however, and a few seconds later she sank, settling on the bottom at a depth of . I-33′s commanding officer and nine other men were trapped in the control room. With water rising in the control room, the commanding officer decided to remain aboard the submarine and drown, but he ordered the men with him to escape via the conning tower. Eight reached the surface, where they drifted apart in two groups that made for shore separately. Most became exhausted and drowned, only two of them reaching shore alive. Thirteen other men were trapped in the forward crew compartment. The lower hatch of the escape trunk jammed, preventing them from escaping. After 12 of the men suffocated, the last surviving sailor committed suicide. In all, 102 men lost their lives. A few hours after I-33 sank, fishermen found the two men from the control room who had made it to shore alive and took them to Mitohama, where they contacted naval authorities. The submarine tender soon arrived, picked up I-33′s two survivors, and headed for the scene of the disaster. On 14 June 1944, search aircraft found a diesel oil slick in the Iyo-nada and guided Chōgei to it. Divers from Chōgei found the wreck of I-33 on 15 June 1944 and brought the bodies of two men found entangled in the bridge enclosure to the surface. The divers also determined the cause of the disaster, finding a piece of wooden scaffolding in diameter which had slipped into the air-induction line during the repairs at Kure and jammed the valve, causing disastrous flooding. A salvage barge equipped with a crane arrived on the scene on 16 June 1944, but an approaching typhoon forced the Japanese to abandon all rescue and salvage efforts that evening. No inquiry into the sinking took place because most of the officers assigned to the investigation were killed in action during fighting in the Mariana Islands in the summer of 1944. The Imperial Japanese Navy struck I-33 from the Navy list on 10 August 1944. Final disposition After I-33 had lain on the bottom of the Seto Inland Sea for nine years, the Hokusei Sempaku salvage firm began work to refloat her in June 1953. Her wreck was refloated between 23 July and 18 August 1953, the salvors discovering that her forward compartments were not flooded. The wreck was scrapped at the Hitachi yard at Innoshima,