prettyman who reported he claimed to have found it in the nineteen sixties.

Uh and uh, and there was a newspaper article published about it, but he was actually forced to retract his story later on, so apparently because he apparently not Yeah, and so most of these series are really fairly weak. The strongest series at the six Heavy Bomber Group, the one that meant the one that I mentioned earlier, operating

out of Panama. Their records do show that was sinking a large submarine on the morning of the February nineteen, but they never they never classified the kind of sub that they say said it was a big stuff. We said said it was a big sub. And so that seems it seems to me that you know, quite possibly they were just done in by the one to punch. You know, they get hit by a freighter and then the next morning they're trying to figure out what to do and limping towards shore and then here come these

airplanes and boom. For guys, I feel bad for him. I mean, yeah, it's like dying in a sub would not be a way to go there. Either you drown or you suffocate, or you start I mean, there are no good possibilities tying, and so it's like, yeah, it would be a way to go regardless of what happens. Yeah, or you managed to stub how get to the lifeboat, get over ward, you get the lifeboat and then later on you're eating sharks or you drift until you starved

to death. All kinds of bad possibilities here. You're picked up by a U boating Yeah, I mean anything could happen here. Yeah. So anyway, sad, sad story. And you know, it is quite possible that they were done in by by British treachery. The Brits maybe for whatever reason, did decide to put a behind in their hole, but there's really no evidence for it. So which one so you think it was? So you, personally, Joe lean towards more of the one to punch approach, yeah, or possibly even

just the one punch approach. I mean, there's no there's no real proof that the Thomas Likes actually hit this, hit this circof. There could have been other things that they hit. There's all kinds of stuff, even leaving inside ships and submarines. There's all kinds of stuff floating around

the ocean. Yeah. Like you remember after after the tsunami in Japan a few years back then, like like one day somebody somebody goes on the Organ coast, goes out looks and there is this big floating dock that washed up on shore. It's like, you know, there's stuff like that. All over the place in the ocean. I mean, but they didn't obviously have containers back and they don't containers

and container ships back then. But these days, you know, container ships lose containers over the side all the time. There's containers out there floating around, and you know, you know, even back in those days of World War Two, there's all kinds of stuff floating around the ocean that you can run into. So it may have been the one to punch, or it may have just been that the

Thomas Likes hit something else entirely. And then these guys showed up on February nineteen in the early morning and sank listener, who personally, I I, based on the history of this this vessel, I have a feeling that to me, it's more of the mechanical issues. She had some kind of failure, because I mean, all this reading about you know, we couldn't get parts for and all this stuff. It just seems to me that something she basically spread the

leak and went down because things just stopped working. It seems the simplest again, it's Accum's razor, but it's simplest, more plausible. Submarines Again, they operating a very hostile environment, and they are very complex machines. There's a lot of points of failure, and yeah, they can easily be done in by just a mechanical failure. Yeah, I mean I think I you know, when I was working on cruise ships, which is not comparable to a submarine really, but a

little bit. It is that we had a ship in our fleet that like I had to go in for repairs like four times or something like that. And there was one time where they like took it out for repairs and like the front seat or just fell off the front seat or so it was like where they would load all the like cargo or whatever. So it's usually like above water and they would drop it down into the water and it just fell off like underwater,

just fell off. Day. Like if it happens all the time, you know, somebody doesn't studer something on quite right, you know your you know then you know what twenty thirty years since they even had parts that were actually made for them. You know, they've been just cobbling repairs together ten years, yeah, ten years, ten years, yeah, but yeah, ten years. So well, yeah, we have in service and constantly and guys are working on in metric versus standard.

It's easy to get everybody confused. Yeah, so I guess I agree with Steve. Yeah, I think mechanics, some kind of mechanical failure or a bombing. I don't think. Yeah, it could have been ebombing, It could have been I'm pretty sure it wasn't aliens, but maybe we don't think so it might have been. Okay, you think it might Okay, that's good. I'm willing to allow like a possibility, okay, alright, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

So anyway, it's too bad for the CIRCUF. I think we solved this mystery pretty conclusively, and we think that maybe it was aliens. Okay, aliens, aliens bombing from the air and six just mechanical failure. Okay, that sounds right, perfect, Yeah, great, Okay, that's so cool now, And so now you're all experts

on the CIRCUF. Alright, So if you want to see pictures of the Sokof, I've actually, I've actually found a cool picture across section of a model of the CIRCOF and so you can look at that and get an idea of the complexity of this beast. And also, if you want to see links to other sites. They will be on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.

And if you like to if you were actually on the circuf and you somehome reculously survived, or if you're on the Thomas Likes, then you want to like like wig in a little bit here and tell us what happened then at State four line. Uh yeah, you might want to send us an email, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Also, don't forget to check

us out on Facebook and iTunes and Stitcher. And if you're downloading an episode through iTunes, please stop, give us a rating, give us a review if you possibly can. We really appreciate it. Let's wrap this up. Another mystery solved here on Thinking Sideways. That's it. Goodbye, talk to you guys soon. It was Aliens. I'm pretty sure now you're probably right with that.