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In the ghostly blue lights of a video camera, sea snakes, squids and schools of blue and yellow fish swirl past five-inch battle guns of a World War II submarine 200 feet beneath the South China Sea. "With all the fish and the coral covering the Lagarto, it's almost like someone put flowers on a grave," said Elizabeth Kenney-Augustine, whose grandfather, Bill Mabin of La Grange, Ill., was on the sub. For decades, no human knew where to put flowers for the 86 men who disappeared with the U.S.S. Lagarto somewhere between Thailand and Australia shortly before World War II...

Blustery weather that rolled across Texas on Thursday apparently downed power lines, sparking a fire that destroyed about 34 homes in a small town near Lake Corpus Christi, authorities said. One volunteer firefighter was burned and two other people suffered minor injuries in the afternoon fire that burned 175 acres in Lagarto in southern Live Oak County, the Texas Forest Service said. A spokeswoman at the Live Oak County Sheriff's Office said not all of the homes that burned were occupied. Three shelters were set up, and the Coastal Bend-Texas Chapter of the American Red Cross had set up a...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) -- Experts at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., have confirmed that a World War II submarine wreck found in the Gulf of Thailand last year is USS Lagarto (SS 371). Underwater archeologists at the center completed their examination of evidence obtained in June by Navy divers from USS Salvor (ARS 52) and Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1, both based in Pearl Harbor. "We now know for certain that this is Lagarto," said Rear Adm. Jeffrey Cassias, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet submarine force. "I am grateful to all those involved in helping...

MANITOWOC, Wis. (NNS) -- Families of crew members who served aboard the World War II submarine USS Lagarto (SS 371) gathered here May 6 to honor the men whose submarine went missing six decades ago and was only recently located by divers. Lagarto was last seen May 3, 1945, in the southern Gulf of Thailand while preparing to strike an enemy convoy. Japanese records later indicated that the minelayer Hatsutaka reported sinking a U.S. submarine on that date. Last May, nearly 60 years to the day after Lagarto was lost, British diver Jamie MacLeod reported finding Lagarto sitting upright in...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) -- Families of crew members serving on the ill-fated World War II submarine USS Lagarto (SS 371) will gather May 6 in Manitowoc, Wis., to honor the men whose submarine went missing six decades ago and was only recently located by divers. Rear Adm. Jeffrey B. Cassias, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's submarine force, will serve as the keynote speaker at the ceremony held at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, where Lagarto was built. Jamie MacLeod, a British wreck diver who located the Lagarto wreck in the Gulf of Thailand last year, will also...

BANGKOK – A team of deep-sea divers has discovered the wreck of a U.S. submarine sunk by a Japanese minelayer 60 years ago in the Gulf of Thailand during the closing stages of World War Two. The U.S.S. Lagarto, a 1,500 ton 'Balao class' submarine, disappeared without trace on May 4, 1945 after attacking a Japanese tanker and destroyer convoy around 100 miles off the southeast coast of Thailand. All 86 men on board are still listed as missing in action. 'We've always known that since the end of the War there's been a submarine missing around there,' said British...