Monday, Christmas day of 2000 and the Brazilian submarine TONELEIROS sank dockside in Rio de Janeiro. She went down stern first in only 30 feet of water and the Brazilian Navy expected to use heavy duty fork lifts and cables to bring her back to the surface shortly. The sinking apparently was caused by a malfunction with the valves and their hydraulic system -- something didn’t close as it should have, and so the boat just went down.

According to CDR STEVE JONES (2183-1992) TONELEIROS is an old British OBERON Type diesel-electric boat, capable of carrying missiles. She displaced 1,610/2,410 tons, her dimensions were 90 x 8.1 x 5.5 meters. Top speed surfaced was 12 knots but 17 knots submerged and at 12 knots, had a range of 9,000 miles. Her crew was 70 men, and her armament consisted of 22 torpedoes of the Tigerfish Type. STEVE tells us that the TONELEIROS Class submarines are used for training and that the TUPI Class boats are the real operational units.

Thanks for the scoop, STEVE.

The Brazilian Navy said that TONELEIROS was not armed at the time she sank. That makes sense since this was a training boat and not an operational unit.