We first broke this story about a year ago - there was a group of ten US Navy destroyer vets who swear they sank a German U-Boat in 1945, just off the entrance to San Francisco Bay. They knew they sank it because - well, they just knew they did. And naturally, this U-Boat was filled with gold and jewels and treasures, like all German U-Boats were........and for only a small investment of $20,000 you could become a partner in this get-rich-quick scheme.

I wrote to these veterans, as well as to the news people who wrote about this 'discovery' and told them there were absolutely NO German U-Boats off the west coast of the USA at all during World War II and they certainly did not come over here loaded with treasures - they normally carried torpedoes.

That was a waste of time and paper, as the vets themselves did not want to hear that they did not sink this U-Boat that they 'knew' they had sunk; and the news media people are usually so blind they can be fed a story and they believe it if it creates headlines.

Since they claimed this 'U-Boat' was in water just a little more than 100 feet deep, I asked why they never thought to put a diver over the side and just look at this 'mystery' wreck. They had one answer after another - none that made any sense.

Early in 1995 the TV program 'UNSOLVED MYSTERIES' carried this story, but with a new & ever goofier twist. Now these guys think they didn't really sank a German U-Boat, but they think they sank a US Navy submarine and further, that the US Navy will not give them any details about this 'mystery' submarine.

To think they sank a German U-Boat full of treasure in an area where no U-Boat had ever patrolled is too far out in itself, but to think the US Navy is refusing to give them information about their sinking a US Navy submarine in error, and further that the US Navy is concealing this fact from the public is beyond comprehension.

Now they have come out with a little newsletter called 'the HUNTER'S LOG' with tabloid-type headlines; for instance:

Issue #1, Spring 1994 carried this headline: "SUB HUNT '94 GETS UNDERWAY"
Issue #2, Summer 1994 carried this headline: "ECHO HUNTER IS LAUNCHED' (They have a boat)
Issue #3, Fall 1994 carried this headline: "FOG DAMPENS SEARCH" "Could it be a German Sub?"
Issue #4, Winter 1994 carried the strangest headline yet: "MORE THAN ONE SUB?" with the sub-header "They both believe the Japanese had a mini-sub base in an underwater cave just north of Santa Cruz, Ca."

A Japanese mini-submarine base in California? Good God! Wasn't BISMARCK based out of New York? Maybe SCHARNHORST in Chicago? YAMATO in Phoenix???

What really IS on the bottom, in a little more than 100 feet? We got a note from 'SCRAP' LUNDY (271-1987) in which he writes:

"I know the guys who made several dives & they found an oil barge which, on a side-scan sonar, had the outline of a sub."

I wonder how much gold and treasure those things carry.....but I guess you need a Japanese mini-submarine to get to the site. Look for their new base just off Pismo Beach....or was that Malibu? If you need directions, ask the 'Little Old Lady from Pasadena' as she races up and down Colorado Boulevard. She traded in her Super Stock Dodge for a Rolls Royce she was able to buy with her share of all the gold on that U-Boat - or was it a Japanese mini-sub?