In the last few years, three lost WWII submarines have been found, thanks to remotely operated vehicles (R.O.V.s). These are robots developed in the mid-eighties equipped with lights, cameras, steering thrusters, and other technology that can find objects as deep as a mile underwater. These were used to locate the Lagarto in May, 2005 - in the Gulf of Thailand in about 225 feet of water; the Wahoo in 2006 - in the La Perouse Strait South of Sakhalin Island in about 213 feet of water, and - most recently - the Grunion. The Grunion, lost in May of 1942 on its first patrol, was found last August on a slope 3000 feet down in the Bering Sea ten miles northeast of Kiska Island, the Aleutians.
The three sons of Grunion's commander, Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. "Jim" Abele, launched the expedition to find their father's lost sub. Its discovery combined dogged persistence and determination by the Abele brothers, international cooperation by volunteer and professional search teams, the latest high-tech equipment, and a massive research effort to locate the descendants of all seventy crewmen lost on the sub. John Abele, who was five when his father was lost, sent vials of seawater from the discovery site to all seventy families of the missing men.
These families were united by wonder, old and new. When seventy men simply disappear without a trace, their loved ones cling to the hope they're alive somewhere, wondering when they'll walk through the kitchen door. One of the Grunion's widows would often go down to the local train station to wait for her lost husband to return. And then, in 2007 when the families got the call that the Grunion had been discovered, they were bonded by wonder at the discovery itself, and the feeling of having found their lost tribe: others who had wondered with them for some or all of the last sixty-five years.
Read all about it here: http://www.rd.com/stories/action-adventure/recovered-navy-submarine-grunion-photos/article51160.html