For almost 40 years, more than five tons of gold sat at the bottom of the Barents Sea. The treasure was locked inside the hull of a British World War II cruiser named HMS Edinburgh, 800 feet beneath the surface.

Finding the wreck was difficult enough. Getting 465 bars of gold out of a sunken warship was a whole other problem.

Pulling it off would require specialized divers, cutting-edge equipment, and somehow finding a way inside a ship that had been sitting on the seafloor for decades.

465 bars of gold sunk beneath the Arctic Ocean

The HMS Edinburgh left Murmansk on April 28, 1942, as part of a convoy. On board was a shipment of gold from the Soviet Union, sent as payment for wartime supplies.

The ship didn’t get far. A German submarine, U-456, struck the Edinburgh with two torpedoes. Badly damaged, the cruiser was placed under tow and quickly turned back toward port.

In a story for BFBS Forces News, crew members described the ship’s quarterdeck as “ripped up like a sardine tin.”

On May 1, the Germans attacked again, and the crew was ordered to abandon ship. When it became clear the cruiser couldn’t be saved, British support vessels scuttled it. Fifty-eight crew members lost their lives, and 465 bars of gold disappeared beneath the icy waters of the Barents........

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