misled searchers for decades. It was not until April 1999, after some 25 failed expeditions, that a search effort was concentrated along the original route. On 17 January 1970, the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar reported that Dakar had been sunk by an Egyptian warship with depth charges. The Egyptian story was told in a 2 July 2005 interview by Asharq Al-Awsat with General Mohamed Azab (a major at that time): On 23 January 1968, the Egyptian frigate, Assyout, left Alexandria base in a training mission for the naval academy. After completing the training assignment and during the return journey to the base, students noticed the periscope of an alien submarine in Egyptian waters, about two miles (3 km) off Alexandria. The Egyptian commander was informed and the decision was taken to attack the unknown submarine. However, the submarine made a hasty dive and the Egyptian ship lost track of it. General Azab reported the story to his commanders and mentioned that there is a probability that the submarine had crashed into the seabed. However, the story was not believed by the higher Egyptian commanders and there was not sufficient evidence to start a search process. General Azab mentioned that the submarine may have crashed into the seabed due to the shallow depth of water in that region, about 36 meters, while it needed at least 40 meters to dive. It appears that the submarine commander took the risk. The Israeli government stated there was no evidence to substantiate the Egyptian unofficial claims. During the 1980s the Israelis, using a salvage vessel with Egyptian liaison officers, conducted three searches for Dakar in waters north of Sinai and another search off the Greek island of Rhodes. In August 1986, the U.S. Navy committed a P-3 Orion and an S-3 Viking to search Egyptian waters near al-Arish. In October 1998, Israel began running advertisements in newspapers in Turkey, Egypt, France, Greece and Russia, offering rewards of up to $300,000 for any information on the fate of Dakar. On 24 May 1999 a joint U.S.–Israeli search team using information received from U.S. intelligence sources and led by Thomas Kent Dettweiler, a subcontractor from American Nauticos Corporation, detected a large body on the seabed between Crete and Cyprus, at a depth of some . On 28 May the first video pictures were taken by the remote-operated vehicle Remora II, making it clear that Dakar had