Paris, June 16.
LI hope was abandoned today for the French submarine Phenix which disappeared yesterday morning off Can Raub Bay, 190 miles from Saigon, with a crew of 71 men, including four officers.
Widespread searches by warships and planes were carried out for 24 anxious hours.
But no trace of the undersea-boat was found and the third submarine tragedy in 23 days became a tragic fact.
The Phenix disaster is the most serious ever to have occurred in Far Eastern waters.
The greatest loss of life in a submarine, accident prior to this was suffered when the Japanese submarine, No. 43, sank on March 19, 1924, in a collision with. fe warship Tatsuta off Sasebo.
Forty-nine lives were lost that time.
The Phenix is also the third submarine to go down with great loss of life since May 23, when the American Squalus foundered off the New England coast. Thirty-three men were drowned or suffocated, but 26 were saved by means of the most modern rescue apparatus.
Then, on June 1, the new British submarine Thetis foundered off the North coast of Wales, near Liverpool, and despite desperate efforts, only four men of a total of 102 were saved.
Fears for the Phenix were first entertained yesterday when the vessel failed to return to her base after a routine dive off the strategic naval base at Cam Raub Bay.
Units of the French Far Eastern Fleet and one squadron of the Indo-China Fleet immediately engaged in intensive searching for the submarine.
Seaplanes attached to the Indo-China Fleet joined in the huge network of searchers, But to a late hour today, all efforts had failed and the Commander-in-
Chief of the French Naval Forces in the Far East believed the boat had lost its balance when diving and had sunk.
The exact cause of the tragedy was not definitely known, however.
The Phenix was attached: o the Far Eastern Fleet, with its base at Saigon.
Her displacement was 1379 tons, and it was 92 metres (285 feet) long and was 82 metres (25 feet six inches) wide across the beam. Top speed on the surface was 18 knots, end submerged, 10 knots.
The vessel's' armament included one 100-min. gun, one 73-min. antiaircraft gun, one heavy machinegun and 11 torpedo tubes.
The foundering of the Phenix is the first French submarine disaster since 1932, when a new U-boat, the Promethée sank off Cherbourg on July 7. On that occasion, 62 lives were lost.
The Phenix is the first submarine to sink in Far Eastern waters since the British boat, Poseidon, collided with a Chinese steamer, the Yuta off the northeast coast of Shantung Province on June 9, 1981, when twenty lives were lost.—Havas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.