Golfo Nuevo submarine hunt
For about three weeks the Argentine Navy hunted one or two unidentified submarines in Golfo Nuevo, Patagonia, dropping depth charges without forcing them to surface.
1960 CE · -42.75, -64.90 · status: official
The account
Between late January and mid-February 1960 Argentine warships and aircraft, including the patrol ships ARA Murature and ARA King, tracked sonar contacts inside the gulf off Puerto Madryn. President Frondizi's government authorised attacks and the US Navy sent anti-submarine advisers; Time and Newsweek covered 'the ping in Golfo Nuevo'. The navy finally said the intruders had escaped. Later writers recast the contacts as 'unidentified submerged objects' moving faster than any submarine.
The sceptical view
Contemporary reports treated the contacts as Cold War submarines (Soviet ones were suspected), and some naval officers later suggested sonar echoes from whales or thermal layers. Nothing in the official record describes anything beyond the abilities of a submarine.
The researched reading
A real, instrumented naval hunt with no result. The most likely explanations are a spying submarine or false sonar contacts in difficult waters. The later “USO” story adds speeds the record does not support.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 30% | Sonar in 1960 regularly confused submarines with whales, schools of fish, sea lions, wrecks and rocky bottoms; Time made this point at the time. Golfo Nuevo is rich in marine mammals, and a jittery fleet firing at shifting contacts for weeks without debris fits false targets. |
| Secret human technology | 30% | A covert foreign submarine on reconnaissance in Argentine waters was a real Cold War possibility (Soviet or Western), and a periscope sighting was reported. All 26 nations asked denied it, which is not surprising for a spying submarine. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 20% | Thermal layers and other changes in water density bend sound, creating false echoes and hiding real ones, so a gulf in summer can produce contacts that seem to appear, vanish and move fast. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 8% | After weeks of press coverage and political pressure, crews expected a submarine. That expectation shaped how ambiguous echoes and a periscope glimpse were read. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 8% | Instrument contacts that persisted for weeks and were never resolved leave some room open. However, the claims of impossible speeds come from later writers, not the navy’s statements at the time. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | Nothing suggests a poorly understood natural phenomenon. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 2% | There is no sign the navy invented the contacts, though the fast-moving “unidentified submerged object” versions are later embellishments. |
Official position: The Argentine government said one or two foreign submarines had been in the gulf and had escaped, but it never identified them.